By Andy Crestodina.
Do you ever get a blank stare from clients when you give financial advice? You probably give that same blank stare when people talk about marketing. Foreign languages are often hard to understand.
My friend Amy McIlwain, the woman behind the Financial Social Media blog, says the finance industry has strides to make when it comes to marketing in the digital age.
Most financial advisers continue to market through “referrals, seminars, radio shows, and client appreciation events. They promote these primarily through direct mail.”
So here’s a way to look at marketing in a way financial advisors can understand. Let’s think of familiar concepts and we’ll see how marketing is very similar. Here are five content marketing ideas that align perfectly with finance concepts.
1. The Principal: Your Content
Like funds in a bank, your content is deposited into your website. This is the foundation of your marketing. Your content demonstrates expertise, answers questions, builds credibility, and impresses visitors.
Your Marketing Advisor: “Make regular deposits of content by sticking to a consistent publishing calendar. Make writing a habit. Make each article as detailed and helpful as possible.”
2. Interest: Search Engine Traffic
Each page of content that ranks in search engines earns traffic over time. Some posts earn more traffic than others. Even a few pages ranking for a niche phrase can lead to a substantial amount of traffic over time.
Your Marketing Advisor: “Make sure that you’re getting the best rate for your traffic, make sure you research keywords before writing and use the keyword on the page with a basic SEO checklist. Yes, you can do that, even if you’re new to blogging.”
3. Earning Potential: Email List, Social Followings
Advancement in your career means earning more. You’re selling the same amount of time but for greater benefits. Smaller efforts, better outcomes.
It’s the same idea in marketing. Building your audience - your email list and social media followings - makes marketing efforts more effective. Establishing yourself as an authority in your field is the work of years, but as your audience and influence grows, you become more effective.
Your Marketing Advisor: “A good-sized social following is ‘social proof’ that opens up opportunities to speak, write and get PR. A good-sized email list is priceless, so plau close attention to your website’s email subscribe form. Once you’ve built your audience, you can take it easy and coast, or push on to the next level.
4. Diversification: Traffic Sources
It’s nice when one source of traffic brings in large amounts of visitors. But there is risk built into your marketing if too much of your traffic comes from one source. For example, if 80% of your visitors are from Google, you could lose that traffic if Google makes changes. That’s how traffic portfolios crash.
Your Marketing Advisor: “Make sure that you’re driving traffic from a variety of activities, including search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and offline marketing. This will show in your Analytics traffic sources as diversity in search, referral and direct traffic.
It’s important to be diversified. That way, if one source of traffic declines, you don’t have your entire nest egg in that basket.
Don’t think finance works on social media? Check out these three great Twitter follow recommendations from McIlwain:
Josh Brown: @reformedbroker Glen Gilmore: @GlenMorgan MichaelKitces: @MichaelKitces
5. Labor: Marketing Efforts
Behind every great enterprise, you’ll find someone putting in the sweat equity. Building up that principal of content (writing) and growing your earning potential (email and social media growth) both take time and energy. There are no shortcuts, only efficiencies.
Your Marketing Advisor: “You can delegate, outsource and curate, but only to a point. You must put in the effort if you expect to grow your results. Your web design is the main source of efficiencies. A bad site makes everything harder. A great site allows you to get better results from smaller efforts.”
Get Invested
When we look at marketing ideas from a financial perspective, it makes sense. You’ll also find that the recommendations are similar:
- Set goals. Know where you’re going and when you want to get there. How much traffic and how many leads do you expect?
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Start early. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll reach your goals. Many types of web marketing are very slow.
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Be consistent. Whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, publish your marketing content on a consistent basis.
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Work hard. All things being equal, the financial advisor marketing with the bigger effort will be more successful.
How are your marketing investments growing?
This guest post was provided by Andy Crestodina. Andy is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, a web design company in Chicago. You can find Andy on Google+ and Twitter.
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