Roughly a third of Americans plan their estates, which should be a reassuring figure if you’re a professional in this area. That statistic implies a potential pool of tens of millions of clients. The question is how to tap into that pool, drawing interest to your services and establishing yourself as the premier practice in your area.
Stand out from the competition and grow your practice with these eight savvy estate planning marketing ideas for boosting your practice’s reputation and reach.
Leverage social media
Social media provides an efficient, low-cost way to access a massive audience, making it one of the most popular ways for any business to market its services. Start building your presence by creating an account on major platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, and populating your profile with posts on frequently asked questions, your services, or practice updates.
Ensure your content is “on-brand”––that is, it should visually and tonally represent your practice. Stick to the same color scheme, logos, and fonts you use in other marketing materials to maintain brand coherency. And if your firm normally takes on a polite, informed tone, keep it up in posts captions and other texts you generate for social media.
Finally, take advantage of paid marketing opportunities. Social media applications allow you to promote your practice to a target audience that meets your desired parameters. For example, you can send ads out to a specific demographic in your geographical area.
Create a Google Business profile
Put your business on the map, literally, by creating a Google Business profile. Many people seek out services on Google, so you want your business to exist in this space and, consequently, appear in search results. Plus, not having a presence on Google can be a strike against you. Suppose a potential client has heard about your services and attempts to look you up on Google only to not find information on your business. This lack of “social proof” can make it seem like your business doesn’t exist.
Maximize the potential of your Google business profile by filling out as many of the available fields (like your phone number, website, and business hours) as possible. Add a business description and use the category feature to delineate your offering, helping Google match your practice with audiences searching for the services you offer.
Be smart about email outreach
Acquire a subscription to an email marketing tool and build out your mailing list. Gather email addresses by asking leads to sign up on your practice’s website or get consent to store and use previous or current clients’ contact information.
Then, create a robust email marketing strategy that targets these different groups. You may want to send estate planning tips to your entire mailing list but blast information on your services only to new leads. Email marketing platforms allow you to segment your audience, making this work easy.
Whatever content you send out, remember: People get countless emails per day. Email content should provide the reader with a clear benefit—whether that’s a discount on your services or access to valuable information. State the benefit in the subject line of the email to encourage the recipient to open it, and deliver on your promise in the body of the text. Write the type of emails that are worth opening every time, and forge a long-standing connection with your audience.
Become a TEPI member
Joining The Estate Planning Institute (TEPI) makes marketing your business easier. TEPI is an association for professional estate and financial planners that offers valuable, time-saving resources, like ready-made marketing materials, like informative texts you can use in email newsletters.
By joining TEPI, you also gain access to an exclusive video library containing educational content to use when onboarding new clients. You’ll also get a TEPI badge, which you can post on your website or use in other marketing materials, showing your commitment to excellence and ongoing professional development.
Implement an SEO strategy on your website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of leveraging keywords to drive traffic to a website. When you use certain keywords on a webpage, search engines like Google, have an easier time categorizing your content, and in turn, putting it in front of the right audiences. For example, if your website repeatedly mentions “estate planning FAQs,” when someone searches for that term on the internet, your site will come up within the results.
Excellent SEO implies not only showing up in search results but rising to the top of them. Using SEO-optimization tools, you can determine the best mix of keywords to use on your site to drive targeted traffic to it. The more traffic you drive, the higher your site “ranks” with search engines. Taking the example in the previous paragraph, your site could be the first to appear when someone searches for “estate planning FAQs” if you strategically plant this and other related terms on your site, building up search traffic to it over time.
Use testimonials and reviews
There’s nothing quite like good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations. Seventy-two percent of people say that a strong testimonial builds their trust in a business. Ask satisfied former clients to provide a statement (or video clip) highlighting their positive experience of working with you.
Harness the power of testimonials by posting them on your social media accounts and website, and use them in email newsletters and print marketing, too.
An excellent review, just like a strong testimonial, can go a long way to establishing trust with leads. Encourage past clients to leave a review and a five-star rating for your business on Google or any other platforms where your practice is listed.
Network with similar professionals
Peers in linked industries can help one another drive traffic to each other’s businesses.
For example, if you’re an estate planning attorney, turn to financial planners in your network who can recommend your services to clients specifically looking for estate help. You can repay the favor by referring your clients to those planners for financial planning services that extend beyond estate work.
There’s no one right way to market your business
The best marketing approaches are often the most comprehensive, using a variety of channels and content styles to connect with the widest audience possible. As you establish your unique approach, consider your target client above all. Prioritize the channels they use to find services and the kind of content that’s most valuable to them.
Regardless of your audience’s dynamics, TEPI can help you efficiently create high-quality outreach. Use TEPI’s informational texts to bolster your written messaging, and leverage TEP’s educational videos as a value-add that sets your practice services apart, helping clients confidently enter the estate planning process.