How to Improve Your Online Presence as an Advisor

Digital marketing is something most advisors can’t afford to neglect. As clients increasingly turn to search engines for financial advice, a wealth of opportunities exist to grab their attention and grow your business. Improving your digital capabilities is also essential to improving the client experience, which can lead to greater retention. If your online presence feels lacking, here’s how to improve online presence for financial advisors.

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How to Improve Online Presence for Financial Advisors: Actionable Tips

Your online presence encompasses your brand identity and tells prospective clients who you are and what you do. An advisor’s digital footprint can include:

• A professionally designed, user-friendly financial advisor website
• Social media accounts
• Branding, including brand statements, taglines, logos, fonts and color schemes
• Bio pages
• Web content, such as blog posts, articles, videos, images and infographics
• Digital ads
• Media mentions

A simple search for your name or your firm’s name can tell you how much of an impact you’re making with your online marketing efforts. If you turn up very few results, that’s a sign that it may be time to try some of these strategies for building your online presence.

1. Establish a Website (or Update the One You Have)

Your website is often the first point of contact a prospective client has with you, and it should leave a good impression from the start.

If you don’t have a website, you can use financial advisor website templates to build one. And if you have a site, consider how you could improve it by asking yourself the following questions:

• Is the site layout easy to navigate and is there a clear menu visitors can use to find their way around?
• Does the site’s logo and color scheme reflect your firm’s branding?
• Are you including key pages, such as a bio page, a resources page, a page explaining your service offerings and contact forms?
• Does your bio page include a headshot and tell a compelling story about who you are and whom you serve as an advisor?
• Do you have a valuable lead magnet on display to collect email subscribers?
• Do pages load quickly or is there a lag?
• Are there any broken links?
• Does your site include search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to increase its visibility in search engines?

You can also ask your clients to share feedback on what they do or don’t like about the site, or try third-party user testing. User testing platforms assign an anonymous individual to visit your site, click around and share detailed feedback about their experience.

2. Leverage Content Marketing

Content marketing can help increase your online presence if you’re creating valuable, shareable content that ranks well in search engines. That includes content for your website or blog and social media accounts. The more eyes you can get on your content, the more opportunities you have to build an audience.

The following tips can help you develop a content marketing plan:

• Tailor your content to your target audience. Any content you put time and effort into creating should speak to the needs or interests of your ideal clients. Think about what questions prospective clients may have or which problems they need help solving. Then use that as a guide to create your content.
• Try different formats. Some clients may prefer to consume written content, such as blog posts or social media posts. Meanwhile, others might lean into short- or long-form videos. Utilizing diverse types of content in your marketing strategy can help you broaden your online presence if you’re promoting that content on multiple platforms.
• Incorporate SEO. SEO is a set of strategies that help websites get found in search engines. Why is that important? If a prospective client types ‘financial advisor near me’ into a search engine, you want your website to be at the top of the rankings. SEO starts with choosing the right keywords to include in your content, but it goes beyond that. Brushing up on SEO basics for advisors can help you determine how to frame your content.

You can also create content in one format that you can easily repurpose into another. For example, you might draft a blog on retirement planning and pick out 3-5 key points to mention in your next email newsletter. Or you might choose one tip to highlight in a short-form video for TikTok or YouTube.

Repurposing saves time since you don’t have to draft fresh content every time. You could also consider using AI tools to streamline your content creation process.

With AI, you could:

• Brainstorm content ideas
• Generate outlines
• Create video scripts
• Write rough first drafts

Note: It’s wise to review AI-generated content for tone, accuracy and compliance before you hit publish.

3. Collaborate

Strategic partnerships and collaboration can help you increase your online presence by leveraging platforms outside of the ones you own. Possible opportunities to boost visibility include:

• Writing a guest post or article for a financial website’s blog
• Taking part in a joint discussion panel or seminar on a financial planning topic that’s geared toward your ideal client
• Joining a well-known financial podcast as an expert guest
• Contributing expert insight to an article for a financial news website
• Co-authoring a book or e-book with another advisor
• Hosting a joint live stream with another advisor to answer your ideal clients’ most frequently asked questions
• Developing an affiliate program to encourage referrals
• Building spheres of influence with other financial professionals, such as bankers, real estate agents, accountants and attorneys

These types of activities can expand your online presence and add to your overall credibility, which is a significant factor for many prospects when choosing an advisor to work with. A critical aspect of building strategic partnerships is identifying beneficial opportunities.

A partnership or collaboration may not do much to enhance your online presence if you’re not getting something out of it, such as a link to your website or shares of your social media content. Remember, you don’t need to be everywhere online. You just need to be where your ideal client is most likely to see you.

Bottom Line

Growing an online presence can take time and a little patience to see the results. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such website traffic, social media follows and media mentions can help you determine which efforts generate the best return on investment.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Partnering with an advisor marketing platform is another avenue for increasing your online presence. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• Should you spend money on digital ads to grow your online presence? Many advisors choose to do so, but it’s important to consider how you’re putting your marketing dollars to work before setting up an ad budget. For instance, where will your ads live online? What is the desired goal of those ad placements? How will you measure the performance of those ads? These kinds of questions can help you narrow down your goals and estimated costs before investing in ads.

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