SMART ADVISOR MARKETING

If you don’t ask, they can’t become clients

We had an advisor ask us about incorporating more “calls to action” on his website. “Of course we can do that - who are your customers and what would you like the visitors to do?” we asked? “I don’t know - you’re the marketing people, you tell me what to do next,” the advisor said.

Here’s the thing about the advisor’s question: the answer depends on many different factors. Unfortunately, we can’t answer the question the same way for every advisor because every advisor’s practice is a little bit different. The way we approach the website is a process called ”persuasion architecture.” Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg are really the innovators of this concept. We had the privilege of studying with them at a web marketing academy and it was eye opening. Bryan was recently interviewed by Netconcepts:

View the Netconcepts interview

The short version of their course is this (take notes):

1. Who are your customers? What kinds of personas can you identify within that segment? Analyticals, competitives, and compassionates are some basic behavioral segments. Each needs a slightly different set of information. These personas should look and feel like the real clients you service - include family details, prejudices and idiosyncrasies if you want to do a really effective job of designing your content.
2. What do you want them to do? What kinds of action do you want them to take? Subscribe to your newsletters, ask for a quote, register for a seminar, call you for an appointment, down load a free report?
3. What information will they need to make those decisions? What will an analytical need to know before they subscribe to your newsletter? What questions will the compassionate have before calling to book an appointment? Most competitives will want to know how your service will make them better than the Jones?.

In the process of answering these questions you’ll create scenarios - a competitive baby boomer from the mortgage business is downsized and wants to know how to handle their 401k rollover. They find your website after a Google search. What do you want them to do and what information will they need to make those decisions?

What you end up creating is a valuable document that is full of marketing insights. You should start with at least three personas and three scenarios for how those personas will interact with your site. You will probably end up with 5 or 6 basic questions that will cover 80% to 90% of each scenario. Then it’s a process of sitting down and answering the questions. The answers might be simple Q&A or charts & graphs or forms that need to be completed. That content can then be organized into web pages. You will also start to see a progression in the way the scenarios play out - Step 1, Step 2 etc.

Once you’ve completed your work, you then need to test it on the other folks in the office and especially your existing clients. Do the personas seem realistic? Are the scenarios reasonable? Are the questions encompassing enough? Does the flow of the answers make sense?

What’s the payoff? A thoughtful approach like this will greatly enhance the yield from your marketing efforts. It does little to just drive traffic to your site without converting visitors into prospects. For more information check out the Eisenbergs’ book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark.