In my travels and face-to-face meetings with advisors, I spend a lot of time listening how they are generating leads.

Again, this is the #1, hot-brand issue for most financial professionals, so any insight here is extremely powerful.

1. Via advisor’s website: This is just effective, blocking and tackling. It’s not enough to just have a website or blog. Advisors who are good at generating new leads know how to effectively give-away content (whitepaper or presentation) on their websites in return for an email address.
2. Online ads: Ken Fisher, massive $40B+ RIA is a well-oiled machine with its targeted advertising on search engines. Fisher uses small ads that have the ability to hyper-target an ideal prospect and get them to click. Again, you’ll need to send the user to a page on your site and give them something of value to get more of their details so you can follow up with them directly.
3. LinkedIn: Many advisors completely miss the boat on the power of LinkedIn to help them grow their businesses. But, LinkedIn is perhaps one of the most powerful tools for identifying hot leads for your advisory practice (assuming, you can define who your target client is). Smart advisors are using the advanced search feature on LinkedIn to find those people in their network that fit their ideal prospect bill. Save this search and LinkedIn continues to monitor the results of your search and delivers any new hits, new names to you when they pop up.
4. Online presentations: Slideshare (just bought by LinkedIn) is a really powerful platform for powerpoints, PDFs, presentations. There are other platforms for audio and video. Live webinars continue to work well to generate leads (you need an email to signup!) for advisors who can get people to sign up for them. Prospects interested in following the breadcrumbs back will find their way to the advisor’s website in the form of a qualified lead.
5. Old school still works: The ROI of offline marketing has gone down but only an insane person would claim that old school techniques don’t work anymore. Seminars, direct mail, cold calling, effective networking — these things all still work.

What are you doing to generate leads? What’s working for you?

The financial community has been slow to adopt social media. One big fuzzy gray zone has been compliance.

But that process is evolving. Last week, a National Examination Risk Alert went out that called into question the Facebook ‘Like’ button.

Testimonials:  …The term “testimonial” is not defined in Rule 206(4)-1(a)(1), but SEC staff consistently interprets that term to include a statement of a client’s experience with, or endorsement of, an investment adviser. Therefore, the staff believes that, depending on the facts and circumstances, the use of “social plug-ins” such as the “like” button could be a testimonial under the Advisers Act.16…

Steph and I discuss this issue (and a lot more) on our AdvisorGo Podcast this week. Go to AdvisorGo to listen/subscribe via email or listen below:

Taking the Social out of Social Media by AdvisorGo

Advisors ask me all the time about their websites.

Most of the time, they’re asking for help in terms of optimizing their site’s performance: capturing more leads, driving new prospects, expanding their reach.

To be honest, building a website for most advisors (for most people, really) is an utterly overwhelming process.

Why building a website is overwhelming

It’s human nature: when we don’t quite understand something, we seek professional help.  That’s why your clients seek out your advice, right?

I’m guilty as charged, too. Here — and on my exclusive Advisor Insider newsletter – -I’m also trying to provide you with powerful tools, tips and technologies to help you build your financial practice.

But when it comes to something so far out of our expertise — like technology, website design, Internet marketing — we seem to slink away from making big, bold decisions and almost over-delegate to the work.

Most advisors will turn to someone who understands this stuff and empower them to get the project done. Without oversight, without true understanding of what’s going on technologically, without understanding design best practices — as advisors, we overpay on technology projects and frequently, get underdelivered on our results.

That’s just the facts.

A better way to get a better website design

Many designers — good, honest people — wouldn’t want you to know about the resource I’m going to give you next. It’s major competition for them (in a good way). It keeps prices competitive and standards high for designing awesome websites.

It’s www.99designs.com

With 99 designs, you can get a professionally-designed website for about $600 (not the thousands that you would normally need to pay).

Q: What is it? How does it work?

A: Essentially, you hold a design contest where thousands of web designers compete to design a site you’re 100% happy with — or, you get your money back.

So, for about $600, you get to plumb the ideas of designers around the globe, tweaking your site until you get an awesome design. The great thing is that this process is transparent, so you see the ideas designers are generating and you can build upon them to get exactly what you want.

By the way, you can get almost anything designed here — logos, stationery, book covers, etc.

How it works

Here’s how www.99designs.com works:

Why 99 designs is good for advisor websites

1. competition is good: We’re in the investing game and we know competition is good for business. Getting multiple ideas and designs only makes the final product — your website — better.
2. diversification keeps costs down: Getting numerous designers to compete for your business means you place less responsibility on a single service provider. You have less chance of getting screwed — or at least, taken for a ride.
3. transparency is awesome: the contest is held in the raw — wide open for everyone to see. It keeps standards high and ideas flowing.
4. cost: I know from speaking with friends in the web development business that they like advisors as clients. Because we don’t know a whole lot about technology or web design, we don’t ask too many questions. Costs aren’t always competitive. Designing a site via 99 designs ensures they are.

That’s it.  Check out www.99designs.com

Let me know what you think — I’m curious to see if this is helpful for you.

Asking for referrals isn’t easy.

Alll the data show that as professionals, we are sitting on gold mines of referral value (!), just ready for us to unlock it to build a super practice.

Clients should be lining up, checks in hand, begging — pleading! — for us to manage their portfolios.

Yeah, right.

The truth about referrals in the financial business

The truth is that very few of us are able to fully leverage referrals.

Why is that?  Have you ever asked yourself that?

If it’s so easy – all you have to do is ask! — why aren’t we all managing $40B like Ken Fisher?

Well, the first thing is that it’s not.  that.  easy.

It just isn’t.  I don’t know about you but my clients don’t suddenly call tons of hot prospect friends when I pop the question.

It takes guts to work up the question.  Beyond that, who wants to sound like a sleazy salesman?

Second, I’m convinced that just asking the question is certainly NOT enough.  Maybe it used to be but there are plenty of reasons your clients aren’t manning the phones — right now! — dialing for dollars, hitting up all their friends to bring you business.

The real reasons clients aren’t referring you business

1. referrals cost A BOATLOAD of social capital — by referring someone to a professional, you spend some of your social capital.  If your contact isn’t happy for any reason, that looks bad on you.  Rightly or wrongly (caveat emptor, right?), your contact will blame you for making a poor referral.

That’s it, one reason.  There has to be a damn good reason for your client to open his rolodex, risking his street cred with his friends and contacts. There’s too much at stake for you to screw up.

In other words, it’s risky — and getting riskier with social media — to make important referrals to a financial advisor.

You’re still TOO FAR OUTSIDE YOUR CLIENTS’ SOCIAL CIRCLES TO GET REFERRALS.

In fact, the more I think about it: asking the common referral question — hey, who can you refer to me? — is the wrong question.

One financial advisor found that he was able to grow his practice 5X by tweaking the question.

He went from…
OLD SCHOOL REFERRAL QUESTION: Hey, you know my business requires referrals from happy clients.  Who do you know who you could refer to me right now?
to…
NEW-FANGLED MONEY REFERRAL Process (2 parts):

1. Hey,what are your hobbies? Interests?
2. With this question, find some overlap with your own interests.  If they like PLAYING SQUASH, tell them you do too. Hey, can I get in to your weekly game?

Of course, this isn’t a direct plug for your client to open his Outlook and begin scheduling meetings for you with his wealthy friends.

And that’s the point — it’s an indirect referral process.

Let’s carry this SQUASH PLAYING example through

1. So, you go to the game
2. Hopefully, you can play squash well-enough to not embarrass yourself
3. Get invited back and begin to integrate into the social circle

Once you’re in the social circle (how many times has this happened to you?), the referrals will happen naturally.  One of the regular players will come over (make sure he’s not sweating in your ice tea) and tell you about a money problem he has or a friend who’s looking for ‘someone good’.

By the way, research has shown that these crucial social bonding questions come in 4 flavors:

1. hobbies
2. interests
3. lifestyle
4. values

Why does this work?  Well, if making a referral means spending social capital, this puts everything on sale.  Suddenly, by integrating into your clients’ social circles (online and off), making that referral is less risky.  They have to spend less social cred to get you in.

Everyone wins.

Referrals aren’t about just asking for networking opportunities or some hoogie-woogie esoteric mindset.  Getting referrals is about creating an ongoing process to ensure that those opportunities present themselves to you.

Ultimately, it makes for good business — you’ve always got to listen to your clients and determine what gets them juiced.  If you can help them get juiced, they’ll help you, too.

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