If I Owned a Financial Planning Business, Here Are 8 Marketing Steps I Would Take Right Now

In the midst of the economic recession and the pandemic surrounding the coronavirus, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty out there for many people and business owners. However, it’s important to remember that people are now online and on social media more than ever, so it’s pertinent that you step up your digital marketing strategy during this time. So, if I owned a financial planning business, here’s what I would be doing right now when it comes to client communications and marketing:

8 Things To Do as a Financial Planning Business Owner Right Now:

1. Write One Article Per Week

Right now, it’s more important than ever to be churning out content for your advisory firm. It’s a busy time, but if you can get out at least one article per week, then this will be perfect for providing useful content for your clients and leads. Keep in mind that this should not only be posted on your blog, but it should be emailed out to clients and prospects. Some good content to be putting out there would be summarizing the week’s events or something like providing my thoughts on historical perspectives.

It’s important to stay relevant and informative and make sure that you are putting content out there that provides a solution for your audience and helps to put them at ease during this trying time.

2. Record A Video On My Phone (To Be Embedded With The Article)

Recording a video doesn’t have to be a costly ordeal these days, basically, all you need is a smartphone to create appealing videos. Video marketing has become the most effective and popular digital media strategy, and according to Twenty Over Ten’s marketing study from 2019 of 200+ advisors, the ones that were getting 11+ more clients per year from digital marketing were most likely to use video in their strategy.

You can actually do this in three easy steps, and they are:

1. Record the Video on Your Phone.
2. Add captions to your video using Headliner.
3. Upload your video on YouTube and across your social media channels.

For the third point, make sure that you are doing this natively rather than linking out to YouTube. This is essential as the platforms will actually reward users who post things natively, therefore keeping your post at the top of people’s feeds for longer.

As you can see in the above image, I have recorded a video from my phone to discuss seven of the best free digital marketing tools out there, which has been turned into a blog and posted across our social media platforms. This is timely and relevant, as many businesses are probably trying to cut costs in the midst of the recession, so offering up useful tools that are also free is a great topic to touch on.

3. Put Together A Weekly Email To All Clients

I have often discussed the importance of email marketing and sending newsletters to your clients, and now it is more important than ever to do this. At Twenty Over Ten, we usually provide a monthly newsletter at the beginning of each month, with relevant blogs or videos, plus upcoming webinars and events that our clients will find interesting. We also provide a bi-weekly newsletter in the middle of the month which includes five of our favorite blog articles that we wanted to share that our audience will find useful.

In times such as these, however, sending weekly updates is necessary, as many people are stressed and uncertain, and so it helps to provide them with some sense of “normalcy” where they can turn for help. It’s a good idea to summarize the best of the best in terms of news coverage of the pandemic plus how the markets are doing. Makes sure that you are providing articles that are level-headed, rooted in data and worth their time to read.

4. Send A Weekly Email To Prospective Clients, With A Similar Tone And Set Of Information

Similarly, you should provide a weekly email to your leads, as well. Even though they are not clients of yours, showing that you are there for them and providing them with useful information and a sense of stability is a great way to nurture those leads, especially in a time when they need it most. If they were indecisive about becoming clients, then this is a great way to show them the type of care that you will provide for them when they do become clients.

5. Increase Your Social Media Posting

Now is the time to boost your social media strategy, especially since people are spending even more time on social media and news outlets in the midst of the quarantine. You can continue to share your own blog posts, especially if the content that you are producing is relevant, however, work to find more graphs, charts and compelling visual information to share. In fact, studies show that when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later, however, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later!

It’s critical that you offer compelling imagery that is easy to process and quickly conveys your brand’s message so that you make an impact on people. Especially right now, if you post a useful graph or image discussing the economy or something about the virus, then it will get much more engagement through commenting and resharing then if you simply shared something without an image.

In the above image from Twenty Over Ten client, Avaii Wealth Management’s, Facebook profile, they offer very relevant and useful information in their blog, “A Guide to the Recently Passed Paid Leave Benefits Amidst Global Pandemic” but also provide some light-hearted humor in the below image to lighten the mood during this difficult time.

6. Look Through My Website Analytics

I definitely check out how our site is running through our Google Analytics, so make sure that you are making use of this useful tool, as it is crucial right now. It can measure over 10,000 metrics, but in this case, Use this to find out which articles from your blog are gaining popularity and getting the most views at the moment. From there, you know what type of content is doing the post and can post similar content to drive traffic.

Another way to get more legs out of your posts is to go back and optimize old posts and update them with timely and relevant backlinks, statistics, add useful images, graphs, etc.

As you can see in the above image from Google Analytics, you can narrow it down by specific landing page and blog post to see the session, how long visitors average on each blog, bounce rate and many other metrics. This allows you to see the type of content that performs best so that you can tailor and optimize your other content accordingly.

7. Use Tools Such Google Search Console And Google Trends

Much like the above, Google Search Console and Google Trends are great tools to discover what investors are searching for right now, how your website is performing for those particular terms, and then you can write content that will perform well in those search queries.

Some of the most important things that you can find from Google Search Console are:

• Queries: The keywords that users searched for in Google Search.
• Clicks: The count of clicks from a Google search results page that landed the user on your property.
• Impressions: The number of links to your site a user saw on Google search results.
• Click-through-rate (CTR): The click count divided by the impression count.
• Position: The average position of the topmost result from your site.

8. Optimize My Google My Business Listing And Be Sure It Is Up-To-Date

This includes any new Hours Of Operation, updated phone numbers, emails or location information due to Covid-19. For a local search strategy, your Google My Business (GMB) listing is your company’s most visible asset, so it’s so important that these things are all updated to reflect different hours and numbers as more employees work from home. 

Additionally, according to a recent BrightLocal survey, local search and organic search deliver the greatest ROI for businesses over any other digital marketing tactic, so it’s crucial that you make these changes to reflect your listing.

In a Nutshell, You Need To Make Sure You Doubling Down on Your Content Marketing

This is the MOST amount of time people have EVER spent online and not being where clients and prospects are spending their time is the biggest mistake you can make right now.