Need To Know April22

April 2022

ThinkAdvisor Marketing Blog:
Tying Content to the Sales Funnel

One of the first questions we ask our lead gen and custom content customers is: what stage of the sales funnel (top, middle or late) are you focusing on?

At ThinkAdvisor, our ABM/Activate products offer the ability to find firms/companies that are displaying likely interest in your product/service and indicate where they are in the sales funnel.

And we also have different lead gen programs that track to different stages in the sales funnel. So you can choose broad programs to drive awareness leads, and more targeted programs to drive later-funnel leads.

But what content types align best with the three stages of the sales funnel? Here’s some guidelines from our audience marketing and custom content teams. And check out the key trends financial industry marketers need to know that follows these tips.

Content Types Aligned to Sales Funnel

Top of the Funnel – Awareness. Define the Challenge/Opportunity

  • Educational: Informative content that answers a question. Think of content around regulations, compliance, and improving efficiency.

  • Thought leadership: Forward-thinking and macro industry trends.

  • Research: Collecting data that supports a challenge/opportunity and puts it into context.

  • Immediate gratification: Solves a pain point, improves efficiency right away. These may come in various types but think along the lines of forms to modernize your contracts, quick reference infographics for compliance, or excel sheets to easily calculate some industry formula.

Mid-Funnel – Consideration: What types of solutions are available?

  • Tip-based content: Quick tips or deep-dive tactics to improve your business, team, or solve problems.

  • Buyers Guides: Step-by-step content that outlines options available to solve a problem or enhance your capabilities.

  • Checklists: Short-hand version/summary of buyers guide.

  • Evaluations: Tools to assess what your team needs, where it’s at, and what to consider.

Bottom of the Funnel – Justification: What are proof points that show the solution works?

  • Case studies/testimonials: How you solved a customer problem.

  • Use cases: When the product is new and you don’t have a case study.

  • ROI Calculators: Prospects can input high-level data from their business and see potential outcomes.

Here are some examples of content our Custom Solutions team has created along these lines. Click here to see our Custom Solutions Showcase.

If you’d like more information about our ability to target leads and content that is aligned with your sales funnel strategies, please contact me at [email protected]
Adam Dunn,
Vice President, Financial Markets Leader

Trends Financial Marketers Need To Know

  • As concerns about inflation, possible tax and retirement changes, and other pressures on retirement income mount, the need for strategic financial planning analysis is becoming even more critical. If advisors lack in-house tax expertise, for instance, they should “connect with their clients’ CPAs,” according to Slott, especially if the advisor is “handling what may be your clients’ largest asset, their IRA or 401(k); these accounts are loaded with taxes.”

  • As more individuals retire early and/or seek out gig work, part-time jobs and more flexible work situations, advisors are looking more closely at niche markets or underserved client segments.” There’s value in working with stigmatized groups and in markets that are not overly saturated,” says advisor Lindsey Swanson. “If you create a safe place, there’s going to be demand … .”

  • Advisors themselves have a growing array of options in their work situations and business models and thus are very interested in information about salaries, fees/commissions and the threat of lawsuits as they switch firms and move their clients. “So if it’s impossible to start an RIA without taking proprietary information doesn’t that mean that every RIA that left a brokerage firm to join Hightower should be sued? As well as Hightower themselves for facilitating that transition?” asks compliance specialist Kyle Happe on Twitter.
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