If you're a Financial Advisor, chances are good that your lead generation is stuck in the past. Like most in your industry, your days are probably filled with local networking events, seminars, and coffee meetings.
But the internet and the critical role of social media in our daily lives has given rise to a whole new set of tools for advisors to grow their business. And traditional lead generation has had a huge overhaul.
To be clear, online there are two ways for an advisor to be ‘discovered.' The first is through search.
In this instance, I've used the most common search term for people looking for a financial advisor here in the United States.
There are over 12,100 searches every month for the term “financial advisor near me” and about 4,000 for “financial planner near me.” Other location-specific searches like “financial planner new york” only number in the hundreds on a monthly basis.
But even at many thousands of monthly searches, those number don't begin to cover the population of possible financial planning/advising clients in the U.S.
That's where social platform marketing enters.
Lead generation from social sites is entirely different from search-based marketing.
With search, people are actively searching for specific solutions, so all you need to do is provide what they are looking for in return for getting them as a lead. In the social universe, however, people aren't searching for anything.
So how can you generate leads from social platforms?
Time and time again, the proven answer is quizzes.
Quizzes can come in all shapes and sizes, including personality quizzes and trivia quizzes. But for Financial Advisors, among the best types of quizzes for generating leads are quizzes designed to demonstrate how little the people taking them actually know about their financial situation.
When someone completes a quiz and finds they don't know as much as they thought they did, you can place an offer to help them front and center, giving them an opportunity to get expert assistance in an area they've just realized they need help.
And for those who ace your quiz, they're likely to want to show off their expertise… by sharing their success on social media (and inviting others to take your quiz as well).
Quizzes like these have proven to be highly effective. Take a financial aptitude quiz offered by the website Financial Engines. In their study, a whopping 94% failed to ace the quiz, thereby generating a huge windfall of leads for the financial services company.
I've written on the subject of lead-generating quizzes in the past, including this case study of a test I ran using the online tool Interact. But for my latest test, I decided to use another cloud-based quiz builder called Quizitri.
Designing a quiz that stands out on social media
Quizzes get three quarters of their traffic from social media, so it's important to design your content so that it compels your ideal prospect to click on it when they're scrolling through their news feed. While this may sound like it takes a bit of magic, there's actually a simple three step formula to make it all work.
1. Follow the classic quiz title template
The fact is that there are only two title structures that nearly every successful quiz employs. The first one is “What kind of ______ are you?” This quiz type is usually found in personality quizzes. The second is “How much do you really know about ______?” These are often the types of quizzes that focus on testing people's knowledge.
2. Use photos with a person
Social posts with photos of people (especially a woman's face looking directly at the camera) end up getting clicked on as much as two times as often as images not including a person.
3. Use a short description that sells the click
The title really draws people’s attention, but the short description sells them on taking action. In the quiz I created on the topic of financial literacy, my tag line offered people a chance to compare their results with the general U.S. population's grades on the same subject. Who doesn't like knowing if they are smarter or better informed than the “average” citizen?
How I created this quiz using Quizitri
Unlike other quiz builders I've used, Quizitri has a simple user interface designed to be intuitive and streamlined. Basically, you just follow the items on the lefthand side of the builder (pictured below) and hit “publish.”
In this first step of the quiz building process, I needed to decide if I was using a “general” quiz type (where I could use logic branching to set up follow-up questions based on how previous ones were answered, or if I was going to use a more straight-forward “scored” quiz type. I chose the latter.
After the initial setup, I determined if I was going to capture leads and add them to an email autoresponder. Many quiz builders use direct integrations with email service providers like MailChimp, Infusionsoft, GetResponse, etc. While this can be very handy, it can also be limiting if you don't happen to use one of the service they've chosen to integrate with.
Recognizing that there are far too many email service providers out there to directly integrate with them all, Quizitri smartly allows users to either connect directly via API or via HTML form code. (If you're not familiar with how to do either, they've included an easy-to-follow tutorial.)
In the case of my test, I connected my quiz to an autoresponder using an HTML form code, and it worked perfectly.
Next, because I had previously chosen to create a “scored” quiz, I needed to define what the possible outcomes would say about the people taking the quiz. I knew I'd be building a short 6-question quiz, so I divided the points evenly into three groups.
Before people started the quiz, I selected to display a “start page.” In my case, this was a simple introductory sentence letting them know what was ahead of them. But you can use a pre-quiz page to provide further context around why you are offering the quiz or incentive for why someone should take it.
Questions are quick and easy to plug-in. In the case of my test quiz, I typed out a question and then filled in the various multiple choice answers. Each answer allowed for branching logic and, because this was a scored quiz, the ability identify a point value to the correct answer.
Another option in this section is to upload images to use as answers. While I didn't chose to use images this time, it should be noted that studies have shown quizzes with images have higher engagement and completion rates.
Amazingly, in fewer than 15 minutes, I had already reached the moment where I was ready to hit “publish.”
Quizitri hosts all quizzes on their super-fast loading platform, and also allows you to embed their quizzes on your own website.
Getting people to opt-in after taking a quiz
Quizzes are a highly effective way to build your email list and generate leads. But not everyone will opt-in. The average opt-in rate is around 50%, but that can vary from as low as 10% to as high as 90%. Here are two factors that will influence if people opt-in or not:
Do you provide value beyond just the quiz results?
While the appeal of seeing one's own quiz results can be strong, unless you offer them something else, that appeal won’t convert everyone. So consider offering something simple like personalized advice or something more compelling like a chance to win a giveaway.
Be honest about what you’re going to send people
If you're goal is to build a list, make sure people know what types of emails you'll be sending and how frequently. It’s much better to have someone not opt-in than to have them angry at you for mailing them to often or with content they don't value.
Get started using quizzes
If you want to stand apart from other Advisors, consider using quizzes. They can help bridge the gap between what most of us are good at (creating content), and what we need to do (generating leads from social media).
If you've not yet implemented quizzes, consider trying Quizitri. It's simple, yet powerful. And if you'd like some help putting quizzes to work for you, let's chat. I'm always happy to help.