Part Two: Creating Brand Awareness and Driving Traffic to Your Website

Written By : Clifford Blodgett

In our first article in this series, you were introduced to a fictional financial advisor named Jeff. Jeff embarked on a digital marketing campaign without first defining his goals, and as a result did not find the success he had expected. You learned that your goals should dictate the type of content you create, so that you can enjoy more success than our disappointed Jeff. Now you’re ready to learn more about specific marketing goals, and how to create content to meet those objectives.

Brand awareness

What is your favorite drink? You may be recalling a specific brand, such as Pepsi, Mountain Dew, or Gatorade. How about your favorite clothing brand? Are you thinking of Eddie Bauer or Tommy Hilfiger?

What these brands have achieved is a very wide awareness among consumers. You might like the way those drinks taste, or the way a particular style of clothing looks, but beyond that you are aware of factors such as quality and lifestyle. These companies have successfully created brand awareness, so that consumers understand how these particular products are different from similar products produced by other companies.

As a financial advisor, you also want to create brand awareness for your company. How do your services differ from those of other financial advisors in your area? Do you want to project an image of wholesome family values? Are you a high-tech advisor who uses video calls to meet with jet-setting clients? Do you specialize in working with federal employees or teachers? These are some ways in which you might set yourself apart from the competition. Your brand awareness should communicate your company’s values, and it should be relevant enough to attract the attention of a large number of people.

The types of content commonly used to create brand awareness are:

• A funny or interesting video
• E-books or webinars
• Slide-Share decks about a particular topic related to your field of expertise

Once you’ve created content, how do you know it’s working? It’s important to remember that your goal dictates your key performance indicators (KPIs). These are the variables you will measure to determine if your strategy is working.

Our fictional advisor Jeff made the mistake of measuring his success by the wrong KPIs. It’s important to remember that you can’t determine whether you’ve created brand awareness by observing the number of new clients walking through your door. That will come later in the marketing process. Right now, you should observe how many times your content has been liked and shared on social media.

Driving traffic to your website

You may have put a lot of effort into building your website, but you also need to ensure that internet users actually see it! Remember that marketing is a process with the end goal of gaining more clients, but your early goals relate more to exposure of your company. Driving traffic to your website is an early goal in your overall long-term marketing strategy.

When your goal is to drive traffic, you will create blogs, videos, or social media posts that include a link to your site. As you create this content, ask yourself:

• Who is my target audience?
• Is this content interesting or relevant to my target audience?
• Did I include a call to action, so that my audience knows what to do next?
• Is this content optimized with keywords and social media share buttons?

Once again, you won’t measure the success of this content by the number of new clients calling to schedule an appointment. Don’t worry; we’re getting there! But for now, you will know if your traffic-driving strategy is successful by measuring:

• Number of website visits per month
• Number of blog visits per month
• The percentage of viewers who are returning visitors
• The average amount of time viewers spend engaged with your site – keeping in mind, of course, the average amount of time it should take to read a blog
• Average number of page views – are viewers reading only the blog they clicked through to read, or are they checking out other areas of your website?
• Conversion rates on content that includes a call to action

As you can see, the types of content you will create – as well as how you measure your success – depends upon the specific goal you are trying to achieve. Marketing is a process, in which you gradually nourish a relationship with potential clients. As you deepen these relationships, your goals and strategies will change. In our next article in this series, we will discuss the types of content you should use if you hope to generate leads.

Filed under: Financial Advisor Marketing, Social Media for Financial Advisors