Financial content marketing is a relatively recent type of marketing. In short, you offer your clients and prospects free, valuable content in exchange for their attention.
This is a different approach to more “traditional” forms of marketing, which largely focuses on using adverts to interrupt people’s attention to attract attention. Instead, with financial content marketing, you give consumers the useful, insightful answers and information they want, and introduce your “solution” (i.e. product/service) from there.
The Weaknesses of Traditional Advertising
With traditional adverts, a financial services business will use marketing materials such as TV adverts, billboards, radio ads and similar measures to interrupt the customer, whilst they are doing something else. This is one reason why adverts, across industries, are often deemed to be “intrusive” and “annoying”.
By their nature, such adverts do not lead with value. They lead with a sale. Because they do not really give the customer what they want, they are often placed in areas where they are hard to avoid. For instance, in the middle of a YouTube/Facebook video, or on the walls of the London Underground trains.
Since these ads have such a small window of opportunity to “convert” the customer, they need to be very clever and creative. If they fall short, then the customer will likely not hear the message clearly; or, if they do, they will quickly forget it.
Finally, traditional advertising is often expensive. It isn’t cheap for a financial adviser to purchase advertising space in a newspaper, golf course banner or billboard.
Is there a better approach? We argue that there is, and it’s called financial content marketing.
The Strengths & Types of Financial Content Marketing
Financial content marketing, on the other hand, leads with value. It offers consumers and clients the content that they want, and often are looking for. It is not interruptive in the same way as traditional advertising, and it does not have to involve buying expensive advertising space.
Here are just 5 types of financial content marketing which can work well for financial planners:
- Blogs.
- Podcasts.
- Downloadable guides/reports.
- Infographics.
- Video content.
In general, these communication tools can provide value in at least two ways. They can either provide educational content or entertainment content. Quite often, moreover, the two can be combined.
Both types of content can be valuable in their own way, depending on your marketing goals, strategy, target audience and so on. Let’s take a look at these 5 forms of financial content marketing, more closely:
#1 Blogs & Articles
Are your customers interested in understanding how a pension transfer works, or how to plan their estate properly for IHT purposes? A well-written article on your blog, newsletter or financial website could hold the answers they need.
Written types of content marketing, such as blogs and articles, are also a great way to improve your search engine rankings (SEO) in Google. By targeting your content towards consumers’ needs as well as the keywords they are using to find answers online, you can often kill two birds with one stone.
#2 Podcasts
Many people prefer to listen to content rather than digest it in written forms. This is why audiobook solutions such as Audible have done so well in recent years.
A great benefit of podcasts is that they allow consumers to carry on with everyday tasks (e.g. making dinner), whilst listening to your content in the background. They are also a great way to build relationships and familiarity with your audience, who can hear and get to know your voice.
#3 Downloadable Guides
Similar to blogs and articles, downloadable guides (or “white papers”) are a powerful way to communicate larger quantities of information in a beautiful, online PDF presentation.
The fact that the resource is downloadable is useful, as it allows for easy storage and reference (e.g. on a user’s smartphone) whilst allowing for seamless sharing, via email/messaging attachments.
#4 Infographics
Another powerful form of financial content marketing focuses on graphic design. Here, infographics can be created to represent a valuable concept, in a clear and engaging way.
Infographics can also present powerful opportunities for more brand exposure in Google Search, via the “Images” search tab. Many financial planners and advisers are not currently exploiting this gap in the search engines, so it could be a powerful way to gain more organic traffic to your financial website!
#5 Video content
Content marketing is often described as “king” by financial marketers. However, if there is a “king of kings” within financial marketing, then video marketing would probably take the crown in 2020. People LOVE to watch videos, even more than infographics and consuming blog content.
The whole experience of a great video can be very powerful in communicating value to an audience. Not only can you include voice-overs to accompany the music and written text; you can also dynamically include infographics and compelling charts to illustrate your points. It’s also possible to include footage of interviews and client testimonials too; adding further social proof.
Here at MarketingAdviser, we leverage online video publishing platforms such as Vimeo to help provide interesting, informative “explainer” videos to financial planners and advisers. These marketing assets can then be offered to the planner’s/adviser’s own client base, perhaps by embedding the video on their blog or monthly newsletter.
Conclusion
Financial content marketing certainly isn’t the only tool available to the financial planner for their marketing arsenal. However, it’s certainly a potent weapon which you need a good reason not to use, in today’s digitally-driven marketing environment.
If you need assistance devising your own financial content marketing strategy, or help with the “heavy lifting” involved with creating great blogs, graphics or videos, then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch to arrange a free, no-commitment marketing consultation with our team, today.