There are two sides to every coin. And that has never been more true than with the current state of financial markets and the impact on the demand for financial advisory services. So, while the current volatile market is troublesome from an investor perspective, financial professionals can take advantage of the need for more professional advice in uncertain economic times. In fact, licensed, experienced financial advisors can help investors through unstable markets by using their experience and knowledge to provide ethical and beneficial advice.
Here are some tips for how financial advisors can best position themselves to help prospective clients during volatile economic periods:
Do Your Research
By becoming as educated as possible on the current state of the market (especially the increased volatility), you are in a solid position to advise others on how the market can affect their own interests. With this knowledge, you can create content marketing like informational market commentary videos and blog posts.
If leveraged correctly, these marketing efforts could put you in front of much more potential clients. This could also result in receiving invites to write guest blog posts or be a guest on a podcast, which can bring tremendous exposure to your financial advisory services.
The Right Marketing plan for Financial Advisors
Once you’ve become well-versed in the current market and the source of its volatility, you can then ascertain who of your target audience would be the most affected by this and target those prospects with content marketing that can help them make better financial decisions.
For example, market volatility typically affects those investors nearing retirement and those who are relatively new to investing and have typically been more aggressive, and likely taking more risk. The key here is to find a niche within those at-risk audience segments and target them specifically with digital marketing strategies that will appeal to their situation.
Another approach is to seek out those investors who initially took a DIY approach to their investments and are now feeling uneasy with the changing market and are looking for financial advice without being made to feel embarrassed or shamed for not seeking out the advice of a financial advisor in the first place. Chances are, they already feel that they’ve made a mistake in doing it alone instead of working with a professional.
In fact, that would be a good way to scare off your ideal client. Instead, giving solid financial guidance without pretense is a great way to show them how they can benefit from your financial advisory services for the long term.
Don't Forget About Your Current Clients
This is a good time to check in with your current clients to reassure them that they can just stay the course during this volatility or to suggest changes if those clients would be more vulnerable due to where they are in their investment journey. Regardless of the unique message and how stable/at risk their unique investments are, all of your clients will appreciate a personal check-in from their financial advisor and will help solidify that relationship to endure future market volatility and economic downturn.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Just because your existing content isn’t brand new doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Additionally, don’t assume that the audience being targeted by your marketing has seen this content before. In fact, re-running existing financial advisor marketing campaigns can effectively use resources when things change quickly in the markets, and there’s simply no time to create an entirely new campaign.
Just be sure you're monitoring your campaign's results to ensure it's performing as you expect. If not, it's time to double-check that the messaging still works for the current environment.
Be the Calm Voice in a Time of Panic
Chances are, there are many people panicking when the market isn’t stable. And even if they’re not in one of the groups of investors with the highest risk factors, a little calming reassurance can go a long way. For these investors, it helps them to be reminded that investing is a marathon – not a sprint – and that if set up correctly, their long-term financial plan was built to withstand these highs and lows in the market and that there’s no need to panic.
Conversely, a calming voice is equally beneficial even when delivering a different message to those possibly at a higher risk during market shifts. Reassuring this audience that while they may be at a higher risk, they can make moves to decrease their current risk level can also positively affect those prospects, possibly becoming future clients.
Stay Vocal, Even After the Market Has Stabilized
Market volatility shouldn’t be the only time you’re producing and distributing financial advisor content. While this is a good strategy to capitalize on the need for solid financial advisor partnerships, people always need financial and investment strategy content.
By having an established library of content, you will not only be getting multiple uses out of the same content, but you will also show search engines like - Google – that you are an established source of financial advisor content and will likely be given better positioning when it comes to SEO.
Get Backup
The bottom line is that stretches of economic volatility aren’t just hard on investors— it can be an extremely busy time for financial services professionals as well. This means some financial advisors may feel like they have to choose between serving their existing clients and producing and sharing content to help grow their client base.
In these situations, an agency that specializes in digital marketing for financial advisors to help grow their firms can be the difference between using times of economic volatility to simply tread water and remain status quo or using these times to nurture leads and grow.
