Guest Post: "Online Video – A Powerful Marketing Tactic for Financial Planners"
Fri, July 23, 2010 Drawing on her expertise in the financial planning and marketing industries, CFP® Kristin Harad of VitaVie Planning works with financial planners to effectively market their practices. In the following guest post, Harad describes five ways financial advisors can use online video in their marketing efforts. And she doesn't just talk the talk. The video below is one of many on her firm's website.
Online Video-A Powerful Marketing Tactic for Financial Planners
by Kristin Harad, CFP®
Online video is an incredibly potent tool for marketing your financial planning practice, yet a 2010 FPA survey of marketing tactics found that less than 5% of planners market themselves via video.
Clients view financial planning as a highly personal relationship, and video is a fantastic tool for creating an initial impression of your personality, philosophy and methods. Meanwhile digital video technology has become substantially better, simpler and cheaper to use over the past several years. So why not try video?
Here are five powerful ways financial planners can use video:
1. The In-Depth Biography
Prospective clients want to get to know their planner, yet nearly every bio page I’ve ever seen offers a few paragraphs of text listing certifications, education and work history. I use a simple five minute video on my biography page to help prospects quickly get to know what it will be like to work with me, as well as to differentiate myself from competitors.
2. The Free Commercial
TV advertising may be well outside of your budget, but you can easily get your video in front of hundreds or thousands of prospects each month. YouTube is the third largest Web site in the world, and visitors go there to search for absolutely everything. To get your video seen by prospects searching for your services, use simple and direct titles that clearly state what you offer. For example, use titles like “Marin County Financial Planner” or “Financial Planning for Divorce.” Embed these videos on your Web site or blog and ask a few friends to subscribe to and rate your videos, and you can very quickly rank highly in search results on both YouTube and Google! In fact, a recent Forrester Research report stated that it is FIFTY TIMES easier to obtain a page one Google ranking for a video than it is for a Web page!
3. Cross-Promotion
Grow your prospect database more quickly by creating short informative videos with service providers in your network. Team up with estate planners, investment advisors or accountants to film brief interviews that answer your clients’ common key questions. Then, turn the tables and have the interviewee become the interviewer. You’ll quickly create two videos that you can each send to your own prospects and clients, providing them with useful content and helping each of you gain exposure to the other’s database.
4. Give Invitations a Personal Touch
Again, video makes it easy to transform marketing communications that can easily get lost in the clutter into dynamic and engaging selling tools. We include a personal video invitation on all of our workshop invitations. It gives attendees a preview of what we’ll teach them at the event, and has substantially increased my enrollment rate.
5. Provide Instructions on Complex Tasks
I’m creating a library of how-to videos to help my clients complete common administrative tasks like changing their paycheck tax withholding and updating beneficiaries. This not only saves me time, but also creates another useful (and differentiated) benefit that I can provide to my clients.
I strongly encourage you to create some online videos to showcase your own practice. You’ll find that it’s much less challenging to do than you may have thought and like me, you may discover that it becomes your most effective marketing tactic!
Kristin Harad, CFP® spent fifteen years as a marketing and advertising executive prior to founding VitaVie Financial Planning in San Francisco. She is currently offering a series of free videos on marketing strategies for financial planners.
Reader Comments (2)
Agreed. Video will have a huge impact on the financial planning profession as more consumers want to see and experience a planner before making contact and engaging their services.
Here are some great examples from the UK of the more promotional type of video from financial planners:
http://www.ifalife.com/content.asp?PageID=1583
Philip Calvert
IFA Life
Philip,
Thanks so much for your comment. I will take a look at the videos you suggest.
Samantha