- September 26, 2021
- Posted by: Adviser Leads
- Categories: Lead Generation, Marketing Tools, Strategy
Understanding how IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools might seem like yet more needless marketing stuff to get bogged down with, but if you invest a small amount of time in getting one built and added to your website, it’ll pay dividends for years to come with absolutely no maintenance.
In this article we’re going to break down what interactive tools are and how you can make them work for you.
Interactive tools are often overlooked as a lead generation device. They aren’t always easy to implement and they do require a bit of website know-how to ensure they work properly. However, if you create a whole marketing plan around one or more of these interactive tools then they can be a really slick lead generation system for you.
What Are Interactive Tools?
An interactive tool is an online way for you to increase engagement with your ideal prospects and build trust with them without having to interact in a personal way. Interactive tools allow you to do a number of things at various points in your marketing strategy, depending upon the objective of the campaign.
Enough of the description, you want to know exactly what they are and how you can use them! IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools such as:
- Calculators
- Infographics
- Ebooks
- Quizzes
- Surveys
And pretty much anything else you can think of that will allow your audience to interact with it online. Believe it or not, many financial advisers actually use memes as interactive tools. Now, if you want to go even further down this route, you can include video, podcasts and anything else that will allow people to interact with you, but we’re going to be talking specifically about the tools that advisers can use to generate leads.
Why Are They Useful For Your Prospects?
There’s lots of studies that show that interactive content is far more valuable than regular content. However, when we are talking about the type of content that generates leads, we need to look at things in a slightly different way. Creating an interactive infographic may be a great way to showcase lots of data in a very visual way, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to a good lead magnet. You’ll likely spend more time and money working on building it and filling it with data that it will spend generating you high quality leads.
Don’t forget that we are working with people who want to increase their wealth or ensure that they are able to pass it on to the next generation without paying much tax on it. They want to know how your services are going to benefit them right now.
So, let’s assume that you are dealing with someone who is retirement planning. There are a multitude of things that they need to consider to know how much they will need to have saved and what they can count on to keep paying them when they have retired. IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools like a retirement calculator.
This tool is incredibly useful as it provides a straight look at numbers for people planning retirement and if this is too confusing for them, it gives them a chance to then reach out to the adviser behind the calculator. Now, this is a more direct tool and more likely a good tool to use when a lead has been generated to help close the deal.
A tool that would be super helpful on the front end of the funnel would be something like a quiz. By running a quiz with a score at the end, for example, a how ready for retirement are you quiz, your prospects are able to see if they are on track or need some help to get themselves ready for their retirement.
How Are They Useful For You?
Aside from the immediate benefit of generating leads for you, IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools that allow them to provide far more insight and personalisation that traditional methods may allow.
The traditional way of lead generation, for most advisers anway, is to scour LinkedIn and try to get a response from an in message. This is both time consuming and ineffective at best. You may feel busy because you’ve invested a lot of time reaching out to people but your conversion rate is very low (If this sounds like you, get yourself booked in for a FREE strategy session, worth $1000, and we’ll help you to build out a lead generation strategy specifically for your business).
You are trying to reach out to people you believe are a good fit based on their profile. Don’t forget that LinkedIn is a professional networking website. Everyone on there wants to look as impressive as they possibly can. It’s likely you’re reaching out to people who aren’t a good fit for your services.
Interactive tools, however, allow people to identify themselves to you as right fit people and filter themselves out long before they even get to speak to you. Let’s take the scenario of the retirement planning calculator. You may have a criteria of people that you want to work with. When prospects fill out the form, you can get notified of their results via email. If their results fulfill your criteria, then you can reach out to them. If not, then you can allow the automation on the tool to do the work for you.
IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools that allows them to deliver qualified prospects to your inbox. It can help to build up a picture of who they are and what they are looking for long before you even open the conversation.
What Tools Do You Need?
This is an excellent question. What is needed so that IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools. Well, we actually break this entire process down here in our ultimate 3-step strategy guide for advisers that you can download for free now. We can necessarily tell you exactly what specific tool you should be using because that depends on your clients and their needs. If this is something that is still a mystery to you, then you should definitely check out our guide to creating buyer personas here.
If you think of a marketing strategy as three basic stages, you’ll be able to position the tools you need in a more effective way. The three stages are as follows:
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel
The top of the funnel is where you will let people know who you are, who you work with and what problems you solve. Consider this cold traffic. The middle is where you start to dive into more specific challenges and show how you’ve fixed them for people in the past and the bottom is where you convert them into a client. We’re going to look at the top and middle sections briefly here.
At the top of the funnel an ebook would be a good idea. They can be very in-depth about specific topics, or they can be a broad guide of large topics of information. It really depends on what stage you’re using them at and who you are targeting. They show off your expertise and are an easy, non committal way of generating a lead. They probably aren’t ready for a call yet, but they are an indicator of the fact they are looking for help.
At the middle of the funnel, a calculator would be a great way to help someone further and show them in more detail what is required to help them achieve their goals. A person who has downloaded the ebook and filled in the calculator is clearly signaling interest in your services, so would need a call. See how they have automatically filtered themselves through the process?
Now, IFA’s can generate leads with interactive tools in literally thousands of combinations. What we have suggested above is not the only way and it should be based around what your clients need to see and when.
How IFA’s Can Generate Leads With Interactive Tools?
There are so many tools that have been pre-built for you. Simply do a quick search for retirement calculator template, and you’ll have thousands at your fingertips in seconds. Now, the other element here is that just because you have a tool, it doesn’t mean that people will use it. You, as an adviser, need to help people find this, as well as explain the benefit of them using it.
Think about the key challenge someone has. A retirement calculator doesn’t necessarily help someone. After all, it’s just a calculator. You need to connect the reason behind why they are searching for it and what use it is going to be to them. Once you understand this, you’ll be able to generate leads with interactive tools.
If you want to learn more about how Adviser Leads helps IFA’s to generate leads, build marketing plans and grow their businesses, simply click the button below now to book your FREE strategy session (worth $1000).