There are so many confusions to sort out when dealing with financial advisers. People have been misled into poor financial decisions, while others don’t know how to find the right financial advice. It requires a lot of trust nowadays for financial advisers to generate and convert leads.
Old strategies like networking, buying leads, and word of mouth don’t work so well anymore. Reputation and credibility are far more critical. Thus, financial advisers face significant challenges in generating leads. The marketing and financial landscapes are changing, and advisers must adapt and develop new strategies to overcome obstacles.
We are going to trash out some of the obstacles that financial advisors have to deal with in lead generation.
GDPR compliance
Before the GDPR introduction, it was easy for advisors to buy leads and reach out to them quickly, but this is not the case anymore. Regulations are tough. Keeping the details of customers private and confidential is vital. GDPR makes it mandatory for clients to expressly give their approval to businesses before they can contact them with marketing materials. It means buying leads is only one piece of the puzzle. It would require further investment in time and money to gain permission from those leads before you can market your products and services to them. This is a significant challenge when it comes to buying leads for financial advisors.
Expensive leads
Lead generation is expensive, particularly for the financial industry. Clients in this industry are usually high net worth individuals, and thus, it costs more than your average lead. If you are going to be paying for an expensive lead you at least would want some sort of assurance that they will convert.
But, there are no assurances. You have to spend more and take the risk with no guarantees. Furthermore, you need to comply with GDPR to avoid penalties and sanctions. This is another Challenge for financial advisors. You have to decide if it is worth spending so much on leads that are not guaranteed due to compliance and strict regulations.
Strict compliance
The financial sector is highly regulated and rightfully so. Clients can be made easy preys through forced marketing and get rich quick schemes. The law, therefore, has strict complaint regulations when it comes to marketing financial products and services to clients. Many have fallen prey to unscrupulous high street financial advisers who advertise false products and services with the sole aim of making massive commissions and bonuses.
Some don’t care about the risk exposure of the client. This has landed some clients into pitiable financial situations with huge sanctions being levied to some IFAs. This as well is another challenge when it comes to lead generation for Financial Advisors.
No control of pipeline
In today’s business landscape, it is paramount to have a pipeline and control the pipeline. Some industries have been extremely successful in growing, nurturing and providing incredible value to their pipelines. Having a pipeline means you are in control of your clients and how you market to them. It reduces the cost of purchasing new leads as you have a core base of loyal customers. By providing constant value, you keep your clients committed and happy. This, however, is not the case if you rely on buying leads.
When you buy leads, you have no relationship with your leads. There is no loyalty. You don’t control the pipeline as they don’t have prior exposure to your brand. This can be a challenge for financial advisers, especially. Clients in this sector want to feel safe before trusting you with their money. Lack of previous exposure means they know very little about you. This can be a hard place to win their trust and business.
Poor quality materials
Some IFAs have recognised the importance of building trust and growing a pipeline, but they are guilty of trying to do too much and thus providing poor quality content to their pipeline. It requires commitment and hard work to grow a client base. You constantly need to add value to keep your leads hooked and hungry for more. This means hours of planning and preparing the right material to put out. It means creating relevant and high-quality content to inform, educate, advice and make their financial decisions a lot less stressful.
What you must do instead
IFAs need to adopt a new approach for lead generation and an approach that is client-centred and value-oriented. They need to do this by providing trust and credibility to attract clients to their brand. It takes time and money to build trust and reputation, especially online. You must look to put in place your own lead generation system utilising tools such as social media, websites, videos, and more to create an authentic and genuine connection with your leads.
Think about it. You expect them to trust you with their money. The least you can do is show them that you genuinely care about them and not just their money. In some cases, leads could take hours, days, months, and even years to consume your materials and grow to trust you before they can commit to what you are selling. Thus, you must be consistent, honest, and passionate about what you do. You must add value to their lives through your materials.
This is how you get them to trust you and want to book an appointment to see you. Such leads won’t need much convincing as they already trust and know you thanks to your incredible materials.
You will need to give more and ask for little or nothing. By giving more value, being available to answer questions and ultimately growing a huge audience.
Generating organic leads can take some time, however with the right lead generation system using paid traffic sources you can have a pipeline in place that will give you fresh new enquiries daily. Once people are in your world and assuming you follow a value added approach, leads will start to convert with little or no effort on your part. Nowadays, people want to trust you; they don’t want to be sold. They want to develop a relationship with you and trust that you are passionate about helping them with their finances.
Thus your ultimate goal should be winning their trust and confidence through your own lead generation system. The best way to do this is by building credibility online through consistently delivering value, being transparent and authentic always.
Not every Financial Advisor can afford an agency to do this for them and clearly buying leads is no longer viable – it leaves Financial Advisors to consider learning how to build their own Lead Generation system. With the right strategy and framework – it’s not as difficult as it may seem.