Content is king. Yes, it sounds cliched, but in a digital world and especially in the realm of digital marketing, content truly is king. Yes, I know you’re not a digital marketer, you’re a financial advisor, but digital marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your brand and grow your business.
Content is essential in digital marketing because it makes people aware of your brand and hopefully converts them into paying customers.
Content is a trigger for interaction and engagement, and if people like what they see, read, and hear, they’re likely to come back for more.
Here’s what you need to know about content creation to ensure that you create excellent financial advice for your clients.
Content creation or curation belongs to the concept of inbound marketing; inbound marketing is the opposite of a hard sell or product push.
Inbound marketing is about publishing excellent, helpful, and relevant content that brings your customers to you.
It’s the type of content that helps users to find you because it’s content that they are looking for. The intention is that you will build permanent and long-term relationships with your customers by publishing this content.
People regularly seek financial advice; your clients are looking to you to receive the latest industry advice. They require information. And because you have the skill and knowledge, you can provide them with information that will help them make their financial decisions.
The onus is on you to explain ideas and concepts in a way that’s easy to grasp. In addition to this, you can offer tips, tricks, solutions, handy and helpful hints.
The thing with content is that you have to keep it up to date and keep it relevant, and this is no small task; it does take effort, research, and time. You need to keep yourself up to date with the latest trends. Try to read everything you can get your hands on related to the financial industry.
If you write regularly, you will find that creating content becomes more comfortable with practice.
This being said, though, there’s also something called evergreen content. This is content that is relevant for more extended periods and doesn’t go quickly out of date. It’s timeless content that will still generate traffic even when you are not writing.
Who’s Your Audience?
Who is your content intended for? Get to know your audience, get to understand their preferences. If you know their preferences, you can segment them into groups and target specific information. This makes them feel like the content was created explicitly for them. Your audience is your Ideal Client. The less defined it is the less effective your content will be in driving inbound leads.
Using Your Persona
Position yourself as an expert in your field. Write to your persona. People come back to things they can identify with, or that feels familiar. You will find that they get used to your expertise and style, and this is what will make them return. What makes you different from other financial advisors? What’s your niche? And, just be you!
Promoting Your Content
Content promotion is also vital. There’s no point in creating valuable content if no one sees it. You still need to entice and persuade people to consume your content.
Email marketing and using your social media platforms are great tools to publicize your content. You can also promote your content through paid advertising or pay per click (PPC); this will get your content directly in front of your audience.
Ideation
When it comes to ideas on what to publish, you can do several things, but one of the best things to do is find out what people are searching for, then serve them relevant content that meets their needs. People use search engines to search for information. They will start their search by typing a word or term or phrase, known as a keyword. You can base a lot of your content on keyword research.
You can also ask your clients or readers what type of content they are looking for – create a poll and let them decide.
You could interview a subject matter expert and give your readers a precis. Or you could be very personal and write about your own financial journey. The list is endless.
Scheduling Content for Publishing
Once you have brainstormed ideas for content, it’s time to create a content calendar or plan. You need to schedule when your content will be published. It needs to be researched and written and edited and then only published.
There is a process, and you need to ensure your timing won’t trip you up. Also, different content belongs to various platforms. For example, blogs differ from social media content; they are longer and more in-depth and are posted on websites; they tend to be more evergreen because tweets last minutes or even seconds. This process will determine where you publish your content.
Analysis
And last but not least, you need to analyze the response to your content once published. How many page views did you receive? This is the number of users that viewed your content. What’s your bounce rate? This is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after visiting only one page. Were they engaged? Did they respond to any calls to action (CTAs) like downloading a freebie or contacting you directly?
The aim of analyzing your content is to find out what’s working. And if something isn’t working, it can be tweaked. This is one of the great marvels of digital content; it can be tracked and analyzed to determine if you’re reaching your goals.
So now it’s up to you. Are you ready to get started?
I wish you luck on your journey. As I have, I hope that you will find that it’s filled with wonder and amazement and can do much for your burgeoning brand.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article! Remember, you can always reach out to me for guidance and advice.
Kind regards,
Derek Notman
