There are different ways to approach videos for financial planners.
One method is to hire a camera crew, bring expensive video equipment into your office location(s) and spend lots of time filming – and editing – footage for your financial planning videos.
This might involve bringing consenting clients “on-site” to be interviewed, as well as interviewing members of your team (e.g. senior financial planners and directors) to talk about your service, why you do what you do and how you can help.
Although this approach can be very powerful for your branding and marketing, there is usually significant time, planning, and investment involved to make it work well. Fortunately, there is another way to leverage financial planning videos.
The second approach is to invest in animated financial planning videos. Here, all of the production and editing work is done “in-studio”, using dedicated software and resources (e.g. high-res imagery) to product compelling presentations.
This method is what we offer here at Clients+. Our content library offers financial planners a wide range of ready-made videos on a wide range of topics including pensions, investing and protection. You can check out the video range by logging in, here.
What makes animated financial planning videos so great? Let’s unpack that question in more detail, below.
Lower cost
As suggested above, the first approach to financial planning videos – e.g. bringing a crew on-site – can get very expensive.
The cost of hiring professionals for one or more days, ferrying them to the location(s), using their equipment and getting them to edit all of the footage afterwards can run into the £1,000s – even £10,000s, very quickly.
With animated explainer videos for financial planners, however, the costs fall more into the £100s.
This is because everything, theoretically, can be done by a professional sitting behind a computer – using special production software.
Since there are fewer overheads where costs need to be passed on to the customer, smaller financial planning firms (often with a more limited marketing budget) can access the power of video marketing – whereas, before, this was more limited to larger businesses.
Adaptability
One argument often made in favour of “on-site” financial planning videos is that they can be more customised to your brand.
To a degree, this is certainly true. With more control over the footage, you can feature your team, office(s) and clients within a presentation. You can also be sure that no other financial planning firm will have a video like yours – since you filmed it!
However, animated financial planning videos can also offer a high degree of branding flexibility.
At Clients+, for instance, each of our ready-made animated videos integrates your logo, compliance statement and contact information at the beginning and end of the presentation. This makes it appear as your own to clients and prospects watching.
Diversity
Remember we mentioned that animated financial planning videos can typically be made at a lower cost than on-site ones?
As such, this means that even a small financial firm could build up their own range of videos to offer clients and prospects (e.g. on their website blog/resources area). For instance, you might have video dedicated to pensions, another on investment planning and one on IHT.
This gives you tremendous power to communicate more clearly and efficiently to your audience.
Also, more videos grants you more options in your financial marketing. For example, you could put your pension planning video on a specific landing page about the subject. From there, you could set up a Google Ads campaign to point users towards that page.
You could also then do the same with each of your other financial planning videos – setting up multiple ad campaigns and highly relevant landing pages, featuring great videos which are highly relevant to what the user is looking for.
Shareability
In today’s digital age, it is important to ensure that the content you publish is easily found online.
Part of this involves having a strong social media presence on relevant platforms (i.e. those used by your target audience). Many social media platforms prioritise video content in users’ news feeds, as this is the kind of content they often prefer.
Therefore, by investing in animated financial planning videos, you grant yourself access to a potent type of marketing asset.
Not only are people more likely to watch it (compared to viewing a text-based post), but they are also more likely share it – boosting its online reach even further.
Competitive edge
Many financial planners are still yet to realise the potential of videos in their marketing.
This often gives individual businesses a competitive advantage. Suppose a prospect is researching different financial planners in their local area. She stumbles across your website and two others belonging to your local competitors.
Not only is your website higher-quality, but your content features a range of excellent animated videos which are highly informative and helpful – whilst your rivals do not. All things otherwise being equal, the prospect is more likely to make contact with you.
Animated videos, therefore, can be an excellent tool for improving conversion rates and branding perception.
Communication power
We all know the saying: “A picture speaks a thousand words”. How much more power, therefore, does motion picture have?
Financial planners can, thus, access a higher level of communication power when investing in animated videos. Not only does the audience have to do less “work” when watching a video (compared to reading an article), the combination of music, graphical animations and script allows much more information to be conveyed – more quickly – without overwhelming the viewer.
