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If you’re considering using content marketing to promote your financial services business or if you are looking for help to take your marketing efforts to the next level, The Ultimate Financial Advisor’s Guide to Content Marketing covered everything you need to know from start to finish.
Content marketing is a powerful way to connect with potential clients for your financial advisory firm. Creating and sharing useful content raises awareness about your business and educates prospects about financial topics and smart money management practices. Because you’re a financial professional who helps your clients make their money work for them, content marketing showcases your expertise. It lets prospects know you understand their financial concerns and challenges. At the same time, it sets you apart as relatable and approachable, before you meet the people who are considering hiring you. And, finally, content marketing is the key to getting discovered online because it boosts your search-engine optimization (SEO), driving organic traffic to your website.
How to create a financial content marketing strategy
Content marketing doesn’t work without a strategy. Map out a plan for creating, publishing, managing and monitoring the content itself. Plus, you’ll need to prioritize growing your audience and distributing your content to put it to work for you.
Be clear about your intended audience, ideal client and what they would want or need from you to catch their attention and gain their trust.
Overall, your goal isn’t to impress your colleagues and competitors, but to turn strangers into readers, interested prospects, and ultimately referral partners or clients.
Having a content marketing strategy in place will make you more confident about your expertise and what you are doing to establish your authority and promote your financial services online.
Tying the content marketing pieces together
Now that you know exactly what content marketing entails, you have everything you need to get started. To access in-depth information on each element of an effective financial content marketing plan, you can reference the appropriate section of The Ultimate Financial Advisor’s Guide to Content Marketing:
Your content marketing strategy should always start with your ideal client in mind. Begin by describing members of your target audience – who they are, what their concerns are, and what they want or need from you.
Equally important is to consider the purpose your content will fill. Are you looking to raise awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, nurture relationships, or all of the above? Ask yourself these questions throughout your strategic content planning.
Next, think about who your competitors are. This would include other financial professionals as well as anyone who teaches your potential clients that they can DIY their retirement planning. How can you fill gaps in the existing content that is vying for their attention and turn their eyes your way?
Then, consider what you specifically bring to the table. Are you especially equipped to help a certain segment of your target market? Has your background prepared you to help Gen-Xers who are juggling toddlers and aging parents? You don’t have to work exclusively with this type of client, but you might be able to create content that draws them in organically.
Think about what your existing clients are talking about already. What are the common questions you answer in your daily conversations? What challenges do you hear people discussing that you can address?
Work through your existing content and determine how it can be used in your ongoing content strategy. Do you have slides from workshops you’ve presented? Were you interviewed for a podcast? Have you written blog posts? Now go back and figure out how this content can be used in the future and how you can build upon it.
Once you have a good idea of what the content will be, who it will serve, and what you want it to accomplish, it’s time to begin planning out the logistics. You’ll need to determine who will produce and manage your content. And you’ll need to create a schedule for how often you will publish your content and on what platforms you will distribute it.
Finally, put some metrics in place for measuring results and a process for auditing and adapting your content marketing efforts as you go.
You don’t need to have everything figured out and set up perfectly before you begin, but recognize everything a successful content marketing plan requires. This way, you can get started right away and improve your efforts along the way.
Crystal Lee Butler, MBA is a creative marketer and results-oriented business consultant with over a decade of experience collaborating with independent advisers. At Crystal Marketing Solutions, she delivers exceptional insights for financial professionals enabling them to create a consistent marketing presence so they can focus on the things that matter most to them.
Download a free copy of the Financial Advisor Content Marketing & Optimization Guide here.
Sometimes content marketing can seem like an overwhelming task to undertake on your own. This is exactly what we do for our clients! We help create and select the right content, optimize it so it is reaching the right people, and handle the scheduling to ensure it is as far-reaching as possible. Let us help you get a handle on the whole process by scheduling a discovery meeting today.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
