By Graeme Mills, Content Manager for Simplicity Lone Beacon.
As a financial advisor in the digital age, transforming your financial and economic expertise into compelling content is an essential skill that can be the difference between gaining market share in new advertising channels and floundering along with the pack. Compelling content not only improves your website, emails, and social platforms but also helps you succeed in thought leadership initiatives and receive favorable placement in financial publications which can generate tens of thousands of eyes on you and your financial advisory. But to create compelling content, it takes much more than just sharing the information you have; it’s about crafting engaging narratives that resonate with your audience, capturing their attention, relating genuinely with them, and entertaining them. In this era of information overload, well-structured, personal, and relevant content is no longer a luxury but a necessity. It’s the bedrock of effective marketing strategies, enabling you to reach, engage, and retain your prospects—ultimately helping you stand out in a way that can generate tangible results. When it comes to your financial advisory firm, the art of compelling content lies at the intersection of your knowledge, understanding your audience’s wants and needs, and thoughtful content crafting.
The Value of Your Financial Knowledge
Because your financial knowledge is the backbone of your content marketing strategies, your content will likely contain information about financial products, planning best practices, investment considerations, and economic trends, among many other topics. However, your financial knowledge goes beyond facts and figures relayed in legislation and news articles. So, how do you transform the valuable information you have into knowledge and insight?
Think of it this way: While anyone can get the most recent tax bracket information with a quick internet search, they can’t readily get quality insights and analysis on how tax strategy can be effectively implemented into a retirement plan. By requiring your content marketing standards to include your unique insights, you can elevate the content you use in your marketing efforts from mere information to truly valuable insights. Your ability to do this is critical to proving to your target audience that your knowledge is valuable and irrefutable.
It’s important to keep in mind that this advice applies just as effectively to your web blogs as it does to your digital video campaigns, TV ads, or thought leadership publication initiatives—all of which require you to captivate an audience not too dissimilar to the way a popular show on your favorite streaming platform might. In other words, you’re competing in the same arena as that show for your audience’s attention! So, while it’s important to bring your insights to the front of your content and not just relay data anyone could find, it’s even more important to craft your content thoughtfully and persuasively that connects to someone on a personal level.
Treat Your Content as Disguised Sales Material
One of the most difficult parts of content marketing for subject matter experts—especially in the financial world, which is driven by technicalities, data, and legalities—is finding the right balance between sharing subject matter and effectively, persuasively communicating to your audience. Of course, much of the literal structure you’d employ depends on the content type, platform, and medium you’re engaging in. But from a conceptual level, there are core communication principles that are proven to generate results and drive people to take action when confronted with marketing content.
These principles should guide how you construct your content:
Before all else, your content should address and acknowledge a true problem felt by your target audience. Whether it illuminates a problem they didn’t know they had, or addresses a problem they’ve felt for years, the truth is that—especially for prospects new to you and your company—nobody will care how amazing your products and services are if you haven’t first clearly and accurately reflected the audience’s relevant pain points and the harm they cause in their lives.
The next most important aspect of your content, usually coming strongest at the conclusion, isn’t your product details; isn’t your company’s awards; and isn’t even your service offerings at all. It’s the benefit—the life-changing benefit—that comes with solving the problem you’ve outlined. How will a client’s life change after solving this problem that evidently plagues them?
Finally, we’re at the product and the solution. By reflecting and illustrating a real pain point your prospect has, then illustrating a life in which that problem is addressed, your prospect is primed to engage with the solution you present because you showed them why solving the problem matters to them and how their lives could be improved without that problem. Only then should you present a product, service, and solution. If you only have 100 words of text space or 30 seconds of audio or video time, the problem and solution sections should be the last pieces to get cut from the outline or audio/visual storyboard.
Of course, these principles directly apply to your advertising efforts. But solidifying the true problem and tangible change in the target audience’s life associated with a problem and benefit can provide the framework to better communicate your subject matter. When you do so, you open the door for you to speak more genuinely and personably about the value of that subject matter.
What to Do with This Financial Content Principle
How deeply you emphasize these principles often depends on how far along in the process your intended audience is with working with your firm. If they are a new prospect, they’ll need more of the convincing and less of the product details. If they are about to sign up with you or are already signed up, they’re likely more interested in getting into the nuts and bolts of your products and services.
As a subject matter expert, it’s much harder than it sounds to follow this advice. Because you understand the financial world so intimately, the problems and benefits associated with a certain topic may seem commonplace to you, and the more persuasive aspects to communicate might instinctually seem like new facts, information, or product details. But remember, your goal for content marketing isn’t to speak to other financial advisors during their business hours, it’s to speak to others in their personal financial lives, whether in niche demographics or the general public.
So, when confining yourself to those terms, it’s easier to understand how your content can be constructed to relate to your audience. Specifically, you can identify areas of life that are affected by the problem or benefit and speak to those in general or personally.
For example, if you’re creating content about legacy and estate planning, your audience will connect with your message better if you relate it to your own wealth transfer experience (or lack of one) and what you learned from it. Or, if you’re talking about business succession planning, your audience may relate much more strongly to your message if you tie it in with a cultural moment such as the hit HBO show, Succession. Tie-ins like these can help establish a personal connection between you and your target audience, further influencing them to engage with your content, and ultimately leading them to make that final purchasing decision with your company.
What Does Well-Crafted Financial Content Get You?
Well-crafted content is tough to create. Your competitors often send out any information they want and call it “content”. But the truth is that results-driven content is thoughtfully constructed to resonate with your audience and keep them engaged in your pipeline from prospect to client. When you invest in the quality of your content, you increase the value of your marketing assets which you can leverage with more success in your campaigns, whether it’s a social media campaign, podcast, digital ads, or a thought leadership initiative to get published in nationally renowned financial publications.
Transforming your financial subject matter into content assets that captivate your prospects can be the driving force behind the marketing success of your firm, so reach out to the Simplicity Lone Beacon team to take your financial advisory business to the next level.
About the Author: Graeme comes to Simplicity Lone Beacon from the health-tech industry where he produced digital content ranging from research articles to multimedia blogs and videos. Prior, he produced marketing content and videos for brands including a documentary for a Boston-based environmental non-profit, and has published work in Altcoin Magazine, Fenway News, and other online publications. He brings this experience—along with an academic background in economics—to Simplicity Lone Beacon’s content marketing initiatives for financial advisors.
