Perhaps you’re a financial planner who has been publishing content for a while. Or, perhaps you’re just starting out.
Regardless, it always pays to take a closer look at your content strategy to make sure it is giving you the best results. Maybe you are struggling to engage prospects and clients as effectively as you would like. In this post, we’ll be sharing some ideas to help you out.
Below, you’ll find out what a financial planning content strategy is, why it matters and how to develop one tailored to the needs of your business and clients. We hope this is useful to you.
To find great financial planning content for your strategy, check out our content library here at Clients+.
What is a financial planning content strategy?
A content strategy, broadly speaking, is a plan outlining how you intend to use content to achieve specific marketing objectives.
It specifies the types of content you plan to use (e.g. videos, articles or newsletters) and spells-out the reasons (i.e. the “purpose” or the “why”) behind your strategy. It should clearly identify your clients – their demographics and psychographics – and how your content will connect with these effectively.
For example, suppose the objectives for your content strategy include increasing your brand awareness amongst prospects, and also increasing engagement from current clients. For the first, you might want to use SEO (search engine optimisation) in your content strategy to try and generate more organic traffic from Google Search.
For the second, your content strategy could include implementing a monthly client newsletter. This could include articles on topics of interest to your clients – offering continual value and positioning yourself as a thought leader.
Identify problems & solutions
It is easy for business owners to fall into the trap of thinking that financial planning content is just about publishing.
However, your strategy has so much more potential. For instance, try not to think of your client newsletter as a necessary “box to tick” (e.g. because your competitors are also running one). Also, try not to see it solely as a sales tool – pushing people to buy something.
Rather, your content strategy is better seen in terms of identifying client problems (on their behalf) and offering solutions.
In the financial planning space, many people have financial problems that they do not even know need fixing. Perhaps young professionals have not thought sufficiently about retirement. Or, maybe those with complex pension arrangements have not considered conolidation.
Here, your content is a great tool to educate your audience – highlighting these sorts of issues and providing helpful information about how to navigate them effectively. In this process, the reader comes to see your content as a great source of value.
Over time, your reputation as a thought leader can lead the reader to take action (without you even needing to ask directly). He/she may even refer you to someone they know, who might need your services and be a good fit for your business.
This is the power of a financial planning content strategy. It can help with client trust, retention and referrals!
Fully understand your audience
Earlier, we touched upon the need to know your clients’ “demographics” and “psychographics” – but what does this mean?
Broadly speaking, the former refers to clearly outlining (e.g. in a “persona” document) what your ideal client looks like. This includes key information like age, income and gender. The latter, however, refers to their psychology – i.e. what drives them and holds them back.
Having a clear image in your head of your client persona(s) is tremendously important when building a content strategy. Financial planners risk offering irrelevant content to their audience, otherwise. In which case, you risk undermining your client relationships.
Be careful not to assume that you know your audience. Many financial planners have close relationships with their clients, of course. Yet people can change over time. COVID-19 since 2020, for instance, has changed a lot of client behaviour. Before, many people preferred to meet their financial planner face-to-face. Now, they are far more comfortable conducting these meetings online via video.
Also, bear in mind that you may have multiple audiences with their own distinct personas. This might require developing multiple content strategies to ensure that your content engages with each one, effectively.
Audit your content
What kind of content do you already have under your belt (e.g. old blogs on your website)?
Perhaps some of this could be re-purposed. For instance, a 2 or 3-year-old blog could be updated to reflect current information and maybe turned into a nice infographic. This could then be embedded in a new article, a newsletter or in a social media post.
It might be that some of your content is out-of-date and needs retiring. Or, perhaps your outdated website article still provides a nice trickle of organic traffic from Google Search. In which case, perhaps you just need to put a disclaimer on the post.
Keep a repository of ideas
One of the great challenges of a content strategy is ensuring a healthy stream of content ideas (e.g. topics).
There are many ways to build up a repository. Perhaps you can keep a notebook or smartphone app at-hand, where you can write down topic ideas when something springs to mind (e.g. during a conversation with a client). You could also put a different spin on a news article.
You could try dividing your topic ideas into the different service areas you provide, making sure that you do not neglect important subject areas that might be of interest to your audience. For example, whilst your readers may want to hear a lot about pensions, perhaps they also want to know about how financial protection and estate planning impacts them.
