Look for opportunities to produce content around these core topics in order to build a robust and scalable marketing strategy in the financial services industry.
The financial services industry affects many people’s lives through work benefits, college savings accounts, business loans, tax preparation, home mortgages, and different types of investments.
Financial service firms provide stability, good management, opportunities, and security during good and bad times.
Inbound marketing can build trust with potential clients more effectively than outbound marketing, making it a good choice for financial companies.
When customers are looking for financial services and products, they will go to a search engine to do research. They want to be able to identify a bad deal or an untrustworthy company. They will look for information on hidden fees, risk assessment, and best practices.
This guide provides an overview of inbound marketing techniques and the topics you should address to drive traffic.
Inbound Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors
1. Amplify Your Message With Paid Ads
Video ads are not as effective as image ads. This is according to The Advisor Coach, who was quoted in Databox. Images apparently drive more clicks.
Image ads are still successful even if you’re not confident in making a video.
If you click on the link, you can watch the video without having to sign up for anything. And don’t write off paid advertising yet–research has shown that 91% of the best performing marketers use paid channels to promote their content.
2. Find What’s Working
Assuming you are a financial advisor who works with police officers, let’s explore how you can help them.
Instead of wasting time posting random content on social media in the hopes that something will be successful, you can look at what police-related social media pages are doing to see what is popular.
To show you how this works, I searched for police-themed pages on Facebook and found a page called “Support Law Enforcement”. One of the more popular posts was this one:
It is not recommended that you copy and paste the content of others. This is considered stealing, and it is not a pleasant experience.
What content works best? Try different types of content, such as photos or videos, personal stories or facts, and see what works best.
If you want to come up with your own content ideas, one way to do that is to look at what other people are doing. You can check out blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels to see what’s popular and then come up with your own spin on it.
Continuing with our police officer example, I found a channel called “Mike The Cop”, which has tens of millions of views. I went to his page and sorted his videos by “Most Popular”, which you can see here:
His most popular video, “12 Pet Peeves of Cops,” can be transformed into an email discussing the similarities between police pet peeves and financial advisor pet peeves.
Similar to the “A Cop’s Every Day Carry (EDC)” video, you could share a video or photo of your own EDC on social media or your website. You could even get creative and show a calculator, financial planning software, your smartphone, and a notepad.
3. Message People who Engage With You
Surveys have shown that 94% of advisors who have been successful in acquiring clients through social media have used the direct messaging feature.
The evidence suggests that this is true and not just an opinion. The evidence is strong and factual, not based on speculation.
The main purpose of your social media activity should be to get people to recognize your existence and interact with you. If you can accomplish that, you will have a much higher chance of convincing those people to become your clients if you send them a follow-up message.
The best way to attract clients using social media is to create content that strengthens your direct messages.
The best way to get people to engage with you is to direct message them. Use other people’s content to break the ice and start a conversation.
Because the money is in the mailbox.
Your aim should be to improve your chances of having a conversation, or to make it more enjoyable when one takes place.
Content Marketing
If you’re going to get content marketing advice from someone, make sure that person or company actually DOES content marketing. If you want to check my stats, here’s a quick rundown:
- I have more than 100 blog articles posted on this site and throughout the web.
- I have more than 100 podcast episodes of my “Financial Advisor Marketing” podcast. (I also had a podcast before that – “The Advisor Coach” podcast – that evolved into “Financial Advisor Marketing”.)
- I have been publishing a paid monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, The James Pollard Inner Circle Newsletter, for years.
4. Choose Quality Over Quantity
I get disgusted every time I see someone tell financial advisors that they have to blog every two weeks to get results. Or post on social media every day. Or create a video every week.
Do whatever works for you. If it takes you two months to create an amazing blog post, take every bit of those two months. You’re a blog-writing rock star. But never, ever, ever…
When financial advisors focus too much on producing content, they may start to neglect other important aspects of their jobs.
Do you know how long the average person spends reading a blog post? It’s usually between 3-5 minutes.
That means visitors are spending 2-4X more time on my page than they would spend elsewhere because I create quality content.
I create in-depth blog posts that are both informative and entertaining. I provide real examples to help you understand the concepts I’m discussing, and I add a bit of personality to keep you engaged.
5. Create a Content Idea Bank
One of the biggest challenges financial advisors face when it comes to content marketing is generating ideas. Here they are:
- Are there any common questions your clients or prospective clients ask you?
- What are some popular misconceptions about your niche?
- Do you have any hobbies?
- What financial lessons could people learn from a famous person? (Preferably in your niche.)
- What keeps your prospective clients awake at night?
- What differentiates you from other financial advisors?
- What do you love about the people you serve?
- Have you taught your family members any money lessons? (Stories about children tend to do well.)
- What are your favorite books and/or movies?
Here are some more ways to come up with content ideas:
- Brainstorm with people. These could be your clients, influencers in your niche, or other financial advisors.
- Stay abreast of industry news and trends.
- Subscribe to blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc. in your niche.
- Read the most popular books read by your clients.
As you think of ideas, write them down. It doesn’t matter how you store them, whether it’s in your phone’s notes app or on a piece of paper.
Just keep a list of ideas somewhere and reference it whenever you can’t think of anything to create.
Topics You Need to Cover to Drive Traffic
To create a content strategy that is effective, you should consult with two sources. The first being your sales team. You should have regular meetings with sales representatives from your company to ask what questions prospects frequently ask.
1. Always Address Cost
People are concerned about cost when they are buying something. They want to be sure they are getting a good deal and that there are no hidden fees or additional costs.
This is critical in the financial services industry. When discussing something like a mortgage or retirement account, you’re talking about large amounts of money.
In addition, there is a large amount of information unknown to the buyer that the seller is aware of. A financial expert will know terms that the person they are talking to across the desk (virtually) will not understand.
This is even more of a reason why you should openly discuss costs – and make sure to do it in an honest and understandable way.
This article is about a study done by Employee Fiduciary about the fees charged by fiduciary-grade advisors.
Costs go up and down based on a variety of factors. Eric Droblyen uses visuals like graphs and tables to present data, which makes it easy to understand the factors that affect cost. A headshot and bio give readers a sense of the writer’s credibility, making it easy to trust the information presented.
2. Talk Openly About Problems
No company wants to talk about the negative aspects of their products or services, but customers certainly do. In order to feel more confident about a major purchase, buyers want to explore the worst-case scenario they might encounter.
If you want to build trust with your buyers, you should be honest about any potential drawbacks they should be aware of.
The investment firm Dakota highlights three common problems when buying an institutional investor database and provides solutions to each issue. The first problem is that some databases are outdated, which can be solved by ensuring that the data is regularly updated.
The second problem is that some databases do not contain enough detail, which can be solved by requesting a demo or sample of the data. The third problem is that some databases are too expensive, which can be solved by requesting a price list from the vendor.
The author, Gui Costin, is the founder of the company. He writes the problems in the voice of the buyer using “me” and “my” instead of “you” or “they”.
The author of this post is not only able to identify the problems that customers are facing, but also provides solutions to those problems.
3. Share Your Insight with Reviews
Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly judging the validity of reviews. We read them to gain an outside perspective, but often find ourselves questioning their authenticity. Are we sure this review is legitimate?
Although it can be difficult to write a review on a company website due to readers assuming there is bias or self-promotion involved, your professional opinion can be greatly beneficial.
This post helps readers learn how to evaluate options for themselves.
The article provides expertise and information on choosing a database, without recommending any specific ones, to help build trust with the reader.
4. Compile “Best of” Lists
Best gyms near me.
Best recipes for banana bread.
Best ways to treat shin splints.
Many people who use search engines add the word “best” to their searches in order to find a list of options that meets their requirements.
In the article “The Top 5 Most Popular Types of Small Business 401(k) plans”, Employee Fiduciary briefly outlines each type of business 401(k), highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages of each option.
I like how this post tells us that there is no one perfect 401(k) plan for everyone. We each have to make the best choice for ourselves, based on our own circumstances. This article has given us the information we need to make that decision.
5. Offer Candid Comparisons
When looking for something to buy, people want to be able to compare their options quickly and accurately so they can figure out which one is best. As a reader, you want to have all the information you need to make a decision.
To Make Inbound Marketing Work, You Need the Right Team
If you want to create content that speaks to your customers’ needs, start by focusing on The Big 5. However, you will need to have the right team in place to do this effectively.
An internal writer who understands your company and its culture is much better than an outsourced or freelance writer. They are more likely to produce content regularly.
Finding and onboarding a talented writer who can produce content that speaks to your audience can be done quickly.
We’ve found that working with only half of their effort only delivers minimal results to our clients. We advise them to staff up, write more, and build a library of content that would be full of helpful information for their customers.
This means that you should produce other forms of content in addition to blog articles. This could include videos, podcasts, guidebooks, social media posts, and more.
Time to Get Started
An inbound marketing strategy that is strong and effective can bring in a lot of traffic to your website that is interested in what you have to offer and could result in sales.
Cutting your advertising budget may save you money, but it should not be done without careful planning. Hiring a content writer and creating a strategy can help you be successful.
More content on your site can lead to more customers and qualified leads, which can lead to more content being created to answer customer questions, and so on in a cycle.
If we focus on the questions our buyers are asking, we can create content that will educate them and help them trust our brand. This is true for any industry or type of sales process.
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