Building relationships with current clients is easier – they can be upfront about their concerns and aspirations. But what do you do when you need to build trust with prospective clients who you haven’t even met yet?
You might try more traditional approaches that are more targeted, such as cold email, cold calling, or going to in-person events to network. However, you need a lot of manpower if you want to make it your main acquisition method.
This is where digital marketing channels come in. Ideally, your digital marketing strategy will help you build trust at scale.
Identify who your target audience is, including their demographics and psychographics so you can create content that’s highly relevant to their situation. Consistently engage with potential clients and build your online presence through these 5 marketing channels.
Social media marketing helps you keep in touch with leads, prospects, existing clients, and past clients. Make sure that you’re active where your target audience is. Find out where they go to spend their time and where they ask questions about their concerns. You don’t even have to give financial advice; just make sure you’re interacting with prospects by commenting, doing outreach to people who might need your help, or posting relevant content. Let’s say that your target market is young professionals or entrepreneurs building SaaS startups. In this case, you can try LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), knowing that both platforms are where they spend their time.
Build your authority and show your expertise in the industry through content marketing. Make sure that the content you’re creating is relevant to your target market. Most content is educational, for example, you can answer questions they have or guide them through the problem they’re experiencing right now. However, you should also prepare content for prospects at different stages of their buyer’s journey and reuse it to create various formats, such as podcast episodes, blog posts, seminars, or webinars.
Combined with SEO, quality content can help you get discovered through search engines. Most people don’t go past the first page, so make sure your pages rank at least on the first page. People who search for relevant terms in search engines are more likely to buy. They already know that they have a problem, and they’re looking for solutions to this problem.
Content marketing and social media marketing are great ways to let people find out about your business and improve their financial literacy. However, getting discovered through these marketing efforts doesn’t mean they’ll buy from you anytime soon. They might be perfectly happy with how they do things right now, so you need to build trust with clients through your own lead generation channels, such as your website and email newsletter.
Your website is where people go when they want to know more about your advisory firm. This signals interest, so make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity. Make sure that they can find relevant content straight away. Help them do this by creating a website that’s easy to navigate. For example, put a navigation bar on the top of your page – where most people expect it to be.
Your email marketing campaigns can help you sell more through targeted marketing campaigns and nurture people who are already interested in your advisory business. Regular newsletters help people remember how you can help. You have to keep exceeding their expectations through email as well. Create more specific content by segmenting your email list. You should also make sure that each email you send is relevant and useful to your clients’ needs.