You no longer have people at hello. Or “Hello (insert name)!” for that matter. Effective content marketing – from blogs to emails – requires a succinct headline or subject line that makes a prospect click, makes them read more and makes them a customer. Just as important as the first line they’ll read is the phrase that’s usually found in a pressable rectangle on a website – otherwise known as a call to action (CTA).
CTAs in Finance
As a financial advisor, you offer a range of services. All of which can be found on your website. If a prospect lands on your site and views a few pages – that they’ve undoubtedly found because of your SEO – what’s the next step you want them to take?
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Ultimately you want a prospect to become a client. But that’s a big ask after glancing at your website for a minute. Instead, you can use CTAs to extend their journey, share more information about your firm and subtly hint at your value.
Our CTAs on Carson Wealth’s homepage are
- “Schedule a Call With Our Team,”
- “See Our Partners,”
- “Load More News”
- and “Schedule a Consultation.”
Each CTA button either offers more information or tosses a soft pitch to start a conversation. Effective financial advisor calls to action nurture a prospect, develop them into a lead and convert them into a client. They strike a balance between being informative and promotional. CTAs are essential to your firm’s marketing efforts if you want to generate leads to grow your business. There are three points every financial advisor should follow when creating CTAs – whether you’re adding them for the first time or updating existing CTAs.
1. Use Actionable Verbs
If you want a potential client to take a certain action, you need to state said action. An actionable verb lets the prospect know exactly what they’ll be doing by clicking on or following your CTA. If number one of this list was “Actionable verbs” instead of “Use actionable verbs” would you know what you were about to read? Actionable verbs incite action.
The examples from Carson’s homepage are all actionable verbs – schedule, see and load. All too often, advisor CTAs leave out the action part. It might seem trivial, but the difference between a hyperlink that says “Form ADV” and a button that says “View Our Form ADV” could boost clicks by 45 percent.
2. Keep it Short
Think of yourself as Simon in Simon Says. He commands crisp, clear demands. Carry this way of talking into writing CTAs. You want to provide the shortest path between point A (your content or website) and point B (your lead-generation form landing page or additional content you want to share with them). The shortest path is a stepping stone – like that of a call-to-action button.
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If you have to go longer with your CTA, keep it as simple and clear as possible. Don’t fill your ask with unnecessary language. Select the words you use in your CTA with intention and diligence. You want to create a sense of urgency and intrigue a prospect.
3. Extend Value
You don’t want someone to read your website and immediately bounce. Nor do you don’t want someone to read your blog, think “hmm interesting” and X out of the tab. You want to convert someone who’s genuinely interested in your content into a lead and eventually a client. The only way to do this if by offering the prospect something of value. Why does anyone buy anything? It’s because the product or service provides a certain level of value to their life. Offer them something of value that, in turn, showcases your value to them. Some examples you can offer as a financial advisor are a whitepaper, case study, free trial or consultation.
Ideally your prospect will learn more about you and your firm and you’ll learn about their financial goals and circumstances – the beginning stages of a client relationship. And don’t let an interested prospect disappear – follow up with anyone who downloads a resource.
Unsure of what resource you could offer? Or are you ready to take a deeper dive into learning how to position your firm for future growth and success through marketing? Download our case study on how one firm used Carson marketing materials to find loyal clients.
