Financial advisors have real problems that content marketing can solve. In a previous article, we considered six of those problems – managing clients’ expectations, fees compression, disintermediation, communicating values, staying in touch, managing information – and the solutions content marketing provides.
I found some financial advisory firms that are doing an excellent job with their content marketing efforts. In this article, I want to consider five financial advisory firms, what they are doing right, and some opportunities for improvement.
Staying in touch
In a previous article, we saw that though every financial advisor should instill a long term investing mindset in their clients (through content), they cannot stay aloof of events in the market. If you do not educate them about what these events mean, rumor peddlers and anxiety mongers will take charge of the conversation.
Good financial advisors must be proactive with their communication.
Here are financial advisors doing an excellent job in this respect:
Alliance Wealth
Website: https://alliancewealthadvisors.com/
Alliance Wealth publishes a monthly ‘Market Insights’ where they comment on various happenings in the market and the implications for their clients.
Such market insights are an excellent way to maintain constant communication (stay in touch) with the clients.
Here is another example of such proactive communication:
Financial advisors should not limit their content efforts to texts on a blog. Alliance Wealth is combining text (as seen above) with webcasts to evaluate current events and how they affect the market. By combining various content formats, they provide options for their clients.
Church Hill Management Group
Website: https://www.churchillmanagement.com/
Church Hill publishes a monthly market update where they analyze current events and how they affect the market.
In addition to monthly market insights, they also maintain constant communication with their clients by publishing newsletters that are both informational and educational.
Church Hill also has an audio version of their newsletters. Once again, we must not limit content marketing to a single content format. Instead, a good financial advisor must combine different content formats – text, audio, video, infographics, etc.
Merrill Private Wealth Management
Website: https://www.pbig.ml.com/
Merrill Private Wealth Management also has a section under their ‘Research and Insights’ dedicated to insights on the present realities of the market. One of the latest is an evaluation of the turmoil in the oil markets and what it means for investors.
Park Avenue Financial Advisors
Website: https://www.parkavenuefinancialadvisors.com/
Park Avenue Financial Advisors also does a good job maintaining communication through market updates.
Managing Clients’ Expectations and Communicating Values
Financial advisors must ensure that their expectations and the clients’ are aligned. Many clients have a short term approach to investing, and financial advisors must use content marketing to reorient the mindset (and expectations).
Similarly, financial advisors must communicate their values. Today’s consumers care about the values that drive the organization they work with. Communicating values will include investment philosophy (active or passive investing, for example), perspectives on some thorny issues (e.g., diversification and emergency funds).
Furthermore, with the rise of social investing, financial advisors will also do well to communicate to what extent (if any) sociocultural issues affect their decisions and outlook.
Here are some financial advisors who are making good efforts on this front:
Alliance Wealth
Here, we can easily deduce that Alliance Wealth is an advisory firm that focuses on long-term investment strategies and discourage market timing.
This webcast will also help set the expectations for clients and potential clients: you agree to work with a firm that prioritizes long-term wealth building.
Church Hill
Church Hill dedicates a page on its website to the investment philosophy that guides their decisions. Everyone who visits the website can read this page and gain clarity on how Church Hill manages its clients’ money.
Once again, this is an excellent way to communicate their values and set expectations with their clients.
(Notice the consistent use of “Our,” and “We.”)
Luminary Financial Advisors
Website: https://luminaryfinancialadvisors.com/
Luminary Financial Advisors, in this article, shows that it believes that market psychology is a problem that investors need to overcome.
Everyone who reads understands that Luminary pursues a long-term investment strategy. Similarly, they know what to expect when they work with such an advisory firm.
Merrill Private Wealth Management
Here is Merrill Private Wealth Management affirming that gender lens investing can be a good thing for the world and an investor’s portfolio. Reading the article and their CIO’s (Chief Investment Officer) statement, you understand that this is important to them – something they desire more investors to pursue.
Investors who are passionate about gender equality understand that here is a financial advisor that can help them put their money where their hearts are.
Park Avenue Financial Advisors
Park Avenue Financial Advisors understand that there are topics that divide opinions among financial experts. However, they are willing to put their feet out there and communicate their positions on such issues.
By doing this, they help potential clients and current clients to understand their investment philosophy and approaches.
Disintermediation
There is a growing tendency that as financial information becomes ubiquitous, consumers will discard professional advisory service.
We have seen that financial advisors must be proactive in communicating the values of financial advisory (planning) and answering objections (high fees, trust, lack of personal touch, I don’t need it, etc.)
If people think they don’t need financial advisors, it is up to the advisors to change that narrative.
Many financial advisors are not yet attuned to this type of content. I could only find two of these five advisory firms doing something close.
Luminary Financial Advisors
When you read this article, you will understand why you need a financial plan. Once you get to the point where you know you need a financial plan, it is a short road to understanding you need a financial advisor.
Luminary does a good job here that can contribute to dissolving disintermediation.
Merrill Private Wealth Management
I love this article from Merrill Private Wealth Management. It is a classic article that dissolves disintermediation.
Financial advisors need to invest in more articles like this.
Managing Information
Content curation is a great way to point your clients to trustworthy information and research sources. You can’t assume that they will not seek any information source apart from your website. Be proactive by using content curation to point them to sources that will not hurt them.
None of these five financial advisors is investing much time and effort into content curation. However, this absence is a multi-industry problem.
Many companies don’t understand the benefits of content curation just yet.
Fee Compression
These five companies are doing a great job creating authority content to build brand equity via brand loyalty.
When you check their blog, you will see a commitment to constant engagement with their customers. These are the kind of brands that can command brand equity and stay above the price war.
However, there is a lack of comprehensive, informative guides that teach readers how to do specific things. There are few long-form content that comprehensively examines a topic relevant to the reader.
Such search-engine-optimized in-depth articles can increase search traffic and generate new customers on auto-pilot.
Financial advisors must understand they are competing with many financial blogs out there. They need to bring their A-game to content marketing so they can reap its benefits.
Financial advisors who are serious about content marketing must produce better content than financial blogs. It’s the only way to benefit from the new normal.
Takeaways
The above financial advisors are doing a great job using content marketing to manage clients’ expectations, communicate their values, and stay in touch with their clients.
However, only a few are using content marketing to solve the problem of disintermediation. Content curation is also an unpopular idea amongst these advisors.
Furthermore, while all of them are doing a great job trying to build brand equity with authority content, their content marketing lacks the comprehensive, informative, in-depth guides that bring search traffic and new customers.
Conclusion
Financial advisors need content marketing if they will solve the six primary problems that confront them. In this article, we saw five companies already doing a great job and some opportunities for improvement.
If you have not started, use these companies as models. If you are already using content marketing like these companies, consider improving it by:
- Creating content that focuses on the disintermediation problem
- Embracing content curation
- Creating in-depth, SEO’ed, and comprehensive guides.
Remember, you need to bring your A-game.
0 Comments