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:
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.
The content on the website has to deliver the information that investors are seeking:
It pays to assume investors visit several financial advisor websites and initiate contact with the ones that best meet their requirements.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
You should be able to derive four conclusions from this article. The right content marketing strategy:
However, advisors have to do it right to reap the benefits.