Marketing Secrets, Part 3

January 04, 2022 | RIA Resources

So we’ve moved past the formative stages of your Independent RIA, including your business strategy, budget, and legal structure. In the last two blogs, we laid the foundation for your marketing efforts. Now, nearly at the halfway point of your journey, we are building upwards and adding the necessary tools and technology to ensure the success of your new firm.

Keep in mind that your marketing will shape how prospective clients view your firm. So it’s time to put your best foot forward and start building your brand.

In this article we will focus on creating your RIA’s brand and SEO tips while next article will focus on social media, blogging, and podcasting.

How to Create Your RIA’s Brand

Digital marketing is the best, most cost-effective method for getting your brand messaging across. In this article, we will cover the following digital marketing concepts: SEO, social media, blogging, and podcasting. While we recommend dedicating resources in all four areas, you’re free to choose the avenues that make sense for your business and goals.

Not everyone is born to be on camera or write engaging content. Find what works for you and excel in it. It will pay off in increased exposure for your newly independent RIA.

SEO

Search engine optimization, more commonly referred to as SEO, is a critical component of any firm’s digital marketing efforts. People aren’t flipping through the Yellow Pages anymore; they’re Googling. Any website that isn’t search-engine friendly will be very difficult for prospective clients to find.

Marketing firm Digital Zero found that the top five search results get two-thirds of the clicks. That drops to just 3.7% for results 6-10. Over half the remaining clicks go to first page ads, which means if you’re not on the first page, you’re fighting for an increasingly smaller slice of web traffic, if any at all.

SEO should be part of your marketing plans since your website is likely to be a primary driver of leads until you’re already well established with a strong referral pipeline. Good SEO can be as effective as paid ads, with the only investment being an SEO consultant and some software tools to improve your Google ranking.

Some SEO tips include avoiding prominent (and expensive) keywords by targeting lesser ones and ones that are more local. For example, “RIAs near me” is a very competitive phrase. Standing apart from that crowd is hard!

However, “RIAs in Pittsburgh” or “RIAs in Southwest Pennsylvania” are less crowded. You’ll have a much better chance of owning the keyword there (without having to pay Google for it).

Build your homepage around these keywords. While you can pay an SEO expert to help you figure out how to target those keywords effectively, tools like Surfer SEO guide you by analyzing the top pages and discovering common words and phrases. You can also share these with any writers you hire, allowing them to write SEO-optimized content right out of the gate.

It also provides suggestions on what keywords and topics to target, which in theory should improve your search position overall.

Search engines also value good content when ranking a site, so you’ll need to produce a fair amount of content initially, perhaps as many as 30-50 pages, to see results. While this might sound daunting, an AI writing tool like Jasper combined with a freelancer could produce that content in just a few weeks.

Summary

Take your time making it through this part of launching your independent RIA, and also be patient with the results. SEO experts say it may take as long as six months to a year for SEO efforts to work — although you’ll see signs of whether it’s working within a few weeks.

Monitor the results and avoid making any drastic changes unless something is not converting. Drastic changes also make it impossible to know what exactly is working and what’s not. Take your time and get it right. Your business’ success depends on it.

The Shoestring RIA is a series of articles written and published by the BillFin^TM team at Redi2 Technologies designed to help RIAs as they start out on their own. We recognize just how challenging it is to venture out and build a successful business. Our articles will be focused on helping these new businesses with a wide range of topics.