With 2017 edging closer every day, many financial advisers are starting to think about how they’re going to grow their financial planning practice next year. If growth is what you want for 2017, then what you need are leads and lots of them.
But lead generation isn’t easy. If it was, you would have already achieved your growth goals.
Over the last five years, we have been obsessively trying to solve the problem of lead generation for financial planners, and we have come up with a strategy introduced to me by my friend Taki Moore called The Five Ones. It is a rock solid, bullet proof strategy financial planners can use to grow their business in 2017.
But there are two caveats:
- First, you need to know the strategy
- You need to execute the strategy with great discipline
Let me help you with the first one now by showing you the strategy.
The Five Ones are the simplest and most reliable way to generate predictable sales in your business. What I mean by “Predictable” is signing 2, 3 or 4 new clients every week.
Forget the feast and famine cycle of two new clients this week then nothing for the next 3 weeks then another client the week after. No, consistency is what we all need when it comes to sales. It helps us project our growth and prepare adequately for the onboarding of new clients.
Below are the five steps that make up the Five Ones:
One Niche
If you want your message to resonate with your audience, then you need to speak specifically to them. When your marketing message speaks in generalities you speak to no one. When you speak to one person, they hear clearly what you are saying.
Step 1 is to choose a specific person to promote your services to. It could be:
- Stay at home married mothers with children under five years old . They are on a single income and they are worried about what might happen to the family financially if the bread winner gets injured or dies.
- 50 – 60-year-olds who earn over $150K and are looking at retiring in the next 10 years. They are worried they may not have enough to retire
- 40 – 50-year-olds who want to grow their investments substantially during the years where their income is the greatest
When you identify who your perfect client is, you are able to speak their language. You can identify their #1 pain point and what keeps them awake at night.
You can then use this information in your marketing to show them that you not only understand their pain but that you also have a solution.
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When you can articulate another persons problem better than they can they automatically and unconsciously credit you with knowing the solution
Wyatt Woodsmall
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One Offer
Once you know your perfect client and their #1 pain point, you need to identify which product or service you have that can solve their challenge. You need to craft an offer that you know 100% will help them achieve their goal.
Once you have this offer, you can then without a doubt offer it to your perfect prospects with confidence that you can help them. This is important when you are marketing your products and services as a financial planner as we all want to believe that we are helping people in a meaningful way and we also need to act in a professional manner.
One Lead Source
This step is the game changer for many financial advisers. In the past, finding a lead source that delivers new leads every week on a consistent basis is almost like finding a magical unicorn.
In the past, you have probably tried networking, cold calling and live events, but when you stop working these methods, the leads dry up, and let’s be honest, they are really hard to do consistently.
Let me let you in on a secret that most financial planners do not know yet. Facebook Ads are the #1 lead source for financial advisers today.
Where else can you find over 14 million Australians using a platform for 30 – 40 minutes per day every day. What is even more powerful is that you can target each one of these people based on over 2000 data points. This means that you can only show your ad to people who are:
- Women
- Aged between 28 – 35
- Who have preschool aged children
- Are married
- With a combined household income over $100K
- Own their own home
- Live within 25 miles of Parramatta
Wow! Now that is powerful. Plus that is only 7 data points. There are around 2000 more you can use to target your perfect client.
Even better is that Facebook gives you mountains of data on every interaction your audience has with your ad. It gives you cost per click, cost per conversion, the demographics of people who click, what time of the day they click and even how engaged they were with your ad.
All of this data helps you measure and test your ads so you can optimise every dollar you spend on the platform to increase your return on investment.
One Conversion Tool
A conversion tool is what you drive traffic from your Facebook Ads to. It does two things:
- Capture the details of the people that click on your Ad
- Helps convert those new leads into appointments in your office
You can use a video, an ebook or a webinar. One of the most powerful ways to convert prospects into clients is by using webinars.
For example, you may put an ad on Facebook promoting a webinar, which a user will have to enter their name, phone number and email address to access. Once you have their details you are able to follow up with them to book an appointment.
Why would someone give you their personal details on Facebook for an ebook or video? Great question and the answer is in step one, “One Niche.”
Remember when you understand someone’s problem better than they do, you will be able to describe their pain better than they can. This means the title of the webinar should address their pain point which will spark interest in them. If you get it right they will just have to attend.
When you get this step right upfront, the rest of the strategy just works. If you get step 1 wrong, it doesn’t matter how clever you are, no one will sign up for your offer.
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One Year
You need to execute this strategy for one year.
Too many businesses, have a go at blogging, SEO, radio advertising, email marketing or cold calling, but never do it more than a couple of times before giving up. The key to any marketing strategy is consistency of execution and time.
The more you do it, the better you get. You learn from past campaigns and apply those learnings to future campaigns.
Facebook Ads gives you so much data on your ads, that you will be able to optimise the ads indefinitely as you learn more and more about the behaviours of your audience. You will be able to optimise your webinar every time you run the webinar and improve it every time.
Imagine how good you will get at this strategy if you run it for one month? What about 3 months? What about 12 months?
I am convinced after doing this for many years with many clients that if a business can find the right strategy and do it for 12 months, they will get so good at it that they will create a predictable sales engine, that gives them leads every week reliably.
Conclusion
If you want to grow your business is 2017, then follow The Five Ones. Pick one niche, one offer, one lead source, one conversion tool and do it all for one year.
A bulletproof strategy with disciplined execution doesn’t sound as exciting as some of the other ideas you might hear online today, but this is what the best marketers of old used to do and what the best marketers of today are continuing to do.
I hope you have an awesome 2017 filled with lots of leads that convert into clients. I hope you find the right strategies, execute them and achieve your goals for the year. It is going to be a good year for financial advisers in 2017!
