How to Start Your Digital Marketing the Right Way

6 Steps to Kick-Start a Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is an absolute necessity for financial advisors who want to sustain a business over the long term—you've heard this before. Younger generations seek information online and want to access it at the touch of an icon on their smartphone. We know going digital is key to success, but the question is, how do advisors implement such a marketing strategy?

Here are six steps to kick-starting digital marketing efforts at your firm. (For more, see: Top Digital Age Tips for Financial Advisors.)

Choose the Right Channels

The first step in setting up a digital marketing strategy is to decide which channels will provide the best return on investment. Marketing efforts take time and cost money and there is absolutely no point in wasting either if your message isn’t getting across to the right audience. You need to find out where your clients are and how they want to receive information. Some may prefer to receive information in an email newsletter, some may want to search your website for the information they need and some may want to receive regular updates via social media networks.

Implement One at a Time

Social media is not magic, it’s work. Work that can have rewards, but work nevertheless. Advisors can reap the rewards of being active online, sharing information with clients and proactively making new connections, however it takes time. If a blog or website is your preferred channel for client communication, remember that it takes time to get set up, obtain approval by compliance and keep it updated regularly with new information.

If you want to start sending out a client newsletter, it will take time to collect email addresses and choose a template for the newsletter using a free email service such as MailChimp; then you must compile the information you want to share. Therefore, it’s a good idea to find the right channels and implement one at a time—because it’s just more efficient. Once each channel is set up, the maintenance is easy. As you implement the first channel you can move on to the next one. Before you know it, you’ll be active daily on social media, have a website with a weekly blog and be sending out a monthly newsletter with helpful information.

Create a Content Strategy

Once your preferred channels are set up, it’s time to decide what you want to share—i.e. find content that your audience wants to read. Planning a content strategy can help set sharing guidelines on the posts you want to publish. It ensures you have information to share daily and are posting a variety of content such as photos, videos, headlines and self-created content such as blog posts.

Different channels require information to be sent out in different ways. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all allow the use of hashtags, which can be a valuable tool to reach new audiences. However, LinkedIn does not have this functionality.

Facebook gives advisors an opportunity to be more personal and share photos of life outside the office while keeping a professional tone. LinkedIn is more of a professional network and content should be related to your job, industry or the market. If you’re attending a conference or industry event, LinkedIn is the place where you can share those professional photos. (For related reading, see: Google Essentials for Financial Advisors.)

Ask for Help With Management

Just as it takes time to build trust with clients during personal meetings, it also takes time to build trust and relationships online. Don’t expect to join a social network, start sharing content and then the next day see that a client writes you a big fat check. When you optimize the channels that your target audience uses, share content they want to read and proactively grow your network, social media can be very rewarding. However, it won’t happen over night.

If you don’t have the time to invest in digital marketing, you can make a financial commitment and outsource the work by delegating it to a member of your team or hiring a third party. They can update your website, write blog posts, create and send out client email newsletters as well as post information on your social networks.

Measure Engagement

As is the case with all marketing initiatives, advisors probably want to know if their efforts are returning a reward. It’s important to measure engagement with each digital marketing initiative because you want to know what’s working, which channels are bringing in sales leads and how your clients want to receive information. From there you can increase efforts on those profitable channels.

When a prospective client contacts you, ask how they heard about you or got your contact information. Maybe it was from an email newsletter, maybe it was from a social media network or maybe they found your website in a Google search. It’s good to know so you can concentrate and focus your efforts on activities that provide the greatest return.

Check With Compliance

Before implementing any digital marketing strategies, it’s important to check with your compliance department and obtain approvals. The last thing an advisor wants is to invest both time and money into digital marketing efforts and have compliance decline approval for use. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. (For more, see: Why Social Media Is a Necessity for Financial Advisors.)