Marketing Funnels For Advisors Explained: Turn Prospects Into Clients

As a rock-star financial advisor, you already know that creating connections with your clients is the key to a successful business.

It’s not enough to simply deliver excellent service, you need to ensure that every interaction is meaningful and that every touchpoint along the buyer’s journey delivers value.

Sure, coming up with compelling content that resonates with your target audience is a critical piece of the marketing puzzle. But how do you genuinely know if you’re delivering the right stuff to the right prospects at the right time?

Luckily, it’s not rocket science: it all begins with understanding your ideal client, down to their thoughts, attitudes, and motivations. 

You have to know what they want and need at every stage of the buying process, from awareness to conversion.

That means paying attention to detail, being mindful of the problem they’re trying to solve, their pain points, and ultimately what makes them tick.

If you’re a financial advisor with conversion on the brain, then you’ve landed on the right blog!

We’re unpacking everything you must know about marketing funnels, from what they are to how they work. We’ll also cover a few content strategies and marketing ideas for financial advisors. 

Ready to up your content game and close more sales? 

Let’s get started.

If you’re looking to get more traffic, leads, and sales from your marketing efforts, then you need to know how a marketing funnel works.

The marketing funnel is a visual framework for understanding how people go about buying products and services. 

This methodology is known as the buyer decision-making process, most commonly referred to as the buyer’s journey.

Before making a purchase, a buyer naturally cycles through three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.

• Awareness: when a potential customer is initially exposed to your brand or product via extremely engaging and informative content
• Consideration: when qualified leads (or prospects) become interested in learning more about your product or service, typically comparing it to competitors in the market
• Decision: when a potential buyer has gathered all of the information they need to make a purchase decision and becomes a customer

A funnel is a powerful metaphor for how people move through their decision-making process.

At the top of your funnel are all your potential customers, those who might someday buy what you have to offer.

At the bottom are all of those people who actually do buy your products or services at some point in time.

In between, there’s a whole lot of activity as people progress through each stage of the funnel.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to get people through that bottom part as fast as feasible so they can start generating wealth! 

Before we dig in, take a look at these lead nurturing stats and facts:

• 47% larger purchases are generated by nurtured leads over non-nurtured leads
• 96% of site guests aren’t inclined to buy anything on their first visit
• 44% of salespeople give up after just one rejection
• 68% of businesses don’t monitor their funnel, leaving 79% of leads unconverted
• 37% of marketers cite prospecting as the most challenging part of their job
• 87% of buyers begin their search on Google or similar digital channels 
• 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing
• 3-5 pieces of content are what the average consumer engages with before speaking to a sales rep

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s have some fun and break down each funnel stage in grander detail — starting from the top!

TOFU – Top Of Funnel Content

So you’ve got a fantastic product or service you’re excited about. You know it’s going to change the world, but how do you get other people to know about it?

The first phase of the marketing funnel is all about awareness — getting your brand out there and letting people know what it is, why they should care about it, and how they can use it in their own lives.

Three top-funnel content objectives include:

• Brand Awareness: getting people familiar with who you are and what you do
• Lead Generation: getting people interested enough to sign up for something like a demo or free trial
• Product Knowledge: helping customers learn why they need your product or service and what makes it different from others on the market

People at this stage start by searching for ways to solve their problems – they do this through research online, talking with friends and family members, reading blog posts and articles — you name it! Then they narrow down their choices based on what they’ve learned along the way.

That’s where YOU come in.

You’re doing things like posting on social media, writing blog posts and press releases, podcasting, vlogging, attending industry events, etc., anything that gets your name out there so that people can find out more about what you offer them!

MOFU – Middle Of Funnel Content

Our next stop on the buyer’s journey is dubbed the “consideration stage.”

At this point, your prospect has heard about you, but they aren’t quite sure if your product or service will solve their problem. 

At this critical stage of the funnel, you’ll want to give them more information about who you are and what you offer so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not they intend to do business with you when they reach the “decision” stage of the funnel.

Three mid-funnel content objectives include:

• Brand Positioning: getting your company’s products and reputation to stand out in the minds of your target market
• Lead Nurturing: proactively following up with prospects to foster trust and long-term ties
• Objection Handling: turning common doubts and concerns into opportunities to move a deal forward

Great MOFU content could include webinars or ebooks, guides, infographics, and more detailed information about what your business accomplishes and how it can help them.

Keep in mind that the end goal here is getting people interested enough in what you have to offer to actually do something with it: buy a product or schedule an appointment, for example. It’s mission-critical that you take full advantage of every interaction.

This is your opportunity to show off your personality while building trust and authenticity with your audience.

BOFU – Bottom Of Funnel Content

You’ve done it! You’ve landed a prospect, and they’re ready to buy in. Now it’s time to convert them into spending customers, and that means you need game-winning content.

Welcome to the third and final stage of the marketing funnel, the decision stage.

BOFU content is designed for those who are feeling almost ready to work with you and just need that last little push in the right direction.

It includes 1:1 demos, financial calculators, case studies, and testimonials from happy clients who’ve already used the service or product.

Three bottom-funnel content objectives include:

• CTA: making it clear what your customers should do next in a confident call to action
• Conversion: turning leads into qualified prospects and continuing to strengthen purchase intent
• Closing: reaching an agreement and sealing the deal, denoting the culmination of your efforts

This is where your prospects are making their final decision about whether or not they will move forward and make a commitment—so don’t waste any time here!

The goal is to close more sales by giving prospects a reason to choose you over your competitors.

Key Takeaways

Blowing campaign dollars on content before having a winning strategy in place is an all too common mistake in content marketing.

The best way to get your financial firm’s marketing strategy off the ground? Start with your funnel.

The truth is that you can’t simply throw content out there and expect people to sell themselves.

You need to have a funnel in place, a system for guiding visitors through your website so that they end up as true believers. 

Just remember, your marketing funnel is the primary engine driving your discovery process: nurturing and converting leads into qualified prospects — and those prospects into happy customers!