How to Get 70% of New Clients through Your Website

In a moment, I am going to walk you through some real specific numbers for Financial Synergies that were a result of its digital-marketing plan, but first let’s briefly walk through the five major sections of a good plan.

The five broad questions that define any digital marketing plan

There are five major questions to answer for any successful digital marketing plan. These questions are somewhat obvious and basic, but their simplicity is the key to why they work really well:

• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get there?
• Who does what and when to get there?
• How do we measure success?

1. Where are we now?

The first step of the plan is to figure what kind and quantity of lead flow you got last year from your website and landing pages.

Get someone on your team to open up Google Analytics and see how much traffic you are getting. Dig in and see your top pages, where the traffic is coming from, where they are going on your site when do they leave right away, and how much of your traffic is new.

Then go into your form software (in the backend of your website) and see the number of entries that you got last year. Delete any spam entries – robot or sales-type entries. What remains is the number of leads you got for the year.

This is your baseline number, and it lets you know where you stand with total leads generated.

Now divide the number of leads by the total amount spent on digital marketing for last year. This is your baseline cost for lead acquisition. It is a good number to know.

There are more considerations, like closing rates, but we are focusing on the basics for now.

2. Where do we want to be?

The next question to answer is what do you want to get out of digital marketing as a source of new business.

A lot of this will be determined by your digital-marketing budget and the techniques you plan to use.

If you have no clue at all, one obvious goal would be for you to aim for 10 new leads per month, yielding approximately one new client per month.

Space does not allow me to tell you what that would cost for your firm, because the different techniques vary in cost and yield different results and also vary based on location.

For example, in a metropolitan area, you can expect to pay about $50 or $60 per lead acquisition with a Google “Adwords” campaign, with the ultimate cost of a new client acquisition somewhere in the $1,500 to $2,000 range.

The cost of new-client acquisition from content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) varies based on whether you outsource the writing of the content and how much is invested in driving inbound traffic to that content.

3. How do we get there?

Once you have determined your goals for lead-gen, figure out your overall strategy. Again space does not allow me to go into too much detail. It varies based on the specifics of each advisory firm.

The core issue is that you need a certain amount of traffic to your website and landing pages to get the number of leads in your stated goal. Should it be paid traffic through advertising or should the traffic come through searching on Google or from other sites? Or a little bit of both?

A lot of this comes down to your budget, the amount time your team has, and the in-house talent your team holds. Consulting with a digital agency on at least this part of creating a digital-marketing plan is a good idea.

4. Who does what and when to get there?

This section covers the specific tasks that need to be done, their deadlines and who is responsible to complete them, whether inside or outside of the firm.

The tasks should be very specific and you should use a project-management tool like Asana, Trello, Basecamp or Teamwork to keep track.

5. How do we measure success?

Finally, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to make sure that you are on track.

Establish monthly reporting. How much traffic did you get last month? How many leads? How much did you spend? What are the quality of the leads? Where did the leads come from? Did you get reach your stated goal of the number of leads for that month?

Watching these indicators will help you make critical adjustments to your digital marketing plan as it rolls out.

The payoff from a digital-marketing plan

I applied this digital-marketing strategy for Financial Synergies, and it generated 40 to 50 new leads consistently per month. I can also give you the breakdown on the source of these digital leads:

• SEO – 65%
• Lead service – 30%
• PPC – 5%

As you can see, the bulk of its digital-marketing strategy was SEO. This included all the techniques that involve inbound traffic via organic search, such as content marketing, strategic link-building, as well as the sales funnels that picked up the traffic. These leads typically had a 35% to 50% closing rate, which is outstanding. It was the best lead source after referrals.

Lead services, like Wiser Advisor, Paladin, and Smart Assets were the next source of leads in its strategy. The closing rate, though, was not as exciting – about one in 20 or 5%. But it actually is an important tactic if you are not on the front page of Google, are just starting out or want to pull leads from all producing channels.

Pay-per-click (PPC) was the next major technique, though it hasn’t been a key source of leads thus far for Financial Synergies. This is an area where it plans to expand its lead growth for 2019. According to Hubspot, thus far the financial industry as a whole has been seeing about a 7.19% conversion rate on leads from Google Adwords and other PPC sources.

A good chunk of its marketing plan will be writing the branding messages for the landing pages and text ads, using the StoryBrand script, developing projections for the cost and expected ROI for various keyword targets, identifying and creating the necessary lead nurturing methods, and then putting into place the review and optimization process.

For 2019, you should implement a digital-marketing plan and start getting the leads to consistently flow.

Christopher P. Wendt is president of Midstream Marketing, a digital agency that generates predictable leads for independent financial advisory firms. Over the last 10 years, he’s spent hundreds of hours applying the LeadGen FormulaTM, a proven method helping financial advisors generate more leads. You can reach him at [email protected].

Read more articles by Christopher Wendt