Attendees at Rebecca Hourihan’s Monday morning breakout session at Excel 401(k) Conference in Dallas were challenged to take a critical look at their marketing to see if it has kept pace with the times or remains stuck in the past.
Hourihan, the founder and CMO of 401(k) Marketing, LLC in San Diego, made a number of comparisons to popular marketing techniques from 20 years ago and how they differ now during her session, “Influence to Inbound: How Content Marketing is the New Key to Your Retirement Plan Business’ Success.”
The days of interruption marketing are dwindling, which is why marketing has had to evolve, “because a lot of the sales and marketing techniques that we’ve used to build our businesses are going to be different sales and marketing techniques that are going to advance us into the future,” Hourihan said.
The digital marketing expert shared ideas of how to use content marketing to demonstrate expertise as an authority in the retirement plan profession, build an effective SEO strategy to rank your website on the first page of Google, and leverage technology and automatization to drive inbound qualified 401k leads.
Then advisors can start to build a pipeline and a lead score to figure out who’s at the top of their funnel and most ready to convert.
“The name of this presentation is called ‘Influence to Inbound’ because the goal of it is to generate tons and tons of awareness and influence about you, which is going to create a quality pipeline of prospects that are going to self-select into learning more about your valuable services, which creates quality leads and ultimately inbound activities,” Hourihan said.
She laid out how technology has dramatically changed the way people research and seek out information over the past 20 years.
“In 1999, there were only 3 million websites. Today, there are over 8 billion websites,” Hourihan said. “Social media literally did not exist and many of us were on our first iterations of cell phones.”
She notes that on average, each advisor receives approximately five social media views per day, 121 inbound emails, sends approximately 40 emails per day, and has around 15 people visiting your website.
That, she says, is equivalent to “about 20 people per day walking up to you and saying, ‘I’d like to know about you and what you do?’”
That’s why your digital presence has to be capable of conveying your expertise.
“Your prospects have to know you, like you, and trust you. 86% of people are going to Google you in advance of meeting with you. And when they Google you, we want them to like the digital you. We want your digital reputation to meet their expectations,” Hourihan said. “And then when they actually shake your hand for the very first time, we want your digital persona to align with your professionalism.”
She went on to offer tips on how to:
- Strengthen your LinkedIn profile
- Curate appropriate marketing content
- Use Google Analytics and Google Ads
- Capture data and start to build lead scores
- Begin automated drip marketing campaigns
A good goal, she said, is to have 50 social media views per day, 150 website visitors, and be automatically sending out 400 emails per day via drip marketing campaigns.
“Could you imagine having over 600 digital activities per day, creating tons and tons of awareness about you?” she concluded.
Learn more at www.401k-marketing.com
Veteran financial services industry journalist Brian Anderson joined 401(k) Specialist as Managing Editor in January 2019. He has led editorial content for a variety of well-known properties including Insurance Forums, Life Insurance Selling, National Underwriter Life & Health, and Senior Market Advisor. He has always maintained a focus on providing readers with timely, useful information intended to help them build their business.
