Content is constantly whirling all around us — landing in our inboxes, popping up in our social feeds and playing on YouTube. If you’re a financial advisor, insurance broker or other finance professional, you might be feeling overwhelmed at the thought of jumping into the content game. After all, cold calling is hard enough.
But if you just stop a moment and think about it, you actually already have the key to leverage content marketing successfully. You simply need to provide value to your prospects through content much in the same way you do with your investment and insurance products or advisory offerings.
Creating Content That Converts
So, what does that type of value-added content look like? While the specifics will depend on your target clientele, focus on answering questions and addressing common problems you know your current clients struggle with — whether they’re individual investors, insurance customers, participants or retirement plan sponsors. That could mean helping employees understand TDFs, reviewing the benefits of business interruption insurance, educating sponsors about how to minimize the risk of excessive 401(k) fee lawsuits or simply providing timely industry updates on pertinent tax or regulatory issues.
You don’t need to pen a 2,000-word blog post or do a big-data white paper deep dive to add value and build connection. Short, self-produced videos and even “snackable” content bites can help you build trust, credibility and a relationship with an audience. What’s always important, though, is communicating regularly and in a highly client-focused way. Take a leap of faith, resist the urge to self-promote at every opportunity and position yourself as a trusted resource. If you do, you’re more likely to be top of mind when your readers, viewers or listeners are ready to buy what you offer.
Leverage Paid Search
In addition to creating valuable content, financial professionals can also leverage Google Ads and other digital advertising platforms to reach their target audience and help grow their professional practice. With Google Ads, you can create targeted ads that appear at the top of Google search results when someone searches for specific keywords related to your services. You can also use Google Ads to display your ads on relevant websites and social media platforms, targeting people who have expressed interest in personal finance, investing or other related topics. Retargeting strategies focus on individuals who have previously visited your website, serving as reminders of your services and prompting them to take action.
You can also leverage paid search on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Targeted ads can appear in users’ feeds, based on factors such as demographics, interests, and behaviors. By using social media advertising in conjunction with content marketing and Google Ads, financial professionals can create a more robust
While you may have some additional compliance steps to navigate that those in other industries don’t, producing effective content as a financial professional doesn’t have to be hard. Start by finding your most comfortable medium — whether that’s written word, video or podcasting — and simply speak authentically about the things your future clients are interested in. Then you can spin off your blog post into a video or podcast, or vice versa. Or, you can seek out a professional to capture your thoughts, polish your drafts or produce your media content. Just get in on the conversation, because the one thing you can count on is that your competition is already out there talking to your prospects.