By Paula Pulvino
Marketing and financial advising go hand in hand – marketing is, at its most basic level, storytelling. It’s how you tell your firm’s story, display your value prop, and engage new prospects. But making those connections isn’t necessarily easy.
Marketers often utilize targeted marketing strategies, like developing personalized content for their target audience, to make a more lasting impact. What’s the benefit of putting in that extra legwork?
The goal of targeted content is to make a customer feel as though the company is speaking directly to them, which in turn makes them more amenable to future messaging and ultimately, to purchasing the company’s products.
In the same way, financial advisors can leverage the principles behind personalized content in order to engage prospects and win new business for themselves.
Why Personalized Content Matters for Financial Advisors
The benefits of personalized content for financial advisors are plentiful. Not only does it allow you to better target prospects likely to buy from you, but it also sets you apart from the competition. Targeted content has a humanizing effect – it allows your personality to shine through.
But personalized content is special in that it’s not really about you. The whole idea is to focus on the customer – to show them that you understand their needs. In the long run, you gain credibility and build trust in those relationships.
Furthermore, targeted content helps to improve customer loyalty and can even encourage customer advocacy.
An Unappealing Alternative
On the flip side, untargeted content tends to annoy prospects and customers. It makes them think you don’t understand their needs and can’t relate to them. Think of it from the customers perspective: Why should they buy from you if they think you can’t relate to them and their situation?
If you’re investing a significant amount of your revenue into creating broad content that’s not aimed at solving any specific needs, it may be time to rethink your marketing strategy.
3 Tips for Creating Personalized Content
You want to create that personalized content, but how do you get started? We’ve got you covered. Here are our top three tips for creating targeted content that builds connections and makes a positive lasting impression.
1. Differentiate Yourself from Other Advisors
You need to provide a unique viewpoint and differentiate yourself from other advisors. There may be numerous articles on Roth 401(k)s out there, but none of them will reflect your ideas and thoughts – what can you add to the conversation?
Use that to your advantage to create engaging content. Your audience wants to hear what you have to say!
2. Make it Personal
This is not the same as personalization – rather, it means you should be developing content around your personal brand. Devoting a portion of your content development to letting your audience know who you are, what you stand for, and what your unique value is as an advisor is just as important as publishing “business- themed” thought leadership content.
Writing about personal brand-enhancing topics – your hobbies, experiences, charitable work, etc. – can provide your audience with an entrée to your personality, while also showcasing your unique approach to advising.
3. Publish Regularly
When we say “publish content regularly,” we don’t necessarily mean “often.” You don’t need to create and post multiple pieces of content each week to be successful in your marketing goals (although kudos to you if you are!).
Begin by focusing on publishing a couple of quality articles, videos, and/or blog posts per month. By quality, I mean value-added content which provides new information or insight to your target audience without trying to sell them something.
Personalized content can help to bring your prospects’ challenges into focus for them, and show them that you understand and are uniquely qualified to help them address the issues that most concern them. And when prospects perceive that a business understands their needs and can help them overcome their challenges, this ultimately results in customer acquisition and retention and in turn, higher revenue.
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