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An increasing number of financial firms are adopting social media tools and finding new ways to deliver content to audiences, but one significant problem remains: the content conundrum. Prepackaged, off-the-shelf content is cheaper and quicker to obtain, but it appears canned and impersonal. Custom content, on the other hand, speaks specifically to your clients’ and prospects’ needs and aspirations.
This will be the year when custom content comes into its own and takes on a foundational role in financial services marketing.
Why? Because authenticity is critical to creating credibility with an audience. The ability to tell your story, communicate your business and investment philosophies and become a trusted advisor to your clients hinges on a willingness to educate, communicate, and inform your clients and prospects about market risks and opportunities.
Canned content fails on many levels. First, it’s impersonal. If it’s not coming from you, why would your clients be interested? They can easily get fresher, more thoughtful analysis and reporting by picking up a copy of The Wall Street Journal. Canned content fails to deliver ancillary benefits, such as search engine optimization. Google and other search engines are now engineered to sniff out pretenders and ignore them. With canned content, you lose interest and eyeballs to other asset managers and advisors who are publishing their own thoughtful analysis and using it to ingratiate themselves to your clients through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging and other social tools. You may not even know they are using those tools to communicate with your clients and prospects!
Ask yourself these four questions:
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What is my firm trying to accomplish? Are you checking the box that says you “must distribute regular content to touch clients and prospects” to fulfill a generic goal? Instead, consider finding authentic ways to enhance your visibility, stay connected to valued clients, keep in front of prospects and centers of influence and enhance your firm’s search engine rankings and visibility.
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Does my firm have a unique voice in the market? If you can’t create or capture a unique perspective in your firm’s approach or philosophy, then why worry? Just buy canned investment advice from an outside source. Thoughtful advisories, though, are thinking more, doing more and creating more separation between themselves and competitors. Custom content is the ultimate differentiator – a way to control your narrative and tell a compelling story that impacts the decisions of your target markets.
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How much can we invest in time and money? Content requires creative thought and work to publish. But financial advisories are in the business of advising, meaning they are willing to share ideas and concepts, warn of risks and point to opportunities. Creating content can be viewed as an additional and costly burden, or it can be seen as an extension of the work your firm’s experts are already doing.
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Will content generate leads and new business opportunities? It won’t if the content is cold, indifferent and nothing more than a digital version of a canned newsletter or tweets purchased from a company with no idea of your firm’s position in the marketplace. But what if that content is authentic, creative and thoughtful? Then yes, the marketplace will value it. Clients will follow it. Prospects will take notice and respond.
Adoption of social media will reach a tipping point in 2014, with the overwhelming majority of your clients and prospects ignoring the newsletters, direct-mail pieces, conference calls and seminars that worked in the past. Blogs, email campaigns and webinars will dominate the information flow. To deliver timely, actionable content that stimulates the target audience to act in a desired way, advisors must connect, engage and stay relevant.
Joe Anthony is a Senior Vice President at Gregory FCA, an Ardmore, PA-based public relations firm. For the past 11 years, he has managed the firm’s specialized unit dedicated to working with the financial advisory industry.
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