How wealth advisors can become thought leaders and generate leads online
A wealth advisor’s website is an important tool, but one that’s often overlooked. A website isn’t just a place where clients and prospects can learn more about you and your team. It is also a powerful tool advisors can use to establish their thought leadership brand and attract prospective clients.
By posting the right content, your website can appear higher in Google searches, making it easier for potential clients to find you. This increased visibility can translate into new client acquisitions.
Advisors can better attract inbound leads by following these four steps to posting search engine optimized (SEO) website content:
1. Identify your audience.
Create a target audience profile using your specific industry niche as a guide. Identify target client characteristics, including demographics, age, gender, income, etc. Read more about developing marketing personas here.
2. Determine where your audience is – both digitally and geographically.
Join digital forums where you can engage with potential clients through online groups in which they participate. Consider exploring LinkedIn and Facebook groups.
Update and maintain your offsite SEO. This will increase your credibility and legitimacy. Keep your Google My Business, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc. accounts updated with the latest information about your business, including address, target area and contact information. This will also make you visible to potential clients on Google Maps and Google Reviews.
Utilize geotargeting. You can reach relevant customers by including location information on your website and social profiles. Update your About Us, History and Contact information. Include location-specific keywords in your articles and posts.
3. Identify the content your audience wants.
Capture the attention of potential clients by identifying the keywords they tend to search for. Identifying keywords can take time. Prepare to test your choices to determine which ones best suit your target audience.
Take advantage of negative keywords. By adding negative keywords, you can filter out unwanted traffic to your website and increase your return on investment.
4. Develop relevant and engaging content.
Integrate your keywords. Relevant and timely content will grab the attention of both target clients and search engines. Develop content based on insights from your keyword testing insights. Match your content to what your audience is searching for.
Use a strong and specific call to action, urging readers to follow through a particular path – whether it’s signing up for a newsletter or scheduling a call.
Digital engagement is a long process. It may take months to see any results, but is crucial for wealth advisors when maximizing the benefits of their website and boosting their brand presence to generate prospects. Partnering with a digital marketing agency like Ext. Marketing will ensure your brand regularly distributes relevant content that harnesses SEO and drives conversions so that you can spend time growing your clients’ wealth. Contact us today at info@ext-marketing.com to get started.
GET MICRO: THE POWER OF MICRO-INTERACTIONS
If recorded in 2023, Madonna would be singing about living in a digital world … rather than a material world. With so much choice and competition, getting your website to stand out to visitors and make an impression can be difficult. One way to delight users and connect with your audience is with micro-interactions. Let’s look at the different types of micro-interactions that engage and elevate the user experience.
Button Animations: meaning animations that occur when a user hovers over a button, which can include button colour or arrow shape changes. Noticeable animations can evoke interest and/or emotion in users.
Carousels: meaning slider or slideshow of images or content. Carousels can help lay out content and important information in smaller amounts of space to reduce scrolling.
Accordions: meaning a heading that expands with more relevant information. Accordions help condense information so your target investor audience doesn’t miss important information.
Hover Effects: when a user hovers over a tile, text or image, additional information pops up – before the user clicks on that tile, etc. and is taken to a new page. This is a great way to lay out content, but the downside is that search engine optimization isn’t captured this way.
Parallax: means layering the background and foreground to give space, depth and movement when a user scrolls through the site. A great example is the visual in our Careers page. Parallax keeps users engaged and on the page longer, while not overpowering content.
Shortcuts: can include quickly sharing articles on social media, providing the ability to scroll back to the top of the page or other content, among others. Shortcuts allow you to direct users to important information.
Mobile: with so many people visiting websites on their phones, micro-interactions make viewing content easier on a smaller screen. Accordions and carousels are great for the mobile experience. Learn more about optimized mobile content here.
Modest functional animations evoke engagement and enhance the overall user experience of a website. These might seem like small changes, but they make a big difference in user retention if they are sprinkled throughout a website. Micro-interactions are also measurable in Google Analytics, since you can track where users are spending their time.
Contact us today at info@ext-matketing.com to ensure your website is making a lasting impression.
Your 2023 Website Spring Cleaning Checklist
Does your website need a refresh? Are you dealing with lengthy load times, missing meta-tags or dated messaging? Even a few minor issues could be cluttering your website performance. Making some small tweaks can make a big difference in optimizing user experience and attracting investors. Check out our checklist to help spring clean your website:
- Define your goals: Your website is a powerful tool. If you are an issuer undergoing a capital raise, your goal might be lead generation. If you are an asset manager, you might use your website more for informational or brand awareness among advisors and retail investors. Keep your goals in mind when reviewing your website analytics.
- Leverage analytics: Review your website metrics to understand and benchmark its performance. Evaluate your website audience to see where visitors are coming from, how long they stay on it and what pages they tend to go to. Your analytics can tell if you are attracting your target investor audience, and what content is resonating most. If you don’t know where to find the analytics you need, you can start by Googling “Google Analytics.”
- Refresh your content: Apply the insights you get from your analytics to update content that speaks specifically to your target audience. This will help decrease your Readers prefer easily accessible information, so you might want to change how your content is laid out by making your website’s hero banner a conversion superhero. Take inventory of high-performing content (the stuff that is most viewed or shared) and move it to the home page to increase engagement. Having a user journey and distinct call-to-action will also increase engagement and conversion.
- Revitalize SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important step in your cleaning process. It makes it easier for your target audience to find you. Here are a few technical items that are often overlooked:
- Broken links: Remove any that go to removed pages with error messages.
- Meta descriptions and alt-text: All pages should have meta-descriptions. Alt-text shouldn’t be too long or too short. This is a great place to insert keywords to improve your overall SEO rating.
- Page speeds: Reduce page speeds to one to three seconds to increase user retention. You can eliminate any code that isn’t being used to increase your website’s speed.
- Leverage plug-ins: Tools like Imagify for image compression can free up a lot of time, enhancing your website performance.
- Maintain regularly: Websites are meant to be kept current and should be frequently updated. Find a cadence that works for you to update your website and stick to it.
Looking to improve your web metrics or create content optimized for search? Ext. Marketing can help you develop targeted web content to help boost your conversion rates. Check out our web design services or contact us today at info@ext-marketing.com.
10 web metrics you should monitor (infographic)
Chances are you put a lot of time and effort into creating your website’s text and design. But even if you’ve developed an amazing-looking website, there’s only one way to know how it is performing. You need to track the following key metrics:
Tracking web metrics is an essential first step in determining the performance of your website. It can help guide you on the most effective ways to improve your content and conversion rates.
Looking to improve your web metrics? Ext. can help you develop targeted web content to help boost your conversion rates. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.
1 https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/bounce-rate
2 https://www.business2community.com/infographics/14-important-metrics
3 https://webolutions.com/10-key-metrics-effective-website/
Make your website’s hero banner a conversion superhero
Your website’s hero banner is the area between the navigation and the start of your content. It does a lot of heavy lifting by setting the tone for your site, encouraging visitors to engage with your brand and helping to establish trust. The hero banner’s effectiveness could mean the difference between high bounce rates and high conversion rates.
If your hero banner is doing its job, you’ll be well on your way to conversion – whether that’s getting a prospective client to reach out to your sales team or sending them to discover your product and service pages.
Remember, website visitors tend to form judgements quickly: it takes approximately 50 milliseconds for users to cement an opinion about your brand.1
It’s no wonder that marketers are always looking to optimize their hero banners and above-the-fold content.
Here are some tips to help give your hero banner super strength:
1. Streamline
Keep your hero banner’s message simple. You want to inspire your visitors, not overwhelm them. Squeezing too many messages into the hero will inevitably dilute its superpowers. It’s been proven that less cluttered homepages are more likely to convert.2
2. Tell a story
The story in your hero banner needs to be told in your brand voice – reinforced by strong visuals and copy. Your website is your storefront, and you’ll want to “greet” users with an on-brand experience that showcases how you solve your clients’ problems and your unique selling proposition (or “USP”).
3. Use video and motion graphics
Video converts. About 84% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.2 It’s no wonder that video and motion graphics are popular choices for hero images. There are caveats: loop your content and keep it crisp, so you don’t bog down your website’s load speed. The ideal length is one or two seconds – content that is over five seconds in length is going to need optimizing.
4. Include calls to action
A call to action is usually placed in your hero banner for good reason – it’s a great way to lead visitors down the funnel. Try to be creative but concise with your calls to action. Remember, there’s more to life than “Learn more.” Use powerful imperative verbs that create a sense of urgency. “Watch,” “discover,” “read,” “subscribe,” “schedule.” Choose specific verbs that tee up a promise and give strong, direct instructions on what to do next.
5. Make it responsive
With mobile often being a user’s first interaction with your brand these days, it’s important to make sure your website is responsive (meaning it will “respond” to the screen size it’s appearing in). For hero banner content, you’ll want to ensure you engage visitors immediately and keep your objectives limited to a single goal or desired action.
To carousel or not to carousel?
There is much debate about whether you should use a carousel in the hero banner position. While many prefer the simplicity of a single message, others need to balance multiple messages. If you decide to adopt a carousel, put the visitor in the driver’s seat: avoid the auto-play feature as it may not give users time to digest the content before it advances. You will also want to make sure your carousel is optimized for mobile, including facilitating optional behaviours such as pinching, tapping and swiping to ensure a mobile user’s journey is seamless.
A/B testing can help
If you are deciding between multiple messages and creative executions, A/B testing can help shed light on what resonates best with real users. You can use this strategy to make sure your hero banner content is a true hero: saving the day and delivering new leads.
Is your conversion rate not where it should be? Ext. and our team of digital, content and UX experts can help optimize your hero banner and all your web content. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.
1https://www.academia.edu/534960/Attention_web_designers_You_have_50_milliseconds_to_make_a_good_first_impression
2135 Video Marketing Stats You Can’t Ignore in 2022
Five tips for creating mobile-optimized content
Scroll through any website on your mobile device and it’s easy to see how a small screen size can be challenging for a visitor to navigate and absorb your content. With nearly 55% of all web traffic in the fourth quarter of 2021 coming from a mobile device,1 you should keep your mobile visitors front and centre when you create web content.
A mobile-friendly site can be especially helpful for those who use screen readers. A screen reader crawls through a web page to help someone with a visibility impairment understand what is on their screen. Optimizing your content for mobile can also help screen readers translate the structure and content on your page.
Here are five tips on how to create better content for mobile users:
1. Use an inverted triangle to organize your page
Use an inverted triangle to place your most important content at the top of the page, including the key message(s) you want your visitor to know. If there is a specific action you want a reader to take after they visit your page, place that near the top. This structure helps the reader to quickly understand why they should keep reading. If there’s interest, they’ll keep scrolling. If not, they’ll exit the page – but not before they see your key message.
2. Write short headlines and meaningful subheads
Your headline should be six words or less to make it easier to read on a mobile device. Use meaningful subheads that allow a visitor to scan the page and understand if they should keep scrolling. These headlines and subheads also allow a screen reader to convey the page structure.
3. Write concisely
Reading large blocks of text in any format is daunting, but it’s even harder on a small screen. Use short sentences and paragraphs to help mobile visitors digest your content quickly. If you’re listing items in a series, use short bullets.
A few numbers to aim for:
• 20 words or less for sentences
• Two to three sentences for each paragraph
• One idea for each paragraph
4. Use plain language
Avoid unnecessary filler words and modifiers, interjections and clauses and technical jargon. These create unnecessary noise and muddy your content. To help simplify your writing, use a readability program, such as Grammarly or Flesch-Kincaid, and aim for a grade 8 or 9 score.
5. Add images and videos
Give your visitor’s eyes a break and use images and videos to make your content more digestible. People absorb visuals 600 times faster than text;2 while 68% would rather watch a video than read text.3 TIP: remember to add subtitles for those using a screen reader and for those watching in silent mode.
Looking to improve the user experience for your mobile audiences? Ext. can help you optimize your web content for mobile. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.
1 Mobile internet usage worldwide – statistics & facts, statista, L. Ceci, February 22, 2022
2 Research: Is A Picture Worth 1,000 Words or 60,000 Words in Marketing, Matthew Dunn, Email Audience, November 12, 2021
3 Video Marketing Statistics, Wyzowl, December 2021
Five ways to dramatically improve your web copy
An interesting thing happens the deeper you get into writing web copy – you start to realize just how different it is from writing text for brochures, whitepapers and other printed materials.
Although there are entire books written on the topic, we want to share five tips that you can adopt immediately.
1. Keep homepage text simple
When visitors first visit your page, they’re probably not looking for your corporate history, founding principles or executive bios. Instead, they’re most likely looking for a specific piece of information about your products or services. So, avoid long mission statements on your homepage and keep the text simple, with short descriptions and clear calls to action.
2. Ignore that old “three-click rule”
There was a time when people thought every bit of information posted on a website had to be three clicks or less away. Improved web writing and design have made that rule a thing of the past. People are willing to click far more than three times to find the info they want, provided there are clear pathways to help them locate it. The key to a great user experience is providing an organized, easy-to-navigate website.
3. Break up blocks of text
Readers tend to just skip over lengthy blocks of text. So, if you have important information buried deep within a large paragraph, you can assume that it may not be read. Instead, make your web text easy to scan by breaking it up using subheads, bullets and numbered lists.
4. Be gender neutral
There’s no need to write “he or she,” or a derivative of the he/she structure. The use of “they” is also now accepted by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a valid singular, gender-neutral pronoun. Better yet, wherever possible, use “you.” Not only do you speak directly to your audience when you write “you,” but you convey that your copy is gender neutral.
5. Does it have to be copy?
Always consider whether the copy on your website could be better presented visually. Videos, infographics and images tend to garner higher engagement than text alone. Plus, according to Smart Bird Social, visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
Got any more web writing tips? We invite you to share them with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Looking for support with web writing or online marketing? Ext. has the expertise you need. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.
Five common misconceptions about SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of ensuring a website can be found by search engines (like Google). While it’s generally recognized as an important factor to consider when building a website, SEO is also one of the most misunderstood aspects of marketing.
One reason for the confusion is that SEO is constantly evolving. Google, which is responsible for 90% of web searches, regularly refines its search algorithm (the complex system it uses to evaluate and serve up web pages).[1] As a result, some of the early strategies that could be used to help improve SEO no longer apply, and new ones have taken their place.
With the rise of digital marketing, understanding which SEO strategies matter (and which don’t) is essential in ensuring your website can be found in today’s competitive landscape.
Here are five common misconceptions about SEO, and the related truths you need to know.
1. SEO is a technical exercise
While there are technical aspects of a website’s structure that can help search engines crawl and index web pages more effectively, SEO has more to do with content than technology. Google wants to serve up useful, relevant content, so the best thing you can do to improve your website’s search ranking is to invest in high-quality, useful content.[2]
2. It’s all about keywords
Integrating relevant keywords into web page content is essential for Google to be able to correctly recognize and categorize a specific web page. This includes ensuring they are included in the meta title that displays in browser tabs and search results, as well as the meta description that summarizes a page’s content in search results. While it used to be possible to boost a web page’s ranking by stuffing it full of a lot of keywords, Google has evolved to be able to recognize (and even potentially penalize) a website that includes keywords in an artificial manner. In October of 2019, Google released the “BERT” update, which uses natural language processing to understand and rank pages.[3] Using natural language has, therefore, become more important than ever before for SEO.
3. The more links you include the better
When it comes to SEO, it isn’t the links you insert but rather the inbound links back to your site from other websites that do the most to help boost your website’s ranking. Inserting links to other websites can be helpful in indicating to search engines that your content is useful and well researched. But Google tends to trust those websites that it sees reputable, high-traffic websites trust (meaning link back to). Content activation strategies that promote inbound links from trusted partner sites can be an effective way to improve SEO results
4. Social media has replaced SEO
Posting content on social media does not directly boost SEO, as Google does not count social links the same way it does inbound links from other trusted sites.[4] It can, however, indirectly impact SEO by increasing distribution and brand recognition. Rather than thinking of social media as a replacement for SEO, the two should be thought of as essential partners that work hand in hand.
5. SEO is a one-time exercise
SEO is an ongoing process. You can’t set it and forget it. Not only do you need to stay on top of Google’s ever-changing landscape, but you need to ensure your web content remains up to date. Users’ needs are constantly changing. Old content needs to be refreshed. New content needs to be developed. The key is to track site metrics to see how well your content is performing so you can gradually refine and improve your content strategy.
With Google reported to have over 200 ranking factors,[5] staying on top of SEO may seem like a daunting task. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that useful, well-written, authoritative content trumps all. Without quality content, your site is unlikely to rank highly on Google.
Looking for support in creating content optimized for search? Ext. has the expertise you need. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.
[1] https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs-realities-of-google
[2] https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/what-is-the-role-of-seo-in-digital-marketing
[3] https://www.brightedge.com/blog/google-bert-algorithm-update-what-is-it
[4] https://www.semrush.com/blog/social-media-seo
[5] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-ranking-algorithm-infographic