Best Lead Generation Strategies

The financial services industry is highly competitive, with endless comparison sites in each sub-category vying to steal each other’s business. But whether you’re a mortgage broker, IFA, wealth manager, or insurance specialist, it’s no longer sustainable to rely on referrals alone.

Word of mouth will always be a valuable commodity, of course, but developing a high-intent lead generation strategy is essential to the success of any modern financial services business or professional. In this article we look at some of the best lead generation methods, and how to build a robust lead gen strategy for your business.

Why lead value matters

When it comes to sourcing leads online, the predominant two are SEO and PPC. But it’s important to understand the value of the leads you gather before deciding which of these methods is right for you.

Whether you’re looking for a B2C strategy to find homeowners or a B2B approach to partner with other firms, the higher the intent of your leads, the more valuable they are. For leads to be high intent, they should be targeted, rather than generic.

For example, buying 100s of general financial services leads when you’re a mortgage broker operating specifically in one niche of lending is unlikely to result in finding many opportunities. If 70% of those leads are for pensions, insurance quotes, or even a type of mortgage that you’re unable to serve, they’re essentially useless to you.

Both PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) traffic allow you to target exactly the type of lead you’re looking for, but in different ways.

PPC leads

If you need results today, PPC leads allow you to target specific high-intent terms like ‘best remortgage rates’ or ‘pension advice London,’ quickly. Because you literally pay per click, so for every visitor on your advertorial page, you bypass much of the competition for that term and land at the top of Google’s search results.

This is a quick, but often pricey, way of securing high intent leads quickly. Because you’ll need a different PPC campaign for each keyword phrase, covering any area of finance thoroughly could include literally thousands of phrases. This is why focussing on those that will attract you the exact business you need should be prioritised.

SEO leads

SEO is a long-term strategy to gain traffic from keywords naturally (or organically). You’re competing to appear in Google’s search result based on the authority of your content, rather than paying for it. This takes much more effort, often from experienced marketing professionals, to achieve the same result.

However, if you have the means, SEO is a fantastic long-term strategy that can continue to supply leads over and over again, whereas PPC campaigns last for a limited time. Developing a high quality website containing expertly written content and targeting multiple keywords can be much more cost effective than paying for PPC leads in the long term, however, is often much less fruitful in the short term.

Choosing between SEO and PPC

Choosing between PPC and SEO isn’t really essential, because the best lead generation strategies tend to consist of a combination of the two. Both methods work as ideal counterparts, with PPC offering immediate opportunities to scale, and SEO providing the best long term ROI by lowering your cost per lead over time.

At LeadCrowd we use both strategies, and also offer both PPC and SEO leads for sale. SEO leads are often cheaper, but tend to be less targeted than PPC leads. However, our marketplace is a great jumping off point for those with smaller marketing budgets.

Other lead generation strategies

With a robust PPC and SEO lead generation strategy in place, your business should have a healthy stream of customers coming in, but there are other methods you could introduce to supplement your lead gen efforts, including:

Email marketing

Email marketing can sometimes be linked to a PPC or SEO strategy. For example, collecting email addresses through SEO content allows you to drip feed prospective customers at regular intervals, making sure your brand remains fresh in their mind.

This means that even if you don’t convert a customer on their first website visit, they may well do in six months time after reading a useful monthly newsletter during that time. As email marketing can now be fully automated, it offers one of the highest ROI strategies once set up.

Social media

Social media offers various link building strategy options depending on your business type:

• LinkedIn: For B2B lead generation it’s possible to connect directly with business owners based on precise professional data, and in a more professional manner than traditional social media formats, such as Instagram

• Personal social media like Facebook & Instagram: These platforms remain excellent for mortgage and property lead generation, as well as promotion opportunities for local businesses, due to accurate demographic targeting. Similarly to PPC vs SEO, you can either use paid adverts on social platforms, or build your brand through social media marketing campaigns to gain brand trust over time

Telemarketing (cold calling)

Although all of the lead generation methods described above provide the opportunity to ‘warm call’ clients to follow up on relevant leads quickly, there could be some value to cold calling clients if properly targeted.

While this can be very labour intensive, some niches still find convertible leads through old-skool telemarketing techniques.

Networking

Particularly in the case of B2B lead strategy, attending webinars, industry events and similar networking opportunities can still build substantial trust in your brand. As well as targeting business, it can also help you to develop a strong foundation for partnerships and professional referrals that are invaluable to scaling your firm.

Building your strategy with LeadCrowd

The strongest business strategies, much like the strongest financial plans, are those with the greatest diversity. If you’re able to combine your marketing efforts into multiple lead generation opportunities, you’ll have a much greater chance of creating a sustainable flow of business, and scaling up more quickly, should that be your goal.

Whether you’re just getting started, or already have a robust SEO lead generation strategy, buying exclusive, high conversion leads can provide a welcome buffer to the ever changing landscape of competing for high-intent traffic.

If you’re looking for high quality and highly relevant leads for your business, look no further than LeadCrowd. Unlike some other lead generation firms, we provide exclusive highly customisable real-time leads with no minimum purchase levels. With our leads you can also target specific locations for no extra cost.

We even have a marketplace where you can bid on leads to suit your budget - get started here to set up a free account and find out what kind of leads we have to offer.