How does a person go from managing their own personal finances to working with a CPA and accountant to master wealth-building and financial well-being? It seems simple. They search for a provider and get started. Yet, that’s rarely as easy as it is. Most clients go through a comprehensive journey to get valuable information and process opportunities and needs before they come close to committing to a professional. When it comes to financial planning, marketing, or building your marketing plan, you absolutely need to understand the client journey for financial planning services.
Why the Client’s Journey for Financial Planning Matters
You have a robust website. It includes just about everything someone needs to know about financial planning. That’s great, but it does not mean it offers everything your customers need to make the decision to invest in you. To better deliver that, you should look to better understand the client’s journey: from thoughts and ideas, connections to services, and the decision to pay for services.
When you understand the customer journey, you gain several benefits:
- You have a better understanding of their challenges and pain points.
- You can create content for your website, social media, emails, and other channels that specifically helps them move through the customer journey.
- CPAs and accountants can build meaningful, strong relationships with their clients and prospective clients better.
- You build your brand reputation, and that directly contributes to your long-term business growth.
- You can provide a better service to meet the needs of your clients.
Ultimately, you’ll be investing in a marketing plan for CPAs or accountants that delivers what a person needs, when they need it, to encourage them to contact you. This builds your brand and business and helps you become successful.
What Is the Client Journey in Financial Planning?
So, where does it all start? How can you create a plan that addresses your prospective client’s specific needs? Let’s break down what goes into the client journey. There are several stages that can help you see where a person is in making the decision to work with you.
#1: Discovery
The first stage is the most complex for the client. At this stage, the potential client is just starting to realize they need financial planning help. They are exploring options, trying to get an idea about what is out there for them. To attract clients in this stage, consider these strategies:
- Build content that attracts searchers. Many people at this stage do not have any real idea of who they are working with or what they need. Instead, they want information.
- Use search engine optimization strategies to build content on your site that targets the keywords they use the most. Keywords that consumers may be searching for at this stage include “when do I need an accountant” and “what can a financial planner do?” Consumers are very much not ready for a consultation, but they want information.
- Offer highly accurate, detailed content that helps build your reputation as the go-to resource. At this stage, be sure to use social media to connect with your clients.
- Use paid media campaigns to help attract those who are ready for support. This could include highly targeted ads for those who meet the demographics to fit your needs, such as people with a specific financial status.
- Build trust with personal outreach. Now is also a good time to start capturing leads. Using targeted emails and setting up an email campaign allows you to start educating and building trust with the consumer.
At this stage, focus on education and building a connection. Use SEO as your first step in pulling in leads and paid marketing campaigns. Then, set up the second stage.
#2: Nurturing
At this stage, your consumers are gaining more insight, and they see the value of what you offer. They are weighing whether they need and want this service. Nurturing the leads you’ve pulled in at this point is critical. These clients are at the most impactful time in their buying journey. If you work them properly, this is the stage at which you can solidify their trust in your business.
To achieve these goals, focus on these steps in your accounting marketing plan:
- Personalize your content. At this point, you want to emphasize the value of your service. Personalization makes that possible because people feel as if you are talking directly to them.
- Showcase your skills and abilities by hosting a webinar, creating blogs that provide hands-on learning tools and opportunities to drive home value, building content that meets their specific needs, or breaking down the components of a comprehensive estate plan in a web series.
- Continue to build value through specialized knowledge. For example, invite groups of people on your marketing list to your specialized event, perhaps a workshop where they can learn how to prepare for the coming tax season as small business owners.
During this stage, your consumer needs valuable information that shows how your service benefits them. Focus on showcasing your knowledge and skills, but also presenting information in a way that helps present your business as valuable. Your financial planning marketing plan here can become a resource for anyone in need.
#3: Decision
Now that your clients have a significant amount of information and they know what you can do for them, the next step is to get them to decide. If you have put the hard work into the first components of the client buying journey, they are already highly targeted and interested. They are engaging with you. Now, you want them to become clients.
To do so, present a few key elements to them at this point while you continue to educate and engage.
- Show the prospective client how easy it is to get started. If they wanted to get started with you, what would they do? Create videos that showcase what happens at consultations.
- Break down barriers by encouraging phone calls. Use your marketing tools to create personalized offers. For some, this could be a one-on-one consultation to apply accounting strategies for their business. For others, it may be time to talk about wealth planning tax strategies, especially if they are over a specific age or within a key demographic.
- Consider offering personalized proposals and specialized services. With AI, you can create these types of personalized analyses and detailed plans without any significant time frame. All your prospective client needs to do is sign up.
There are numerous ways to close the deal, but taking fear out of the picture is also helpful. Be sure to tell them what you offer that reduces any risks associated with working with you. Make sure your competitive edge stands out – you want your clients to know you are the best at what you do, even if you cannot use those works within your marketing content.
Key Marketing Tools to Help You with the Client Buying Journey as a Financial Planning or Accounting Business
Creating a cohesive marketing plan for financial planning or accounting companies means building a lot of touchpoints for your customers. It is easy to become overwhelmed by all that you could be doing to build your company. Yet, there are tools that can help you. Some of the most important resources available to companies today include:
- SEO optimization tools. To get those leads, you need to incorporate SEO strategies for financial planning, accounting, and related fields.
- Online reviews and listing services. Building your presence online and demonstrating your ability to meet client needs helps to break down those situations where your client isn’t confident in what you have to offer.
- Online advertising. Paid advertising for accountants and financial planners is often an excellent way to target a very specific demographic and draw them into your business. Once they sign up for emails and connect with you, you can continue to nurture them through the buying process.
- Text messaging: Text messaging can also be a critical tool for keeping in touch, especially after webinars, seminars, or other live events. Encourage your customers to use your texting services.
- Content management. Use a content management system to help you build your content and confidently deliver it to your clients. By automating this process, content gets to your customers when they need it the most.
Bringing It Together for a Cohesive Outcome
Your client’s journey in financial planning is sometimes a long one. Some clients are ready to close the deal in days, while others need time to learn about the professionals they are working with to determine available services. To help you get started, arm yourself with the best marketing plan for CPAs and financial planning professionals. Set up a demo for Surefire Local that lets you explore how to build a client journey from discovery to sign-up with reliability.