Why Advisers Can’t Rely On One Lead Source to Grow Their AUM

One of the biggest challenges that advisers and wealth managers have is finding a reliable lead source to grow their AUM. If you work for a large financial services firm, then it’s quite likely that you will be given a proportion of leads to you on a semi-regular basis. However, if there is not a dedicated marketing division within that company, or, as is the case with a lot of the larger organisations, the marketing team is not very good, then you’ll likely find yourself being frustrated with a lot of irate people on the end of the phone telling you to go away.

A time honoured tradition is for advisers to then buy up data lists and hit the phones as hard as they can to see if they are able to play the numbers game for new business. Now, we aren’t saying for a second that this doesn’t work. Traditional tactics do still have their place in the world of sales and marketing and if you were to put a billboard up with an advert on, it would certainly deliver you results. It’s the effectiveness and tracking of said campaign that is the problem. It’s difficult to define ROI from a billboard. We want to work smarter and ensure we know which channels are working the best for us. 

What Happens If Your Lead Source Stops?

There’s two parts to this question really; what happens if your lead source stops and what happens if your lead source reduces in effectiveness. The first part of this is quite simple. As with a number of things in the world of marketing, if your lead source stops, your leads stop. You have nothing to work with and everything comes to a grinding halt. Unless you have a decent amount of AUM already coming in, you’re going to struggle, which could have considerable consequences in your personal life. 

The second part is what happens if your lead source stops being effective. If many years ago you were getting a 50% conversion rate on the data that you bought, but now you are only getting a 10% conversion rate it means you’re wasting money, working the same or harder and getting a worse result. No one wants that. In both scenarios you end up having to work much hard to get the same or worse result.  There’s lots of comparisons to the world of finance and marketing. In money terms, advisers will tell you that you should always have a reserve of funds for emergency situations. An additional stream of income to help if your main source of income stops and your lead source is no different. 

The Cost Of Your Lead Source

Let’s stick with the example that you receive leads from the marketing division of your company. If this is all that you rely on, even if they give you enough to be busy on the phone all day, what is the cost to you? Well, from a mental perspective, it’s tiring and a little bit soul destroying too. From a finance perspective, it may not be costing you anything, but it certainly isn’t making you anything. 

If the only way that you have been getting your leads is to buy data, then there most certainly is a financial implication to this. A lot of lead gen companies will charge anywhere between 50 cents to $1 per lead, depending on the quality. So anywhere upwards of $1000 is what advisers will usually pay to get these leads. Then we have to look ar the ROI. Did you make any sales from that data? Only one would cover it, but how long did it take you to call all of those people and book a meeting? If you were able to do marathon phone sessions, you could probably get through 1000 leads in a week but that’s quite unlikely. It may take you a month or more to reach out to each person on that list, assuming that the data you bought is good. 

If you pay someone to reach out to them then there’s an immediate cost involved which will need to be covered by the AUM brought in from that data list. You see where we are going with this? Your lead source should be high enough quality to bring you a positive ROI.

Is Your Lead Source Delivering High Quality Leads?

What lead source gives you the best quality leads? Well, unless you have multiple lead sources delivering you leads every day, then it can be difficult to answer that question. What you will find is that paid advertising will give you an answer to this super quick. If you have a good paid advertising campaign then it might be tempting to stick with that for a while. After all, paid advertising is usually quite cheap and excellent results can be gained from it. But, and there’s always a but, how long will it take for the costs to creep up from that lead source and their effectiveness decrease? This is one of the most infuriating thing about the world of lead generation. You always need to innovate. If you stand still, competitors will pass you by and steal your market share. 

On the other side of this, could there be other channels that deliver high quality leads for a higher or lower price? 

The Tactics You Can Use With Your Lead Source

Every channel is different. What you can do with one channel is not available on another, so it’s important to be able to utilise as many different tactics as possible on as many lead sources as is effective. Paid advertising has features that can only be used on that platform, for example, interactive adverts that the Facebook catalogue provides, or demographic targeting that isn’t available on another paid platform.

Using your blog you are able to explain complex subjects in detail and get the benefit of organic traffic from SEO. You may also be able to deliver a more visual or audible experience to prospects through the use of a podcast that you post on YouTube. Having more than one lead source will allow you to interact with your target audience in different ways to provide different value at different stages. You really do have to consider the customer journey that a prospect will take in order to become a client. 

Taking Control Of Your Lead Source

The key thing with lead generation is that you need to be in control of it. If you are relying on your marketing division within the company to provide you with high quality leads, you aren’t in control of your lead source. If you are buying data lists, there’s a high likelihood that someone has already reached out to those people, and you aren’t in control of the quality of those leads. 

If you are creating your own content and delivering that through several channels, then it’s quite likely that you will end up with high quality leads, but more importantly, you are in full control of your lead source. In fact, your lead source becomes a multiple lead source channel as you are able to adjust and fine tune according to which channel delivers the highest ROI and quality of leads. 

If you want to learn more about what lead sources might be best for you, book a FREE strategy session (worth $500) using the link below.