Lead generation for financial advisors: counting the calls returned and the forms sent
Put the question to an advisory firm's front desk and the reply is rarely a click. It is a phone call that someone returned, or a contact form that landed in an inbox with a name and a number on it. Lead generation, as this desk uses the words, means building the routes that end in one of those two events, and counting each event against the route it came from.
What the front desk counts, and what it leaves uncounted
Lead generation at an advisory firm ends at the front desk, so the count starts there. An ad click is no lead. Nor is a visit to a service line page, nor a Maps view. Each is a cut-out on the mobile, and each may lead somewhere, but the count that matters to a principal sits at the bottom of the rod: a call answered or returned, a form sent.
Four routes feed lead generation for most advisory firms. Search pages bring visitors who typed something like financial advisor near me
into a box. Maps listings bring people who looked at a pin. Ads bring people who typed a phrase the firm picked. Referral partners bring people who were pointed to a page. We build and tidy each route, and each is tagged so the firm knows which one rang.
Tagging stops at the door of the conversation. The tracking setup tallies each arriving call or form and notes its source and date. It is not set up to keep what a caller says or what a form sender writes about themselves, and a firm's contact form takes four fields only: name, email, phone and one short note.
Three routes into an advisory firm's front desk
- Organic
Search pages and Maps listings that lead to a call
Service line pages, town pages and office pages are written to leave a visitor with a single route to the firm. Our search work and our Maps work build these routes, with no ad charge attached.
- Ads
Ad groups that open on one landing page each
Each paid ad group is organised around a line of service and a location, delivers its click to a matching page, and is counted by calls and forms alone. Details live on the paid ads page.
- Referral partners
Pages a local partner can point a reader to
A short page the firm approves, naming what it offers and where, so a referral partner has a link to send. Calls and forms that arrive from it are tagged as partner visits.
How each source of an advisory firm's inquiries is noted
| Source on the string | What counts as an inquiry | How the firm sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Search page for the advisory firm | A form sent from that page, or a call to the number printed on it. | A tagged count of forms and calls by page. |
| Maps listing for each office | A call made from the listing, or a tap on its contact link. | A tagged count by office. |
| Ad group in the firm's account | A call or form that started on the landing page of that group. | A count beside the ad group's name in the monthly note. |
| Referral partner page | A form sent or a call placed from that single page. | A count by page, with the partner named only when the firm approves. |
How the count is hung, in four ties
Name the event that counts
The principal and whoever answers the phones agree to count a lead as a call returned or a form sent. Clicks and visits are kept as side notes, never as the count.
Give each source its own string
Every listing, landing page and ad group wears its own tracking tag, so each call traces back to the piece that produced it.
Keep the conversation out of the count
The setup counts events and sources only. Whatever a caller says, or a form sender types in the note, stays with the firm.
Read the count together each month
We send a plain monthly note listing calls and forms by source. The firm reads it, asks what looks crooked and decides what to change.
Two beliefs about buying leads for an advisory firm
Said at the planning tableA shared lead list is the shortest way to ring the phones at a planner's office.
What the rod showsA lead sold to several firms at once is a cut-out hung on many mobiles, with nobody holding the string. This desk sells and resells no leads: each call and form we tally arrived through a route the firm owns.
Said at the planning tableA high count of clicks means the lead generation is working.
What the rod showsClicks are one hanging piece. The count at the bottom of the rod is calls returned and forms sent, and the firm reads that count, not the click count.
Four things to settle about a wealth management firm's lead count
- Everyone at the firm agrees what a lead means in lead generation reports before any tag is placed.
- Every phone number and form on the site belongs to the tracked setup.
- What a caller says or a sender types in the note box never gets copied into a report.
- One person at the firm reads the monthly count and answers for it.
A firm's own cost per inquiry, read without anyone else's yardstick
Some firms want a cost per inquiry. The sum is simple: add the monthly fee to whatever a platform billed the firm for clicks, then divide by the number of inquiries that came in by call or form. The number belongs to that firm alone. We publish no benchmark and we make no comparison with other firms, because another firm's mobile hangs from a different rod. The one fair comparison sets the firm against its own earlier months.
Lead generation of any kind depends on the contact routes working, which is the job of the whole marketing mobile. Reviews on the Maps listing, covered in our review routine, and pages from content marketing for advisors sit on the path a visitor walks just ahead of the contact form. Plan prices are on the pricing page.
Where ads are involved, the firm reads every platform's own terms ahead of any ad going live, and nothing is drafted that the firm has not read.
Questions an advisory firm asks about lead generation
What does an advisory firm count as a lead in your lead generation work?
A call that someone returned, or a contact form that was sent. A click or a page view is noted separately and never counted as a lead.
Will the call tracking capture anything a caller says to the planner?
The setup is arranged to tally calls, note their source and date, and stop there. Nothing in it is built to hold whatever a caller shares about personal matters, and the firm's reports leave the content of any conversation out.
Can a wealth management firm buy leads through you?
No. Leads are never sold or resold by this desk. Calls and forms arrive by way of the firm's own search pages, Maps listings, ad groups and referral partner pages.
Will you tell an advisor what a good cost per inquiry looks like?
No. We supply no benchmark. We show the firm its own number, month by month, and what to do about it stays the firm's decision.
Describe the front desk and the offices your firm wants counted
Say in the form where calls and forms reach the firm at present, and leave each client detail out of the note.
Which pieces should your firm hang first?
Tell us the service lines you offer, the towns where your clients live and the neighbouring offices that point people toward you. Keep every client name, every account figure and every personal identifier out of what you send.
Ask us to hang the first piece of your search work
Send one question about how your firm turns up in search. The call is taken by our CEO, Ross Cohen, who ends it by naming the first pieces to hang.
The mobile below is only an illustration, and it forecasts nothing.