Content Marketing for Financial Advisors Done Right

So you’re a financial advisor and you want to market yourself in the most cost-effective way possible.

Well, you’ve come to the right place! Before we dive into some helpful content marketing for financial advisors’ ideas, let’s review a few things.

Did you know…?

70% of customers believe brands that share consistent content are interested in building favorable relationships with them.
78% of consumers prefer to learn about a company through articles, newsletters, and other content rather than through ads.

Currently, about 50% of financial advisors and marketers have agreed to produce and share content on a “need only” basis.

Meaning they only create new content and share it across their channels when a particular need arises or they want to promote a new product/service.

This is a very defensive approach that we don’t recommend. It is important to be proactive when planning content marketing for financial advisors.

You want your content to add value to your customers in a way where they see it as a benefit to doing business with you.

If you’re a financial planner or are in the financial game, a jolt in your content marketing strategy may be exactly what your business needs right now.

All it takes a few good content marketing for financial advisors’ ideas to interest your customers and pull them into your marketing funnel.

Content marketing is an important process in promoting your financial planning business to prospective clients.

Production of unique and valuable content can help add value and give a sneak peek of the benefits they can reap by signing up with you.

Content marketing may take many different forms – blog articles, eBooks, videos, podcasts, or images, to name only a few.

Content marketing for financial advisors should be educational in nature rather than acting as another salesman for your company.

The most important benefit of content marketing for financial advisors is that through content production and sharing.

You can build trust and develop a relationship with the reader – which is very important in the world of financial planning.

Providing key information will bring value to your potential customers and thus creating trust.

Takeaways

Your content marketing efforts need to answer the question every single one of your customers is asking…Should I trust them with my money?
Remember, it doesn’t matter what type of content marketing you choose to go with as long as you choose to do it consistently.
When it comes to matters of money, as you can imagine, consumer trust and intent-driven content reign supreme.

Benefits of Content Marketing for Financial Advisors

Business owners often come to us with a need to draw out a perfect marketing plan for them.

More so, help them develop cost-effective marketing tactics that not only increase their customer following but also result in sales.

One thing they miss out on is having a fool-proof content marketing plan and fully understanding the benefits it brings to their brand visibility online.

Content marketing helps you attract your potential clients without having to spend a ton of money to get their attention.

This is a huge benefit for every business owner. Not only that but they experience these other benefits of content marketing for financial advisors:

Business websites that create their own content see 8x more traffic.
Investing in content marketing costs much less than outbound sales-driven marketing.
Businesses doing content marketing have 3x more leads.

The benefits of content marketing don’t just stop at a well-designed website or even a well-articulated blog post.

Content marketing for financial advisors runs deeper for consumers than it does in other industries.

Your content marketing efforts need to answer the question every single one of your customers is asking…Should I trust them with my money?

Do your content marketing efforts answer this question? They should.

The content marketing understanding that we pass on to financial advisors revolves around solving just that.

We can venture effectively into content marketing tactics like eBooks and white papers.

Or build an expert webinar or podcast that will eventually build credibility for your business.

Easy Ideas for Content Marketing Financial Advisors

Stick to Current Topics

As we noted above, customers in the financial industry want live updates and a hands-on approach with their money. Always.

There is no set and forget when it comes to managing someone’s money. You are accountable 24/7, even more than any other industry.

Financial advisors understand this but sometimes fall behind when it comes to their content marketing.

Just giving out tips and ideas can become redundant after a while.

It is important to stay current with the tide and discuss market trends and how they may affect your customers.

A prime example can be a financial advisor in Florida putting time and effort into sending out a best practices email to all his local customers before…

…a band strike.

In such a case content can be created looking at current market chatter and in a way, that benefits customers.

Wells Fargo did something similar during a recent hurricane warning in Florida.

They targeted ads, blog posts, and emails to all former, current and potential customers about tips for being safe during the hurricane season.

Moreover, they made efforts to convey how the bank was being proactive in case of emergency.

Such a piece of content hits the mark even for people that don’t bank with Wells Fargo.

Play on Objectives

Deep within a company’s mission statement or tagline, you will find its business objectives.

For example:

A popular savings company proudly associated itself with its tagline – “More for your money.”
A local bank in New Jersey has a mission statement – “Committed to those we serve.”

The best idea for content marketing for financial advisors, sometimes, is in your company’s mission statement itself.

Creating content similar to your objectives is the play here.

If a company’s actions are governed by its mission statement and business objectives then why can’t content marketing too?

It is important to think of your content as an extension of your world. It’s the vibe that your brand will send out to its customers.

Financial advisors more than anyone needs to understand the importance of that.

While they expect people to have trust in their services, it is important they stay true to their objectives even in the form of content topics.

Think about your service areas or the demographics you appeal to. Business objectives can often set the path to your content marketing goals.

The below image is a snapshot of blog topics from a money-saving tool.

These are all topics that are great ideas for content marketing for financial advisors if they appeal to your audience like they do with Nerdwallet.

Customize per Channel

With the growing acceptance of digital media consumption, there are nearly 3 devices that a person uses at any given time.

Each with its own format and channel of how content is viewed.

It’s important that your designs for content marketing for financial advisors are adaptable and…

…contribute to providing value no matter the channel and format your customers view them on.

To explain this better, we asked our team to give a real-world example from their experience working with financial advisors.

Content across different mediums may need to be adjusted based on the audience viewing it and their reason for being on that medium.

We often make this adjustment for our clients where sometimes the content we generate for them is different based on the channel it represents.

For example, we recently helped a student loan provider with their content across social media.

While Twitter and Facebook spoke about best practices they can use to stay on top of their debt, LinkedIn spoke directly to them on a career level.

Our content on LinkedIn was all about helping them find a job out of college that will eventually help them pay their student loans.

Applying this content marketing for financial advisors’ best practice helps your brand connect with your audience on a personal level without…

…forcing services on them.

Stay Consistent

For content marketing to be effective, it is essential that you keep things flowing and consistent.

The only thing that’s worse than poor content is an absent content schedule.

Whether your business shares content through a newsletter, via an email or through company blog posts.

It is important to have a content marketing calendar when planning your content marketing strategy.

We have seen numerous clients have a blog page where the last published post was dated a year or so in the past.

Even outdated testimonials on your website can be hurtful. You cant to make sure these are up to date.

When it comes to situations like these with clients, the first thing we do is make the change to an updated testimonial or…

…publish a blog post on a new topic their readers will love!

Remember, it doesn’t matter what type of content marketing you choose to go with as long as you choose to do it consistently.

Your customers expect it just as they expect you to manage their finances consistently.

There are several scheduling tools that send you notifications when a content piece is due.

Such self-serving tactics can easily help you stay on schedule and consistently produce engaging content that will strike a chord with your customers.

Appeal to Interests

Personalization might be a relatively new concept, but it is here to stay.

With the drastic increase in consumer buying and media consumption patterns.

Successful financial advisors have upped their game by personalizing their content.

The beneficial idea here is to appeal to your customers’ interests. Think about life stages as an example.

Every person goes through many life-changing events. Marriage, the birth of a child, college, and so on.

If you can identify such stages in the life of your customers, tailoring content to appeal to that interest can be the most effective tool in your arsenal.

Collecting business intelligence for the benefit of marketing is something our team excels in and enjoys doing.

We have previously documented ways to collect data and segment your customers too.

And using this data is crucial in personalizing content for your audience.

I recently saw an ad on Facebook about saving on college tuition.

The ad was timely, to say the least considering I had recently visited some local universities online to view their options for furthering my education.

Do you think the financial Facebook ad was just a coincidence? Absolutely not.

But it was a great example of customizing your content as per customer segments. Because above everything else, it made me click on the content.

The existence of various technological advancements has given us the advantage of tools like browser cookies and pixels.

Our team can tag users based on their keyword searches and web page visits.

Marketing automation can then show your potential customers interest-based content.

Thus igniting their interest in your brand.

Always Track Traffic & Analyze Data

In this age of technology, website metrics and data reigns supreme.

As a financial advisor looking to partner with a marketing agency.

You need to be sure that the digital marketing agency you choose will identify such data and…

…then analyze it to give you enough insights to make business decisions.

This is our happy place, literally.

Tracking traffic to your web pages and measuring how your audience engages with your content…

…is an important part of how we create content.

It not only gives insights into what topics and themes work best but also lets you take a KPI driven approach to your investment in content creation.

We certainly practice what we preach. This is why we spend time going over measurements and data with you monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly.

Use Email Newsletters to Support Your Content Marketing Efforts

An email newsletter is a great way to keep your audience engaged.

For financial advisors, content marketing is all about timing and staying current with their customers.

Whether it is about saving tips or investment checklists.

Everyone loves a handy saving grace checklist that can help them rise through situations.

Companies often send out email newsletters to their audience on a consistent basis to help…

…their content marketing efforts reach a greater audience for little to no cost.

We often recommend a biweekly content piece that goes to subscribers and talks about your brand and the solutions your services could provide to…

…your customers.

Email newsletters also serve as a medium to test different content themes.

For brands that are planning a much bigger push, this serves as a testing ground for what is to follow.

It is also an opportunity for financial advisors to keep in touch with their audience and serve as a mentor to their clients.

You can do this just by providing information they may not be able to easily find elsewhere.

Like how Bank of America sends out a market health report to its investors and/or small business owners.

This report talks not only about the business but also how the current market is trending and how to stay prepared.

Produce Link-Worthy Content

With the control of over 85% of search traffic, Google alone has the power to make or break your business.

If you are not doing any paid search advertising, it is important for you to optimize your content well enough for it to be ranked among…

…Google’s organic search results.

Don’t believe us? A quick search query for “financial advisors in Atlanta” on Google generates 36,800,000 results in less than a second.

The listings consist of links to content pieces talking about financial advisors in Atlanta.

All organic and ranked by Google based on their domain authority and relevance.

The discussion on how to rank on Google organically is for another time.

But well worth your time to take a look at how we can help you do that with our financial SEO services.

But it is essential that you create content that benefits viewers to an extent that they share it with their friends.

Provide enough value that other sites and businesses want to link to your content.

The more links and shares you have, the greater reach you have…for free!

It is these kinds of actions that Google sees as an indicator that you have great content and…

…will rank you above your competitors for the keywords users search for.

Curate and Collaborate

If you’re just starting out in blogging, you can’t expect results right away.

Even if you post every day or twice a day, it will take a while for you to get noticed. So consider collaborating with other bloggers and marketers out there.

Check out some websites related to your niche that accept guest posting and apply.

This is an effective, proven way to grow your brand and get a new audience to visit your website.

And also, it will definitely increase your search engine rankings and boost your organic visibility.

Examples of Content Marketing for Financial Advisors

A quick meeting with our content marketing team can very well solve your content problems.

But to put things into perspective first, we decided to lay out a few examples of companies that…

…understand the benefits of content marketing for financial advisors correctly.

Take a look at what they have done and think about how it can be applied to your brand.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Interactive Maps

All it took Chase was a few visuals and an interactive web page that displays a graph depending on the viewer’s location.

It is important to understand that financial planning is still quite local at least for the average American.

They like to engage in financial activities that are A) in their physical location B) understands…

…the local market and is easily approachable without the tag of being a global multinational.

This is why Chase’s idea to personalize their content based on the user’s location is a great way to capture and keep customers/clients.

Morgan Stanley’s effort to tease your curiosity

Every financial advisor out there provides his piece about why their service helps their customers save money.

You want to make sure you are sharing this information in an exciting way.

You want to capture and keep attention. You don’t want to provide the same saving and investment tips as the other guys.

On the contrary, you want to create content that doesn’t always talk about your services but offers more.

Share ideas about something that helps your customer’s everyday way of living.

That is something that can certainly peak a user’s interest and form a likely relationship.

This is exactly what Morgan Stanley has achieved with their ideas web page. It talks about nothing more than everyday topics that affect people.

The biggest benefit here is being able to keep things fresh.

Coming back to our point that your customers want something that is real-time and customized to their tastes.

The above image shows the homepage of Morgan Stanley’s ideal web page where investors can go to…

…learn about various industries and get ideas about where they might like to invest their money next.

NerdWallet’s blog is the epitome of content marketing done right

A quick audit in our custom tool showed us they have a domain authority of 86 and monthly traffic in the range of 10 million.

It is no surprise that NerdWallet is one of the top websites Americans frequent for financial tips.

Everything from which credit cards give the best bonuses to which home loans have the lowest interest rates. And everything in between.

The biggest thing to note here lies in their ability to identify what issues their customers might be facing in the real world and helping to solve just that.

Kabbage Stories

In a research study by Harvard, researchers concluded that nearly 88% of online purchase decisions were influenced by online reviews.

In a separate study, close to 94% of respondents said they looked for online reviews before making a purchase decision.

This data without a doubt emphasizes the importance of testimonials and unbiased customer reviews for your business today.

Kabbage’s marketing team has definitely taken note of these studies and consumer behaviors.

To show their dominance in the content marketing for financial advisors game.

They have dedicated an entire web page to customer experiences and testimonials.

This is a nice human touch in an age where competition is fierce and the end user’s attention is constantly in a cluster.