Harnessing Lead Generation Systems to Super-Charge Your Advisory Practice

I joke regularly that I am inherently lazy. So what this laziness has prompted me to do is refine a methodology to maximize my new business generation activities. We all know that we make money by working with clients, not by prospecting. So our ultimate aim is to employ economic processes to turn qualified prospects into paying clients as quickly as possible. To accomplish this we need to keep on refilling the pipe line to grow our businesses and replace the natural attrition our practices experience from time to time. So how can we more effectively generate highly qualified prospects for our business?

There are no secretes to lead generation. It requires you to make an investment into your business. If you are not willing to invest to grow your business maybe you should consider closing up shop and looking to work for someone else. If you are not putting money and time back into your business to grow it, remember some of your colleagues are, and they are reaping the rewards.

So you might be asking what methods are available for you to attract the right clients to your practice? There are the traditional means of getting your message out to your intended audience such as print ads, radio and television spots, trade shows and the dreaded free seminar. Each of these traditional methods require a high level of financial and time commitment and there are no guarantees that the right prospect will raise their hands and seek you out.

Today in the modern world the internet has the ability to connect us so much closer to our current and future clientele. So what I would like to share with you is an analysis I recently performed to illustrate how the internet can be harnessed to turn prospects into clients both time and cost effectively.
In this example let’s look at a large multi-national insurance company that was weighing two internet marketing strategies to increase revenue immediately and throughout a five year period by acquiring new costumers.

This insurance company was weighing its options to invest into a year long marketing campaign on the internet to generate new Term 100 insurance sales. The aim of this company was:

1. To attract new clients to their Term 100 product and to break even in the first year;
2. To make $2 for every $1 it spent on its marketing investment over a five year period.

The options that this company were evaluating to achieve its goal were to buy either Google Adwords or to hire an Inbound Internet Marketing Company that would pre-qualify every insurance lead before selling them to the insurance company.

This analysis was based on the following assumptions. This insurance company was willing to commit $40,000 per month to their lead generation campaign. Opting for the first strategy of purchasing Google Adwords advertising that would appear on the top of the Google search engine for “Term 100 insurance”. The average cost as of March 2009 was $40 US for each click. Based on this, the Google Adword campaign would generate 1000 clicks to the insurance company’s website per month. Of these 1000 click throughs, an estimated 10% of visitors who went to the insurance company website would fill out a request for a Term 100 Insurance quote. From these 100 prospects, 30% or 30 people would actually buy an insurance policy from them. The average insurance sale would generate $1000 of revenue for the first year, and over a five year period, $5000 per lead generated.

In summary, the Google Adword campaign per month would cost this insurance company $40,000 and generate $30,000 of first year revenue and $150,000 income over the five year period. Giving this company a five year return on its investment 277%.

Now let’s look at the other internet option. This insurance company decides to go with an Inbound Internet Marketing Company that pre-qualifies all the leads it gathers and then sells them to the insurance company. The Inbound Internet Marketing Company has a special process that vets prospects who have requested to speak with an advisor to purchase Term 100 insurance. The cost per lead is $85. The insurance company by investing the same $40,000 per month through this channel would purchase 470 qualified leads. Of these 30% or 141 people will purchase Term 100 Insurance. As with Google Adwords each new client generates $1000 in first year revenue and $5000 over a five year period.

The numbers speak for themselves. The insurance company using this lead generation channel would spend $40,000 per month and generate $141,000 in first year revenue from this investment. More impressively the gross revenue generated over a five year period from leads gathered using this vetting process would be $705,000 or 1663% return on its investment.

All businesses need to grow or they will decay and the internet properly used can be your greatest ally to maximizing your growth. As I have shared in previous columns, your clients seek you out as a public accountant for direction on tax minimization and deferral solutions because you are an expert in that field. You should do the same when it comes to investing in web strategies and web optimization solutions. Hiring an expert can help you attract the right people for your business with a smaller investment in both time and money than that necessary for traditional marketing media.

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Peter J. Merrick, BA, FMA, CFP, TEP, FCSI is a Trust and Estate Practitioner and President of MerrickWealth.com a fee-for-service financial consulting firm in Toronto. He is also the author of two books. “The Essential Individual Pension Plan Handbook” (Lexisnexis Canada, 2007) and “The TASK – The Trusted Advisor’s Survival Kit” (Lexisnexis Canada, 2009). Peter can be reached at 416.854.1776 or Peter@MerrickWealth.com .