Marketing Evolves Constantly – Stay Ahead Through Personalized Content, Multimedia, Social Responsibility, Social Media and More
The financial services industry is growing rapidly. With thousands of new advisors entering the market every year, advisors must find a way to make their practice stand out. After identifying their purpose, finding their niche and creating a brand that reflects it, the next step is marketing.
Marketing trends and best practices constantly evolve and staying on top of new trends is essential to effective marketing initiatives. While not every new trend is appropriate for financial advisors, identifying the trends that work for an advisor’s business can help them stay at the forefront of clients’ and contacts’ minds.
Exclusive and Personalized Content Tailored to Prospective Clients
Tailoring content to the prospects’ concerns will go a long way in getting and keeping them engaged with an advisor’s marketing. The longer an advisor can keep that prospect engaged the greater the odds of them becoming a client. A prospect that is given access to exclusive and personalized content will feel recognized since the content has additional value and cannot be accessed by all.
Personalized Email Content
Changes to email automation, such Apple’s iOS15 update, make the traditional methods of measuring engagement outdated. Privacy protection features prevent third-party marketing services from collecting tracking data, such as email opens, audience segmentation and A/B testing, limiting methods for determining what is resonating with prospects.
Advisors will have to identify their prospects’ interests using data they receive from their own client base. If they are sending out regular correspondence to their clients through third-party email platforms, they should find the topics their clients engage with the most and create campaigns to prospects using similar topics, adapting the messaging to promote their services.
Social Media
Social media best practice may evolve at a rapid rate, but it remains an effective method for advisors to connect with clients. Start with one social media channel at a time, as it’s difficult to master multiple platforms simultaneously. LinkedIn tends to be the area with the most business colleague connection opportunities, but Facebook is a strong way to network amongst friends.
To get started, advisors can write a brief post or create a short video on a financial planning or investing topic or share interesting financial articles and ask others to share their opinion.
Video and Audio Marketing
Video and audio (like podcasts) have become an effective marketing tool as the content has three times more engagement on LinkedIn than text-based content. Advisors can leverage video content by creating a series of videos that address investors’ issues and how they can help them with solutions to those problems.
If they want to be considered a thought leader around financial planning and investing, creating a podcast is another way of getting in front of potential clients while educating them on financial topics.
Abbreviated Content
Keeping content short and concise on social media with a strong call to action will help drive engagement. This means short, pithy videos or audio snippets from podcasts to pique attention instead of longer clips that require more time to watch. Prospects are being inundated with information and quick, simple content can create more lead generation.
Advisors can monitor the posts to see which topics gain the most traction on social media and then create more detailed content, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts or whitepapers, to expand on the associated topics. This gives the prospect a reason to visit their website where they can learn about their service offering.
Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is not just a trend in the financial world but has become a mainstream topic for most corporations and individuals. Many clients are looking for ways to become more socially responsible or work with companies that champion responsibility. Advisors are in a unique position to help them reach their goals through socially responsible investing.
Advisors would be wise to include their expertise in this area when marketing to targets who are looking for a resource who shares similar values and can help them in fulfilling this goal.
Using the right marketing techniques and leveraging trends can help advisors connect with clients and grow their businesses, while fulfilling their purpose – helping clients lead fulfilling lives and achieve their financial goals. These trends can help advisors connect with their niche market, which is critical to developing a long-term perpetual legacy relationship.
Shantese Smithers-Alexander is Marketing Manager at Virginia-based RIA Wealthcare, and Michelle Goldstein is Founder of digital marketing consultant MG Digital Group.
