What are some of the most common objections you hear, as a financial advisor, in conversation with prospective clients? Probably along the lines of I already have a financial advisor, I don’t have enough money to invest, and maybe in the future but right now I’m not interested.
Worst case scenario, these objections can end an otherwise promising sales conversation; best case, they slow things down requiring financial advisors to spend a lot more time and effort on hesitant prospects than is really feasible.
If you’ve got the talking points ready, you can of course work to overcome these objections—and others—in the moment, but what if you could preempt them through your marketing strategy? What if, by the time you were talking one-on-one with an ideal new customer, all their biggest concerns had already been addressed?
Here are four ways to overcome prospects’ biggest concerns through marketing.
Craft Messaging that Allays Concerns in Advance
Every good marketing strategy has its ideal client at heart, and that includes those prospects’ needs and interests as well as their hesitations and fears. As you craft the content you plan to share with your target audience, consider not only what will excite them but what’s giving them pause. For the latter, think through how you would address these concerns in person, and go ahead and address them in your campaign outreach.
For example, if your target audience is young and concerned that they don’t have enough money to invest, consider creating a piece of collateral—a print or digital infographic, for example—highlighting how little it really takes to start investing and why it’s important to start now, even if you’re not working with very many zeroes yet.
If you hear most often that your prospects don’t have time right now, focus your messaging on how little time it takes to get started or, where appropriate, create a sense of urgency through time-sensitive opportunities.
The more you can tailor your messaging to what you know your prospects are likely to be thinking, the more likely they are to feel seen, to trust what you have to say, and to get in touch with you for a positive and productive consultation.
Highlight Your Unique Value
If one of your top objections is that your prospects already have financial advisors, then it’s to your advantage to focus your content on your unique value—why you, specifically, are the perfect fit for your ideal clients. What sets you apart from the competition? What is your biggest strength—what’s in your wheelhouse that your prospective clients are looking for?
Working with a financial advisor is a fairly vulnerable prospect for most customers, and asking them to move away from a known quantity to a stranger can be a hard sell. So the more you can show your audience who you are, what working with you is like, and what you have to offer that their current advisors may not, the more likely they are to consider making that switch.
This is where a multichannel campaign is really important. When they start to see your consistent branding and messaging over and over in their newsfeeds, their emails, their physical mailboxes…then you become a familiar presence, and therefore a trusted one. When you connect one on one, your prospects won’t feel like they’re talking to a stranger.
Face Concerns Head-On
When it comes to preempting prospects’ concerns, there’s no need to be coy (at least, not all the time). Incorporate those concerns directly in your digital and print campaigns, showing prospects you understand and care about what’s keeping them up at night. Here are a few ideas:
- A digital survey or a social media campaign asking followers what their biggest concerns about working with a financial advisor are. You can use the survey responses to hone your messaging, and chime into the conversation on social media with thoughtful responses and resources to allay those fears.
- An FAQ direct mail campaign. Create an eye-catching mailer that explicitly lists the concerns you hear most often—along with your responses and an invitation to talk further.
- An email nurture campaign addressing and overcoming one main objection at a time.
When you’re learning to debate or write an argumentative essay, you learn to anticipate the other side’s argument and refute it before they can even make it. The same applies here, and by calling out those objections head-on, you demonstrate that you can empathize with your audience, showcase you understand, and take the anxiety out of investing.
Make it Easy to Take the Next Step
Speaking of anxiety, research has shown that 71% of Americans—and 82% of millennials—are afraid of some aspect of talking to a financial advisor. All the work you’re doing in your marketing campaigns to alleviate their fears is apt to make a big difference, but there’s one more step you can take: make it as easy as possible for your ideal clients to engage with you by clearly outlining the next actions they can take.
This might mean putting a button in your email or a QR code on your postcard that takes recipients straight to your calendar to schedule a meeting. It might mean offering a free risk-tolerance quiz to help them start visualizing what a financial strategy might look like (and get them excited to learn more). The options are limitless, but the more friction you can remove from the process of starting work with you, the more effective you’ll be at converting cold leads to promising meetings.
When it comes to thoughtful (and compliant) communication with prospective customers, financial advisors have a lot to think about. And that’s not to mention actually executing on all that content — creating collateral, printing assets, and delivering direct mail campaigns, for starters.
At OneTouchPoint, we pride ourselves on easing that execution burden, from asset management to fulfillment and beyond for both digital and print marketing. That way, our clients can focus on the heart of the matter: connecting with their ideal clients.
Learn about how OneTouchPoint helps financial advisors devise and execute high-impact multichannel marketing campaigns at the national and local levels. Then, when you’re ready, contact us or request a quote, and we’ll be happy to talk more about how we can help your team.