To stay relevant financial advisors need to work on creating a strong digital presence. Often, the base of this is a compelling website where they can showcase their services offered, expertise, team profiles, and educational content.
Further, to build authoritative and thought leadership content, various experts should contribute to the content piece. Here, most professionals leverage collaborative WordPress publishing that further enhances the site by allowing multiple team members to contribute content. This allows them to showcase a wide array of expertise and insights in their industry.
But, amidst all the social media chatters and website management clutter, you’d need a facility allowing clients to schedule appointments, consultations, or seminars.
If you are hosting a financial advising site on WordPress, consider using a suitable booking plugin that can make your website more functional and professional. It boosts client engagement, streamlines administrative tasks, and offers collaborative publishing features.
Step 1. Identify your requirements
Choosing WordPress booking plugins requires identifying the needs of your financial firm. This step is critical because it ensures the chosen solution aligns with your business needs.
Consider the following when performing this step.
- Synchronization with a calendar (like Google Calendar)
Synchronization with calendars allows automatic updates between your booking system and personal or professional calendars. This eliminates double bookings and helps keep track of all appointments in one place. Therefore, consider plugins that provide real-time synchronization and support the specific calendar tools you already use.
- Email or SMS Notifications
See if your financial advising firm can get true value from Email or SMS notifications. This helps you and your clients be informed about upcoming appointments, cancellations, or rescheduling, thus enhancing communication and trust.
- Payment integration for paid appointments
If you are charging for your appointment as a financial advisor, it is best to have the client’s confirmation. Often, this will mean getting the payment while booking an appointment, and a plugin that streamlines the booking process for paid services offers convenience for clients and your business.
Step 2. Choose the best-suited plugin
Several booking plugins are available, so you’ll choose one that fits your needs.
Let us check out some of the popular WordPress plugins for financial advising firms that can be pivotal to your B2B appointment setting and pushing your service sales.
- Bookly: A booking plugin that offers a responsive booking form, customizable SMS notifications, and integration with various payment gateways.
Key features
Responsive booking form: Get this if you want a form that adapts to different devices.
Customizable SMS notifications: It helps send personalized appointment reminders to clients who’ve booked an appointment.
Payment gateways integration: Enables accepting payments through platforms like PayPal or Stripe.
- Amelia: This is tailored for professionals like consultants, fitness trainers, lawyers, etc. You can use features like multiple employee management and industry-specific functionalities for client appointments at your financial firm.
Key features
Multiple employees management: This plugin allows managing appointments for various staff members.
Integration with Google Calendar: This feature enables synchronizing with personal and professional calendars of both (you and your client) that allows efficient schedule management.
Online payment integration: If you want to integrate various payment gateways, then Amelia allows receiving payments for appointments online using their preferred payment method.
- WP Simple Booking Calendar: Ideal for those seeking simplicity, this plugin provides a basic booking calendar without many additional features or complexities.
Key features
Display a legend near the calendar: Use this display-specific feature to add a legend or key that helps your clients understand the symbols, colors, or marks used in the calendar. Specifically to your profession, you can book time slots for consultations like tax-related, investment related, etc.
Backup or restore calendar data: If you need to transfer your data to a different site, use this feature to create backups of your calendars and associated data without losing valuable information.
Multiple calendar overview: If you have different financial advisors for unique purposes, this can be a handy tool to create and manage multiple calendars (for each advisor). You can view these calendars in an overview format, making it easier for clients to see the availability of each advisor.
3. Install and configure the plugin
Once you have chosen the right plugin for your client appointments, you must install and configure this WordPress plugin. This is where you’ll install and activate the plugin.
Let’s understand how you can do this.
- Go to the ‘Plugins’ section in your WordPress dashboard.
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- Click ‘Add New’ and search for the chosen plugin by browsing the extensive WordPress repository.
- Next, click ‘Install’ and then ‘Activate’. This will automatically download and install the plugin. Remember to click the ‘Activate’ button, making it go live on your site.
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Next, you can configure your WordPress booking plugin by maneuvering functions of some of the following settings.
General settings: Includes language, currency, time zone, and other broad parameters.
Booking settings: As a financial advisor, you’ll want to customize the appointment slots, consultation types, and fees and even consider integrating it with other tools like Google Calendar. Consider setting up working hours, buffer times between appointments, cancellation policies, etc.
Notification settings: Ensure you keep the booking notification ‘on’ and check if the chosen plugin provides a reminder before the meeting. You can also set it to notify both the client and the advisor when an appointment is booked, rescheduled, or canceled.
Possible integrations: Many plugins offer integration with other tools like CRMs, email marketing platforms, etc., that enables a more streamlined client management process.
Wrapping up
The above-mentioned key steps can help you streamline client appointments using WordPress booking plugins. This can be an integral part of your financial advising firm since this only adds a professional touch to the appointment process but also helps automate many manual tasks.
Interesting Related Article: “What is a plugin? Definition and examples“
