Content marketing for financial services will help you attract new clients and expand your business.
It will also allow you to increase your profile and show your audience that you are an expert and industry thought leader.
Your content should give your reader value-added wisdom in return for their attention.
This can be a powerful way to raise awareness of your brand or service and keep people coming back to read more of your content.
Why Is Content Marketing So Important For Financial Advisors?
People want to make informed decisions about major financial decisions.
Clients will be more confident in the expertise of your financial advisory company if you can clearly explain your services through your content.
Financial services content marketing can help you build trust and loyalty.
Financial advisers can now meet a huge need for consumers.
A 2018 National Financial Capability Study found 53% of people polled felt anxious about their personal finances. Another 51% fear running out of money in retirement.
Financial companies can address these concerns and build trust with their audience by offering tailored financial content that meets their needs.
By providing support and trustworthy advice through your content strategy, you will build a loyal audience and client base.
Getting Started With Content Marketing For Financial Services
A content strategy is essential.
It is easy to let your content production slip if you do not have a clear understanding of the topics and times you will write them.
Without advance planning, you could miss the opportunity to use important dates in your calendar, such as the end of the financial year or new year’s goal setting.
Without a strategy, content is more likely to be scattered and have no clear focus.
This can lead to poor results and confusion.
For example, if you post a blog or a newsletter to your audience, do it on the same day and time each week.
Remember that the ultimate goal of your content is to bring new prospects to your business, while making it enjoyable and informative to your clients.
These are just a few important things you should consider when planning your financial content strategy:
- What topics would you like us to discuss?
- How often can you realistically produce and post content?
- What content types do you wish to use?
- Where will you house your content?
- How will you promote your content?
Let’s explore these questions…
Tips To Make Financial Services Content Marketing More Effective
If you are new to financial services content marketing, it may seem difficult to find the right place to start.
These are our four top tips to make content marketing as efficient as possible.
Demonstrate your skills
With great financial content, you can show how much you know about a topic by demonstrating thought leadership and authority.
It is possible to position yourself as an expert on a subject, and also offer free advice to potential clients.
For example, you could publish content on how to pass your assets on to your children or minimise inheritance taxes if you are a financial adviser specialised in estate planning.
It may seem counterintuitive to give your knowledge free of charge, but it will yield extraordinary results.
By positioning yourself as an expert in the reader’s mind with your informative content, you become the company they first think about when looking for advice.
Allow your financial content to position you as a thought leader in the industry
Financial services firms should strive to be thought leaders in their industry.
This is particularly important, as Financial Services can be complicated and make it difficult for buyers to make informed decisions.
It is important to ensure that your company (and the key people within it) are considered thought leaders and a source of knowledge and expertise.
This will help increase website traffic, improve domain authority, increase social following and build trust.
You can promote thought leadership content on social media, encourage people to subscribe to your newsletters, or use email marketing to nurture leads and prospects.
Use keywords to identify new opportunities
You could write the most valuable and informative content, but if it does not contain keywords, nowhere near as many people will see it.
SEO (search engine optimization) is an essential component of content marketing.
It helps maximise how many people can read your wisdom.
Google and other search engines have made many adjustments to their algorithms over time, and best practices are forever changing.
One positive being that well written content now ranks above poorly written content stuffed with keywords.
If your content is well written, following Google’s E-A-T guidelines, and contains relevant keywords without signs of keyword cannibalization, it will be well received by Google’s algorithms and is on the way to ranking.
Ultimately, content marketing is important for financial services companies, as it feeds your website traffic, social media channels and email engagement.
Therefore, it is important to ensure your digital content is SEO-friendly.
It is a hugely missed opportunity to create tons of great content for your company, if it is not SEO friendly to rank on Google and other search engines.
There are many other factors that optimise SEO to ensure your content is searchable and visible for your target audience. These factors include:
- Technical set-up
- On-page optimisation
- Keyword strategy
- Meta descriptions and page tags
- Image optimisation
- Page speed
- Link quality/accuracy
However, when creating SEO-friendly content, it is important to ensure that it is keyword-rich (based on keyword search) and uses the right language and tone that your personas would use. Relevance is crucial.
Include a strong call-to-action (CTA)
CTAs are an important component of effective content.
The purpose of your CTA is to get your reader to continue their journey with you while you have their attention.
The best CTAs that are concise, clear and simple.
Let’s assume someone is reading your blog on investment advice for beginners.
You know that by clicking on the article, the reader is interested and invested.
The article concludes with a statement that says, “If you want more investment advice, we have experts who can help, so click here.”
They are then encouraged to act while the topic is fresh in their minds.
Promoting Financial Content
Producing financial content takes effort, time and money.
Make sure your content works for you.
It is no longer enough to publish it once and forget it.
To get the greatest value from your content, share it on social media and include it in your email newsletters.
Blogs must also be regularly updated to ensure they remain relevant.
This is a great way to reduce your workload and ensure that you have fresh content for all channels.
You can also use blog ideas from the past to inspire new series of content.
For example, if you have a 2022 guide to investing, simply update any areas needed and create your 2023 edition.
Paid Campaigns Can Boost Your Financial Content, With Google and Facebook Advertising
Your content marketing plan should include organic content as the foundation.
Organic content feeds your social media channels and website traffic.
However, investing in paid campaigns can help you target and use your content to increase your lead pipeline.
Companies now have a wide range of targeting options through paid platforms and channels that are worth exploring for ultimate content success.
Where To focus Your Content Marketing For Financial Services
There are many areas where you could focus your content efforts, but the 5 we propose as a must for all financial companies:
Blogging
Your website can be used to publish regular financial blog posts.
This is a great way to connect with clients and generate leads.
Financial adviser blogs can be about any area of financial advice, products or services.
A good place to start is answering clients’ questions from comments, social media or frequently asked questions.
Financial adviser blogs that address client concerns can help strengthen relationships.
Blogging aims to position a financial brand or adviser as thought leaders in their financial niche.
It is all about creating relatable content that achieves this goal, while still being accessible to the intended audience.
Social Media Marketing
Every financial professional should have a social network presence. This includes accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a platform we strongly recommend you place your focus.
LinkedIn is considered an established and trusted environment for financial advice
The huge amount of change currently affecting financial markets and the current uptake of investing is unlike almost anything we’ve seen before.
Against this backdrop, LinkedIn is a trusted and established platform on which wealth management firms can reach new clients and solidify relationships with existing ones.
Social media is a popular way for people to connect, especially millennials. Marketing your financial content via social media can be a great way to build relationships and get new clients.
Although social media posts may be shorter than emails or blog articles, they can still share relevant content, such as financial tips and industry news.
Smart links to your blogs, guides, website pages, podcasts, etc should also be well used to drive more traffic and ultimately nurture your audience into a client journey.
Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing strategies.
Many people prefer to receive their financial information and updates via email.
It is also a great way to share other forms of content, such as:
- Financial news
- Trends and business tips
- Blogs
- Client testimonials
After your audience has engaged with your content marketing campaign, it is possible to track what type of content they prefer and how they want to be delivered.
You can then give them more of the content they want.
This can be done using email automation techniques and journey funnels.
This improves prospective growth and relationships, increases your lead generation efforts, and ultimately helps you grow your business.
Newsletters
Not many people have the time or patience to read the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal every morning.
But they still want to keep up with financial news.
There are many who want to learn more about personal finance and keep up with the state of the market, but do not know where to start.
By providing regular, concise, yet informative financial adviser newsletters, your audience can be kept informed without having to commit a lot of time.
You should send news, tips and education directly to their email or LinkedIn notifications (LinkedIn newsletters) in a newsletter that they can digest over their morning coffee.
Your financial adviser newsletters, combined with other marketing efforts, can create a powerful outcome over time, allowing you to connect clients and prospects with your financial brand. The secret is creating a financial newsletter that people actually want to read.
Guides
Guides or eBooks are long form content that provides relevant information to your users.
Your guides could include updates, reports, service information or free industry advice.
They are especially useful for prospect education and reputation development when used as lead magnets.
Getting Expert Help For Your Financial Services Content Marketing
You should not be afraid to ask for help with your content marketing for financial services.
It’s time consuming and sometimes a mind-numbing task.
Poor written content can do more harm than good for your business.
It could damage the authority and trust that you have worked so hard to build.
Effective content marketing for financial services can help you reach your target audience and increase conversion rates.
You have many exciting opportunities to market your financial content.
These efforts will increase revenue, build brand recognition and credibility, and build relationships with prospects and clients overtime.
Especially if you are consistent and stick to your goals.
Do not forget that every piece of content you create has real value.
Start by determining which content is most effective for your audience and business, and then develop a content marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goals.
Want your website to organically rank higher than it is now?
With our help, the strain is taken off your shoulders and your content marketing strategy is placed into the expert hands of our content specialists.
