How long do you think you need to work at your marketing to get results? A month? Three months? What if we told you it takes a lot longer than that? Probably a lot longer than you'd like. But that's ok; you're in this for the long haul because you want more than just leads—you want paying clients.
One of our members shared with us that he “just scheduled a meeting with a $1.2M prospect” he's been emailing since 2018. After three years of nurturing and building the relationship, he finally got a call booked with that high-net-worth (HNW) prospect. Even though it won't take all your HNW clients three years to convert, you need to invest in that relationship with a considerable amount of nurturing to get on their radars.
So the right answer to our question in the first paragraph is: it depends. We recommend using our holistic lead generation strategy for at least six months before giving up—but it could take up to three years (or even longer) to net the big fish. Remember, you won’t get results immediately, and expecting instant gratification will hurt your marketing success.
Stay motivated with consistent efforts and marketing metrics that actually matter to get more marketing wins—paying clients who are loyal to your business.
Get Results with Quality and Consistency
John Anderson, managing director at SEI investments for the past 27 years, acknowledged the importance of high-quality content by saying, “If a prospect reads or sees content that speaks to their situation, they're more likely to respond.”
Your marketing performance and results depend largely on how well you create quality content and how consistent you are at communicating with your leads and clients.
As you continue to consistently reach out to your prospects with quality content that interests them, you stay top of mind and start to become their go-to resource. In other words, you become the person they reach out to when they have finance-related questions.
Dry, unhelpful content can be transformed into great content if you know exactly who you’re creating it for and what purpose it serves. Additionally, most clients want to know that you care about them; in fact, 84% of them stated that being treated like people, not numbers, is a key factor to winning their business.
Jon, a Snappy Kraken member who has been a certified financial planner for over eight years, told us, “It’s a riot when people get hit with the marketing-obvious emails and then [we send them], ‘Hey Christine, are you still interested in Social Security and retirement income plans?’ And then they’re like, ‘Yeah, you know actually I kind of am!’”
Invoke Curiosity with Eye-Catching Visuals
Most people who see your social media ads or find your business on Google don’t know who you are and what you do. So they’ll only click on your ads and links if they see content that makes them stop and think.
For example, we created a lead generation campaign on hidden tax opportunities that are likely to expire, targeted at prospects, taxpayers, pre-retirees, and retirees:
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For the main ad image, we used four different eye-catching colors that are loud enough to “stop the scroll” but not obnoxious. We used a large number “5” to invoke curiosity—viewers want to know what 5 means—and added the text “Hidden Tax Opportunities” right underneath so that it resonates with taxpayers.
The images alone, both in your ads and on your landing pages, should make your viewers want to learn more so that they give you their contact information. If you need some inspiration, check out our campaigns. As soon as viewers give you their information, you’ve got yourself a lead.
Learn More About Your Leads by Starting Conversations
To start creating content that really resonates with your leads, you need to get to know them. For example, if you know most of your leads are first-time parents and pre-retirees, then you know exactly what kind of content they want—tuition planning guides, childcare expense summaries, and retirement planning tips. To do this effectively:
- Send out email surveys that ask questions about their financial goals
- Take note of what lead magnets they downloaded
- Remember which emails they responded to
After you get to know more about them, nurture your leads with educational and finance-adjacent content to convert more leads faster. Educational content that explains important topics like tax planning, 401(k) rollovers, and Medicare will showcase your knowledge and prove to leads and prospects that you know your stuff.
Finance-adjacent content is more conversational and covers topics like end-of-year wishes, Omicron, and philanthropy. That kind of content serves three purposes:
- Draw in your leads with topics they like outside of finance (but somewhat related)
- Reassure them by addressing topics they might be worried about
- Start conversations with common hobbies and interests
Plan Content Campaigns for Consistency
You can't land clients with quality content alone—you also need to be consistent in delivering that content. Greg, president of a financial planning firm for over 10 years, shared, “[Snappy Kraken is] easy to use and allows me to send out solid, visually compelling content on a regular schedule—something I struggled with before. It’s already landed me a few new clients!”
The surprising truth is that sending compelling content on a regular schedule is actually easier than you think. All you need is to start thinking about your content holistically and set up automated tools to deliver it on schedule.
If you think about your content as a strategic system of linked content, rather than individual, unrelated pieces, it's going to be more effective. Experts call it "Campaign Thinking," and it's really intuitive.
You can't learn all about someone on the first date—the same goes for your marketing. Your lead generation campaign is the first date, while nurturing campaigns are memories you make along the way that, ultimately, lead to commitment (a.k.a., your lead chooses to become a client). Or, in some cases, your leads will decide you're not a good fit—and that's ok. Breakups happen, and usually for good reason. You can move on and focus on building the next relationship.
Once you have quality, conversational content that resonates with your target customers, you can add automation that will save time for you by sending emails on schedule, posting on social media, and personalizing your content in a few clicks.
3 Ready-to-go Marketing Campaigns That Work
Keep yourself top of mind with engaging campaigns that span weeks and months. These three campaign types have worked for businesses across several industries, including financial planning.
1. Lead Generation Campaigns
Don’t stop communicating with your leads after they give you their contact information—they’ll forget about you. Instead, start a conversation.
Our lead generation campaigns usually run over a period of four weeks. They contain six emails, 12 social media posts, an opt-in landing page, a tripwire page, a confirmation page for appointment booking, and a post-confirmation page that leads to your website.
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The diagram above is the sequence for our Sudden Wealth campaign that runs over 28 days.
A well-crafted lead generation campaign will not only help you capture more leads but also help you learn more about them and set the tone for your relationship.
2. Visual Insights Newsletters
Our visual insights newsletter (VIN) is designed to cover finance-adjacent topics and establish you—the financial professional—as a caring, knowledgeable expert. These usually run for about three weeks and contain one landing page, one confirmation page, six emails, and 12 social media posts.
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The diagram above is the sequence for our Strategic Philanthropy VIN that runs over 21 days.
VINs are designed to be current and thought-provoking. They establish you as the reliable expert while also reassuring your readers about current events to ease worry.
3. Prospect Engagement Campaigns
Prospect engagement emails are nurturing sequences for building relationships and pushing your readers to book an appointment with you. They usually run between one and three months and contain a landing page with an appointment-booking form, a confirmation page and email, plus five promotional emails.
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The diagram above is the sequence for our Tax Planning Campaign that runs over 35 days.
Prospect engagement or nurturing campaigns are designed to give your readers questions only you can answer so they book an appointment with you. Similar to other campaign types, they also continue to build strong relationships with your leads and clients.
Stay Motivated with Qualitative Metrics that Matter
We know that slow and steady wins the race thanks to a famous fable about a turtle and a rabbit. But keeping yourself motivated to win when the race turns into a marathon can be difficult. Just like the turtle, you need to motivate yourself by looking at what’s going well and having a clear end goal. Marketing is a series of small steps over time, but you have to stick with it to cross the finish line. A few checkpoints will help you measure progress.
While we have important quantitative metrics—like click-through and conversion rates—most advisers forget to look at results that can't really be quantified like:
- Email reply quality. When your leads and clients respond to your emails, they’re either telling you they’re interested, they’re engaged, they want to hear more, or all three. Take screenshots of replies that mean something to you or have shared some really good experiences or feedback.
This is an email response one of our members received from one of their top clients.
- Engagement quality on social media. When your followers interact with your posts beyond likes and simple comments, it means they like your content and are willing to reach out to you. As you create better content, you’ll notice your viewers and followers will start initiating conversations and building relationships with you—that’s an important metric.
Even if you don’t have a million followers or an email list a mile long yet, you probably have qualitative results you haven’t been paying attention to. Keep your screenshots and good notes from clients and leads in a folder and use those to keep you motivated throughout the marketing process.
Send Your Prospects and Clients Quality, Engaging Campaigns with Snappy Kraken
We know there’s a lot of watered-down content going around, so we promise to give you campaigns full of engaging content that resonates with your potential clients. On top of that, we make it easy for you to implement campaigns—all you need to do is choose a campaign from our library, personalize the content a little, and hit the launch 🚀 button. Our system will send your campaigns out on schedule, to the right people.
Wondering if Snappy Kraken is right for you?
