What Do Online Dating and Financial Advisor Lead Generation Have In Common?

This article first appeared in Advisorpedia on April 30th, 2021, and can be found here.

The internet is one of the first places we look when searching for something, even a romantic partner. In fact, a recent Stanford study shows that 39% of heterosexual American adults found their partner online.

That’s a surprising percentage.

But when we consider how often we turn to the internet to resolve something, it becomes more understandable. Especially when we look at the growth of Google searches alone:

So with more people forging romantic relationships online, why wouldn’t they do the same for financial relationships?

After all, the two have so much in common. And whether it’s to forge a romantic relationship or a financial one, you’ll want to make sure your online presence is supporting you.

With this in mind, we’ve broken down the shared traits between online dating and financial advisor lead generation to see where the two overlap.

1. Attractiveness

Let’s be honest, the first thing most people notice about a potential partner is their attractiveness. For financial advisors, this is your website.

Make sure your website is attractive and provides a positive user experience. After all, 38% of users will leave a site that isn’t well-designed or visually appealing.

And not only does your website’s attractiveness matter, but so does its accessibility. According to SWEOR, 57% of website visitors won’t recommend a site that’s not designed for mobile devices.

So, how do you make an appealing website to attract leads? Here are the features to focus on:

1. Color. Use color to attract the viewer’s eye to specific page elements, evoke specific feelings with color psychology and improve brand recognition.
2. Video. Including videos on your landing pages improves conversions and increases engagement when shared on social.
3. Navigation. Your site needs to be well-organized and simple to navigate. A confusing web structure is frustrating and often leads to visitors navigating away from your site, not further into it.
4. CTAs. Calls-to-Action should be used across your entire site and made unique to each page. Ask yourself what specific action would you want a visitor to take? Use color to draw attention to your CTAs.
5. Mobile-friendy. As discussed earlier, your site needs to be mobile-friendly. For advisors using Twenty Over Ten’s Website Engine, this process is automatic, as every advisor’s site is converted to mobile in the design process.
6. Live Chat. Setting up live chat is simple and saves time and effort on the advisor’s end when answering initial questions and qualifying leads. You can then spend more time focusing on clients.
7. Optimized Headlines. An effective headline attracts attention and keeps SEO in mind.
8. An FAQ Page. Blogs and FAQ pages have a lot in common. They help with SEO, answer visitor and client questions, and should link to other helpful pages on your website.

As an example, Dream Financial Planning incorporates everything on the above list to create an attractive and efficient website.

Brand colors are used to attract the eye to specific page elements and CTAs. Navigation is organized and simple. And visitor questions can be answered in both the live chat and FAQ page.

Using design and an SEO strategy, Dream Financial Planning was also able to increase its traffic by roughly 200% in a year.

2. Similarities

When you’re getting to know someone we often look for similarities and shared beliefs to make sure you’re compatible. For advisors, this is your services, your client’s goals and your values.

If you’re a financial advisor that provides retirement planning, then you probably attract individuals and couples that are looking to retire soon.

If you provide investment advice, your audience might be broad, but your goal is specific.

Specificity gives clarity. You’re not trying to be the advisor for everyone, you’re trying to be the right advisor. Show this on your site by doing the following:

Create a Clear Services Page

47% of visitors go to the products and services page first. You’ll want to provide clear information to common questions and transparent pricing.

And since this might be the first page of your website that visitors land on, you’ll also want to demonstrate your firm’s values.

For example, Southshore Financial Planning provides a detailed and transparent services page that also highlights their key values:

Appeal To Your Niche

Design your website to appeal to your chosen audience. Your firm will stand out as different from other advisors, and though you may limit your client base by focusing, those that you do appeal to are more likely to connect.

Cornerstone Wealth Consulting Services is a great example with a website designed to appeal to their audience through imagery and copy:

3. Location

Location is important when searching for a romantic relationship, and while long-distance can work, it’s still challenging, even for the right person.

Finding a financial advisor works very much the same. Googling “financial advisor” will confirm as much when you see local results on the page.

Location is incredibly important to both your clientele and SEO. And, unless you provide a very niche service, you will most likely be working with individuals in your area. So here’s how you can make sure they can find you:

Title Tags and Meta Description

Hover over your browser tab and you will see a small window of text. This is your title tag. If you’re on a Twenty Over Ten advisor site, you’ll notice the location of your main office comes first. This is because your title tag helps with local SEO, and by providing your location, you’re local rankings are improved.

Another location to find a title tag is in a Google Search. The blue text you click on to go to a website is the title tag. For example, Arista Wealth Management‘s title tag is highlighted in the purple box below:

You’ll also notice a description beneath the title tag. This is the meta description and is used to give a synopsis of the page. The synopsis should also contain any other keywords you’re looking to target.

Arista Wealth Management‘s meta description, boxed below, gives readers context and includes multiple keywords to improve SEO.

Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

A Google My Business listing is the information window that appears on the right side of a Google search result page. Following our above example, this is the Google My Business listing for Arista Wealth Management:

By verifying and optimizing your Google My Business listing you’re helping with your local SEO.

Establish a Link Building Strategy

Link building is one of the building blocks of SEO. It’s not just for local SEO, but without an effective link-building strategy, your local strategies won’t be as effective.

Link building involves obtaining a link from another website besides your own. When a high-quality website links to you, it shows that the site trusts your information.

Google acknowledges this and will often improve your overall ranking as a result. The more links you receive, the better.

So how do you build links? That’s the hard part, as websites often acquire links organically. There are some specific link-building strategies, but your best practice is to create quality content, optimize it and share it. This way it gets in front of the right users, increasing your chance of link building.

4. Rapport

A sense of connection, vulnerability and shared experiences are necessary to sustain any relationship.

The same goes for advisors and other financial professionals. To do so, provide a glimpse into your life outside of work. Share your hobbies and interests, be human.

There are a few key locations to do this. Consider the following:

Provide a Detailed About Page

Your services ensure that you can fulfill your client’s goals. But an about page will show your values and interests connect to your services.

Don’t be afraid to discuss what you do outside of work, your personal interests can be the factor that drives a lead to contact you or a perfect conversation starter.

As an example, the Thrive Retirement Specialists website uses an about page to connect values, interests, services and experience in one location, giving visitors a comprehensive look at the firm:

Use Your Website To Tell a Story

You can also demonstrate your firm’s values and services by connecting it to a story. Doing so makes your brand more relatable and provides another way to connect to your values and services.

A great example is Lago Wealth Management, which connects its values and brand identity through a story displayed on its home page:

Create Personal Content

Personal content can come in many forms, blog posts about your team, podcast episodes and personal posts on social media are just a few examples.

They are a great way to mix up your normal content strategy, and if you can, find a way to relate them to what you do as an advisor.

One post every Friday is fine. It’s leading into the weekend, so it’s an opportunity to discuss non-work activities.

As an example, Niki Clark, FPQP, uses social media to highlight our “meet the team” blog, a series of posts focused on our team members:

Wrapping Things Up

Whether it’s online dating, or financial advisor lead generation, there are a lot of similarities.

Both require a positive online presence.

For advisors, this means effective marketing. Make sure your website covers each of these steps to help improve your lead generation.