Have you ever wondered how certain brands have been able to appear out of nowhere, seemingly overnight? As a practitioner of financial content marketing, I certainly have.
Did they come up with some ingenious idea which no one else thought of? Or is it purely a matter of having the money and connections, which garner instant attention?
Most IFAs do not have limitless resources to throw at the financial marketing. So you you may be relieved to hear that the answer to these questions is “no.”
Whilst being a billionaire business owner, having influential contacts and clever ideas can certainly help, the thing that really matters is creativity. With some creative thinking, it is possible even for small businesses and IFAs to make a big, overnight impact.
In this article, we’re going to look at 6 tips that IFAs can use to leverage financial content marketing, and increase their brand awareness. The latter can be defined as increasing consumer familiarity with your brand.
This includes your colour scheme, logo, styling, personality, values and anything else that is associated with your brand. Nurturing brand awareness is always important, but it is especially so in the early days of forming and growing your company.
Tip 1: Engage In Partnerships
Although we’re concerned with financial content marketing here, it does help to consider examples from outside the industry to see how IFAs and financial firms could learn from others’ successes.
Uniqlo is one such case study. A Japanese company providing casual clothing for a diverse consumer base, they decided to sponsor free admission to New York’s Museum of Modern Art every Friday from 4 PM – 8 PM. The result of this campaign was to expose Uniqlo to a new, previously-unreached audience whilst generating favourable word of mouth.
Similar approaches can be used by IFAs and other financial firms in their own marketing strategies. One of our own clients partners with a local golf club, for instance, because it positions their brand in front of a specific, target audience. Another partners with a company that provides luxury racing car track days.
Tip 2: Refer-A-Friend
Referrals will likely remain one of the most important marketing channels for IFAs, for years to come. However, the nature of how referrals work has shifted with the evolution of the internet.
It is now vitally important that your financial content marketing encourages client referrals, and makes it easy for them to do so. Including social sharing options, for instance, on your emails, social media and other digital channels can be vital methods to encourage these conversion behaviours.
Tip 3: Write Guest Posts
Again, let’s consider an outside example. Buffer (a social media published tool) went from zero users to over 100,000 in just 9 months. How? By writing over 150 guest blogs.
There is no reason why financial advisors, investment managers and wealth managers cannot take a similar approach to growing brand awareness through their financial content marketing.
Buffer had to start guest blogging on smaller websites, before they could work their way up to the more prominent ones in their industry. However, eventually their name was everywhere in their niche.
Tip 4: Infographics & Financial Content Marketing
KISSMetrics is one of the tools we use and recommend in our financial content marketing with clients. They also provide a fascinating case study on how infographics can be used to ignite brand awareness.
An infographic condenses complex information into a visual, easily-digestible form. They’re also a great way to be creative in your financial content marketing.
By creating nearly 50 infographics, KISSMetrics were able to attract over 2.5 million website visitors, over 41000 backlinks and over 3700 unique referring domains. The company also claims that their infographics enabled their blog to grow from 0 readers, to over 350000 monthly readers in just 2 years.
Tip 5: Optimise For Conversions
With a little creativity, you can leverage your financial content marketing to maximise conversion opportunities.
For instance, one IFA had the idea of creating a final salary calculator. This would enable users to get an idea about whether a pension transfer could be in their interests.
The calculator could be easily embedded onto a web page, such as a newspaper guest blog. The condition would be that using the calculator would bring up a notification to the user, saying “Brought to you by X Wealth Management.”
The idea never took off in the end, but could have a been a fantastic way to increase conversions through financial content marketing. What ideas do you have?
Tip 6: Become A “Headline Master”
There’s a reason why newspapers agonise over different headline variations, and place so much emphasis on getting the first page headline especially right. After all, this could be the difference between your paper being picked up in the morning, or your competitor’s.
With your financial content marketing, you don’t need to spend hours discussing what to call your latest eBook, infographic or blog post. However, you should probably come up with a list of 6-10 options, and then select two which you can then test.
The result of this effort is to give your financial content marketing the best chance for maximum brand exposure and awareness.