Several types of content can be delivered through financial advisor marketing. The two most popular types of content that investors seek is the information on the websites about advisory firms, followed by digital assets such as blog articles, eBooks, and webinars.
This article will cover the following topics:
- The production of leads and prospects
- How content marketing converts more visitors into leads, prospects, and clients
- How financial advisor content creates a competitive advantage
- The best type of content marketing
- How features and benefits impact the content marketing strategies of financial advisor websites
- How important financial pain points are
- How differentiating characteristics impact the content marketing results of financial advisors
What about the production of leads and prospects?
This article deliberately described converting visitors into clients and skipped the production of leads that are converted into prospects and clients.
To be clear, a “lead” is anyone who has given their contact information to a firm (name, telephone, email). But, if there has been “no contact” yet, advisors aren’t sure what the investors seek. As you know, obtaining client contact information is a critical step in the digital sales funnel process.
On the other hand, “prospect status” means there has been contact (in-person, telephone, Zoom), and most importantly, there is mutual interest between the two parties. Investors meet the minimum requirements of financial advisors, and advisors provide the services that investors are seeking.
How does content marketing convert visitors into leads, prospects, and clients?
The content on the website has to deliver the information that investors are seeking:
- Information about the firm
- Information about the professionals who work at the firm
- Descriptions of the firms’ ideal types of clients
- The types of services that the firms provide
- Why investors should select the firms
It pays to assume investors visit several financial advisor websites and initiate contact with the ones that best meet their requirements.
How does financial advisor content create competitive advantage?
In a word, the answer is credibility. One role of content marketing is to convince investors that advisors are financial experts who can help them achieve their financial goals. This knowledge may be contained in blog articles, pillar pages, eBooks, or webinars. This is why most financial advisor websites have Resource Centers that deliver information on financial topics.
The higher the quality of content, the higher the probability it will produce the credibility that creates a competitive advantage.
What is the best type of content marketing?
Once again, one word helps define the best types of content that financial advisors provide to investors: “relevance.” The more relevant the content, the greater the impact it will have on the response ratios of website visitors.
Conversely, the lower the relevance, the less likely investors are to respond to advisors by contacting them. Very few investors will spend significant amounts of time reading or watching content that has nothing to do with their financial situations.
How do features and benefits impact the content marketing strategies of financial advisor websites?
Most financial advisor websites are loaded with features that describe their firms’ ideal types of clients, services, and characteristics. On the other hand, investors buy benefits and not features. In other words, how does a particular feature benefit them?
A good example is the large number of financial advisor websites that describe their firms as financial fiduciaries (an important feature). But, many of them fail to describe how their RIA or IAR registrations benefit their clients.
Many say the main benefit is the regulation that requires them to put their clients' financial interests ahead of their own. However, many investors assume all advisors (fiduciary and non-fiduciary) have this requirement. Perhaps a better benefit is to point out fiduciary is the highest ethical standard in the financial service industry.
How important are financial pain points?
The role of custom content is to build credibility and convert investors into leads. To do this, the primary function of content is to deliver the information that investors seek when they visit financial advisor websites.
However, some types of content serve a higher purpose. For example, webinars and eBooks are designed to convince investors to give up their anonymity and submit their contact information. The more compelling the financial topic, the higher the probability investors will volunteer this information.
One illustration of this principle is the use of financial pain points. The more compelling the pain point, the higher the probability investors will provide their contact information to access the solution.
What are investors most afraid of?
How do differentiating characteristics impact the content marketing results of financial advisors?
Differentiating characteristics primarily impact the content that resides on financial advisor websites.
Many advisors struggle with these characteristics when they describe their services and reasons and why investors should contact them. Yet, these are key elements that have a significant impact on the reactions of investors. This is particularly true when the characteristics produce significant value for investors.
An excellent example of this strategy is the way financial professionals describe how they are compensated.
- The fee-only advisors are most likely to describe their compensation method on their website (commission free).
- The fee-based advisors may describe fees as their preferred method of compensation.
- The commission-only advisors may describe their services as free because the product companies pay them.
There is no question that compensation is an important characteristic that significantly impacts investors. And yet, based on a Paladin survey, less than 10% publish their compensation schedules on their websites. This could be a significant differentiating characteristic for financial advisors with competitive compensation models.
What did you learn about effective content marketing?
You should be able to derive four conclusions from this article. The right content marketing strategy:
- Is extremely important to build financial advisor credibility
- Is a productive way to improve Internet visibility
- Will help to increase website traffic
- Can convert more traffic into leads, contacts, and clients
However, advisors have to do it right to reap the benefits.
