Sales and marketing

What do clients really want?

Paul Watkins uncovers some of the mystery of SEO and how advisers can better use it to reach potential clients.

I’m sure most of you have a small agency looking after your search engine optimisation (SEO), or some of you may be knowledgeable enough to do it yourselves. If you don’t, then no matter how amazing your website is, no one will find or see it. SEO is a bit of an art form.

The most critical part of SEO is working out what people are searching for. But researching this for better rankings of the website in Google is not the only reason you would want to know this. It will also tell you precisely what people want to know from you. The more you know what clients really want, the more you can tailor your advertising and promotional activity to meet this demand.

A good illustration of the need to do some keyword SEO research is seen in ads for legal or accounting firms. They often shout about the new partners in the firm. Is that a compelling reason to ask for their services? I would be surprised if anyone ever searched for “accounting firms with new partners”. It’s not what clients and prospects care about.

We live our lives online now. The pandemic has pushed hundreds of thousands of Kiwis online that would not have otherwise done so. Shopping online, be it for click-and-collect, or delivery has exploded, and many Kiwis now see no need to return to some of the bricks and mortar stores for their shopping experience. What I am leading to is that we spend more time than over online, so take advantage of that in learning about your clients and prospects.

The 5 basics

This article assumes you already have the five online basics in place for your brokerage.

1. A well-designed, easy to navigate, informative website with an active blog.

2. A listing in Google My Business.

3. A business Facebook page (linked to an Instagram account).

4. Monthly emailed newsletters.

5. An active business LinkedIn page.

These five online activities are no longer just a good idea, but mandatory for a service business to survive and thrive.

While none of these are expensive money wise, they are all labour-intensive. If you do not wish to do them, or have an allocated staff member responsible for them, then find someone to do them for you. It’s not expensive.

What are clients searching for?

Now with these in place, you still need to be found and know what clients really want, or you won’t know what to write or post. While an SEO agency will be able to give you a detailed report on what is being searched for by your target market, here are some general ones that I discovered in a search using a couple of keyword search tools.

Highest on the list right now in New Zealand is “mortgage calculator NZ”, followed by “mortgage calculator ANZ / ASB / Kiwibank” (they name a specific lender as they are obviously clients of these). What can you read into this? It could be that first home buyers want to know what they can afford. Other clients and prospects may be wanting to know how the recent increased interest rates could affect them. It could also denote mortgage stress or people wanting to look at refinancing. The recent rate rise could be prompting such searches. This is how to interpret such search results and are clues to how Kiwis are currently thinking about mortgages.

Not far behind those searched were “what mortgage can I afford?” and “how do I get a mortgage?” which would mostly be first time buyers.

Then there is a group of search results known as the “long-tail keywords”, which are far fewer in number of searches and are very much niche Google enquiries. Don’t write these off as unimportant, as they still give an insight into your prospective client base. These are often searches made by those with more knowledge on mortgages. My exercise in finding them showed up such key phrases as: “reverse mortgages New Zealand”; “mortgagee sales”; “refinance mortgage”; “offset mortgage”; “mortgage deposit” and “expat mortgage NZ” among many others.

Do your website or blog or social media posts specifically talk to any of these and use them as headlines to attract readers? That’s how searches work. If Google can match the result to a website entry then you rank higher in the results.

Keywords/phrases

Here is a simple way to make the most of keyword/phrase search results. First, get this list yourself or through your web SEO agency. Have them give you an extensive list of say 50 popular and long-tail search phrases. Add to these the most common questions you get asked by clients, which are perhaps another 30. You now have 80 topics, entirely based on what clients want to know.

Next step is to treat these as what your clients really want, so now you can address their thinking and concerns. Sit at your laptop or with a blank sheet of paper and pen and start writing. Under each of the 80 keyword search results and questions you now write a paragraph of text in terms of how you would address it to clients or prospects. Maybe brainstorm such paragraph answers with your team.

From this exercise you will learn a lot about what mortgage clients want from a broker or lender and therefore how you can add value to their enquiry. This exercise gets you to talk to client needs, many of which will be well known to you, but some may be a surprise.

You will also have just created 80 social media posts, 80 blog posts and 80 newsletter articles. As I have written many times before, video is king right now, on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, so you may choose to talk to these questions and search enquiries via a short video – videoed in a chatty style on your cell phone. These also work well as blog posts, and for the adventurous of you out there, you may even want to use them to start a YouTube channel.

Having spoken to brokers. I hear such objections as, “but there are only really five things clients want to know about mortgages”. Well, not according to search results in Google. There will always be many variations on each topic, so the five will surprisingly expand to 80. Start with the list and see how you go. You will learn a lot about your clients and attract more due to directly addressing their enquiries. ✚

Paul Watkins is a marketing adviser to the financial services industry.