Especially in the investment business, your web presence is an extension of you.

People who first encounter you and your business online form a very quick — and strong — view of who you are.

How your clients think about you (and how your website influences them)

Many advisors I meet get a simple, basic (ugly?) website up just to have something online.  Something simple, plain, with some contact info.

…because you just gotta be there…

I’d challenge that assumption.

If a person’s eyes are the windows to his soul, those same eyes are his window to the world.

Our perception — even our very 1st visual understanding of a new product or service– immediately informs our beliefs. In a big way.

Research by neuroscientists shows that

• People identify with (or avoid) certain personalities.
• Trust is related to personality.
• Perception and expectations are linked with personality.
• Consumers “choose” products that are an extension of themselves.
• We treat sufficiently advanced technology as though it were human.

Throwing a sub-par website at them that wasn’t designed with you (or them) in mind will not only not help you land these new clients but can actively push them away.

Right, your website’s design is that important in growing your business.

Designing your website professionally…yourself

I’m not saying design is everything, more that it’s something powerful.

Hiring a fancy-pants expensive designer to design your firm’s website isn’t always the right move either. I’m not talking about design for the sake of design — I’m talking about designing something that informs new prospects exactly what you’re all about.

Whether you outsource the design or get more involved with it yourself, there are some core tools and concepts you’ll need to learn.

From Bootstrapping Design, a great resource to learn the basics of DIY design:

To evaluate design, you must be impartial. You have to check your personal taste and predispositions at the door and consider whether the work succeeds in solving the problem at hand.

We all believe we can recognize good design when we see it, but creating it is a different story. Evaluating your own design work is difficult, and it takes practice. There are a few tricks that can help you look at your work with a different perspective. Beyond these tricks, a second opinion can work wonders.

8 design resources to help you get started fast

1. Jakob Nielsen’s blog: Nielsen’s old UseIt blog was the first resource I found (like in 1998) that addressed design from a usability standpoint by calculating its business impact
2. Bootstrapping Design (ebook): great ebook that addresses high-level design principles and color, typography, etc for non-designers
3. Smashing Magazine: Lot of examples of winning design and tools to help
4. 40+ web design resources for beginners (Mashable)
5. I Love Typography: blog @ typography and its role in effective website design
6. UsabilityPost: good blog focusing on designing websites with good usability
7. Color Matters: Great place to start for color theory
8. Gestalt Principles of Web Design: A series of blogs that codify laws and principles governing good web design

Appointment setting works like this:

1. Compile a powerful lead list: Using many of the techniques I discuss on this blog regarding lead generation for financial advisors, you should have at any time a list of leads that need to be nurtured, people who need talking to. They’re looking for a solution to a problem (you need to figure out what problem) and you can provide guidance. So, bring ‘em in to the office. If you’re using marketing automation for investment professionals, your leads should be receptive for your call.
2. Create an offer to reel ‘em in: Bringing someone in to meet with you should be about them, not you. WIFM (What’s in it for me?) should permeate your marketing and communication. Determine what benefit your prospect would expect to come in to meet (hint, it’s not to be sold). Maybe it’s a portfolio review but it’s got to favor your prospect in the help me vs. help you spectrum.
3. Set up the appointment: With your list in hand, identify someone in your office or outsource appointment setting (you can see how many firms provide this service on Google) Having someone specialize on this task boosts productivity and speeds up the learning curve: let them get good at bringing people in while you, the advisor, focus on closing and relationship building. Oh, there’s an added benefit, too: the psychology of saying no to someone whose job is to make appointments works in your favor.

Measure the return on investment in appointment setting

Outsourced firms are getting really good at this process but you have to make sure the economics work in your favor. There’s a ramp up period where the outsourcer learns and incrementally improves at appointment setting for your specific business.

Above, you’ll find a spreadsheet that measures outsourced appointment setting effectiveness. Of course, the warmer/better your list and the better a closer you are will influence this ROI calculation but it’s a good place to start.

How are you setting appointments — have you given it much thought? Let me know in the comments.

//////More tools from me to build your business//////

If you’re serious about marketing, getting more leads and growing your business, check out my free 7-day email course

Whether you’re a Series 7 broker rep or RIA, the job responsibilities of many independent advisors span across the entire sales and delivery process (less so in larger organizations):

• marketing/PR: we’re hosting events, advertising in local media, doing our own PR work
• sales: you’re setting up, nurturing leads, and closing them
• delivery: the client calls you because you own the relationship
• customer satisfaction: you live and die by the sword and are responsible for keeping your clients happy

That’s a lot of responsibility.

Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

And that’s why it’s key to ensure that you’re working with the right clients. Right is subjective and will be different for everyone but it’s super important to make sure that you can identify and work with your ideal clients.

In Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine, author Aaron Ross describes the techniques he used to build CRM giant, Salesforce.com into a massive sales organization.

In his world, growing sales begins with identifying the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

That’s important for 2 reasons:

1. targeting: once you know who you’re marketing to, it’s easier to reach them
2. disqualifying others: If you have a specific profile in mind, it’s easier to pass on poor clients that will take time and not deliver revenue

Once you determine that you’re targeting customers/clients in the upper right-hand quadrant, you can begin to break down more specifics about them. You’ll want to target your client using the following terms:

• Ideal requirements from financial service provider
• Ideal geography
• Ideal pain points you solve
• Interesting industries to serve (you have a special skill to help)
• Find influencers/referrals
• Preferred communication medium
• Frequency of communication required

Look for red flags and deal breakers

Aaron Ross also counsels sales professionals to bubble up early red flags or signals that a prospect may not be a good fit. Here are some things that may be deal breakers for you:

• They just left their previous advisor because _________________.
• Their tolerance for fees is only _________________.
• “Know-it-alls”: We know what we’re doing — why would we need an advisor.
• Geography

Advisors want to do it all…can’t

Many advisors I meet doing want to do this exercise. The most common response I hear from these types is Why should I turn down an interested paying client?

That may work in the beginning of practice building, though in my experience, it never ends well.

Identifying your ideal customer maximized revenues and time spent chasing them and minimizes delivery and satisfaction problems.

Leave the non-ideal prospects behind and focus solely on those who fit your profile.

Who is your ideal client? Let me know in the comments.

Last year, I found myself focusing on lead generation for financial advisors and I’m pretty sure you’ll find me writing a lot more about marketing automation tools for financial advisors this year.

For 2013, I’m also focusing on sales technique: not the old-school, pushy broker but the more new school advisor that uses trust building to his advantage so that clients can’t help but open an account.

My favorite and most valuable resources to improve selling

(disclaimer: none of these resources are specifically focused on financial professionals but the techniques and tools can be easily applied)

1. B2B Lead Blog: This blog brings in some of the best analysis on lead generation from multiple writers and multiple industries. It’s part of the B2B Lead Roundtable Group on Linkedin.  It’s quite metric-driven and provides practical tools and methods to improve your sales funnel.

2. Bob Burg: You might have read Bob’s books which include The Go-Giver which deserves a place on the shelf of anyone who does any kind of sale. Burg is about relationship building, on giving generously and rapport building with clients and prospects. He uses a lot of real-world stories on his blog to help emphasize his powerful message.

3. Marketo: Market’s blog better be good — the marketing automation software company eats its own dog food and describes many of the techniques it uses to land new customers. Good blend of marketing and sales coaching goodness.

4. Matt on Marketing: Matt runs Heinz Marketing, a results-driven consultancy in Seattle. Matt’s blog provides tools, metrics, and how-to articles for anyone serious about getting more accurate and profitable with her sales activities.

5. SalesNexus Blog: This blog is used for content marketing purposes by SalesNexus, an up-and-coming sales and CRM system. This is a must-read resource that addresses the space where CRM-based marketing intersects the sales process.

6. Sandler Training Blog: Sandler is a sales training firm and the blog provides a lot of value in developing a sales mindset, setting sales strategy, and proper technique.

7.  Smart Selling Tools Blog: Nancy Nardin is a big thinker when it comes to sales and marketing productivity tools. Lot of benchmarking and reviews of sales tools here. Nancy helps readers navigate the many resources for selling.

8. Tele-Smart: Josiane Feigon is an pioneer in the Sales 2.o movement and has written a great book about inside sales. Much of her work is in the sweet spot for sales teams and the managers who head them. Good reading for financial organizations serious about the inside sales process.

9. Fill the Funnel: This blog’s tagline is Web Tools for Salesmakers, so you know where its focus is. Lots of industry-wide webinars, ebooks and other tools that we financial salespeople can put to immediate use.

So, you can see where my mind is. I always find it useful as a new year kicks off to take that energy and that focus that comes with new beginnings to chart a new path.

So, I’m working on sales technique and marketing automation to help grow financial businesses.

What are you working on this year?

Tools are getting easier and easier to use and the holy grail for all marketers — AUTOMATION! — is become a reality for financial professionals.

To paraphrase John Lenin: Imagine a world where all your marketing activities were automated and that everyday you got a list of people ready to buy your product (not leads, almost-customers!).

My personal experience –> recommendations

I’ve spent a lot of time working with clients on the automation parts of their businesses and I’ve experimented with a lot of tools and services and resources this year.

These are some of the best — bookmark this list because I’ll keep adding to it in the future.

Best marketing and automation tools for advisors

1. IFTTT: Stands for “If this than that”, this nifty free tool can help automate your social media strategy. By programming simple rules and hooking up your social media profiles, you can automate much of the social media marketing for your business. I use IFTTT to automatically take a blog post I write and publish it to Twitter and Facebook.
2. Zapier: Zapier is like IFTTT’s older brother. It automates much of the connection between multiple web services without the need to higher a programmer to get them to talk to one another.
3. OfficeAutoPilot: I swear by this all-in-one CRM/Marketing Automation suite. You can use this powerful tool to capture leads for you and fully nurture them to complete a sale. If you have financial products or services for sale online, you can capture the transaction all within OAP. Highly recommended.
4. CopyHackers: I love this site and gladly lap up the copywriting dirt on Joanna Wiebe’s shoes whenever I get a chance. CopyHackers is a great resource for those of us marketing financial businesses to learn about copywriting with a keen focus on the conversions. Check out my interview with Joanna earlier this year about kick-tuchus-marketing for investment advisors.
5. Unbounce: No matter whether you’re beginning to market financial products and services online or you’re a pro — you still need to generate leads for your business to work. On the web, the best way to do that is through pages specifically designed to capture user information. Unbounce is an easy, DIY tool to create these pages and make them look great.
6. Storify: I love this tool. It helps create visually-stimulating blog posts by organizing multimedia into a sort of storyboard. Use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube videos to help explain a concept or create a timeline.
7. Evernote: If I were stuck on a desert island with no WiFi and required to choose only one app to take with me, it would be Evernote. I use it to store everything in my life. I’ve got folders and test/audio/graphic notes on everything I’m working on. It syncs to all my computers/devices as well.
8. Nimble: Nimble has been getting a lot of press recently. The Social Relationship Manager takes what CRMs do and adds the social layer in, so you can manage all you contacts, communications, activities and sales in one place.
9. OnePageCRM: I’ve helped install CRMs like Saleforce.com in numerous financial businesses. While it’s really powerful, many businesses stop using it after awhile because of its complexity. OnePageCRM is just a simple-to-use, basic CRM that is so easy to use, you just end up…well, using it.
10. Hootsuite: It’s a nifty dashboard tool to manage and measure your social networks. Instead of heading to Twitter.com or Facebook.com to engage, you can do it all from your Hootsuite console.
11. TweetDeck: TweetDeck was so good at managing social media communications across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn that Twitter ended up buying the thing.
12. Buffer: When I’m looking to promote an article or tool I come across on the fly, I don’t head to TweetDeck or Hootsuite. You can get sucked in and lost there. I have a Buffer button installed in my browser that I press and Buffer promote the message or link out to my audience.
13. Audacity: I’ve been using this free, open-source software for years to record and edit my podcast.
14. Blue Yeti Mic: This is my desktop USB mic. It looks awesome (too big to shlepp) and the sound is great. All that for under $100.
15. Samson Go Mic: Is that a Samson Go mic in your pocket or are you just happy to market to me? This mic records insanely well for its size. I find myself using it more and more.
16. SoundCloud: While definitely not the cheapest of solutions to host audio files, SoundCloud is one of the best. I’ve had over 21,000 listens to my podcast over the past year by embedding the SoundCloud player in my website.
17. UserVoice: While researching different helpdesk and customer feedback solutions, it became clear to me that UserVoice actually does both. So, I use it with clients as a channel to receive questions and help off their websites and provide self-help answers to potential leads and customers.
18. Covestor: While the startup hasn’t quite hit it big yet, I still believe Covestor is a great channel for investment advisors to market through. It’s a marketplace of portfolios — mostly managed by professionals.
19. Seeking Alpha: There’s no easier way for an investment pro to promote himself and his ideas than Seeking Alpha. SA now has a PRO designation where content is embargoed from the general audience and paying subscribers (hedge funds) get an early look at it. You can even get paid if you make your content exclusive to the platform.
20. Google +: Lot of people not getting the whole Google + thing. I think it’s one of the most powerful social platforms and strengthening. You can run live video-chat Hangouts with your audience. You can even create groups (called Communities) to share with a closed group of people.
21. WiredAdvisor: Stephanie Sammons is just so good ad what she does. Her company not only hosts social-media enabled websites for financial advisors, but she builds content marketing and user acquisition strategies for her clients. Definitely a must check out.
22. Fiverr: Fiverr is a marketplace of service providers ready to build logos, do voice overs, video intros, web banners for…you guessed it: $5. I use Fiverr so much for small things around my business I think I’m addicted to it.
23. Voices.com: Voices is a marketplace for voice-over talent. If you’re doing any recording or using audio of any sort in your marketing (like an intro to a radio show or audio lesson), you can find amazing value and talent on this site.
24. VoiceShot: If you’re a small practice and want to up-the-ante on your professionalism, you can use VoiceShot to send recorded appointment reminders to your clients and prospects. It’s automated and a nice touch.
25. Automize: This company is all about marketing automation. If you do any teleseminars and webinars, Automize can help you set them on automated replays so that you can keep marketing to prospects 24/7.
26. CallLoop: This tool enables you to send SMS and voice messages to your list. Financial businesses can use it as a reminder tool for events or meetings or as part of an integrated marketing campaign.
27. Linkedin: Linkedin is still just a powerful marketing, promotional, and networking tool. Groups work to cement advisors as experts in their fields and even the messaging enables businesses to get the word out to thought-leaders and prospects.
28. Quora: While not as powerful as a daily/weekly promotional tool like Linkedin or Twitter, Quora is just a community of very smart people answering really important questions. Take the time to answer questions pertinent to your business and people will seek out your advice.
29. Clarity: Clarity takes Quora one step further and enables users to seek out experts in their fields and then connect with them over the phone for short consulting work. This could be a powerful referral engine in the future for financial businesses.
30. Visual Website Optimizer: If you are numbers driven in your investing, you should also be similarly conscience of metrics in your marketing. Visual Website Optimizer allows non-programmers to install a small piece of code so you can test different colors, arrangements, and wording on your website to see which converts the best.
31. UserTesting: Ever wonder how people use your website? What they like and what they found confusing? Instead of hiring focus groups, you can use UserTesting to have targeted users record themselves using your websites and provide you feedback.
32. EventBrite: Readers know I really like this tool when it comes to ticketing/RSVP’ing for virtual and real world events. Here’s a list of 22 tools to help your seminars convert more clients (hint: EventBrite is one of them).
33. Wistia: YouTube is great for hosting your videos but if you’re using video to marketing your practice or firm, Wistia is the platform. It provides deep analytics to help you understand what’s working…and what’s not.

What tools do you use? What do you recommend? Let me know in the comments.