Social media is an incredibly powerful tool to facilitate communication and build financial services practices through expert content marketing. It’s not about trendy technologies or how many Facebook friends you have. It’s about having the right voice online and building a community of people around that online presence. Most financial advisers who have made the plunge into content marketing online are flailing because they’re just too darn professional.
Sound strange? Why would someone fail because they’re being too professional? I’ll explain.
First of all, content marketing is the practice of using content to lure new clients and retail old ones. Financial advisers should be well aware of this technique offline. Gurus like Ken Fisher have used books, Forbes columns, seminar materials, and white papers for years to lure clients and build practices with billions of dollars under management.
It works like this:
- Decide what your target clients look like and what they would be interested in reading about
- Develop a piece of content — it could be anything from a magazine article to a free ebook to a subscription investment newsletter
- Give a breadcrumb to the prospect/reader so he can contact you in the future
- Get some contact info so you can proactively reach out to the prospect/reader
So, how does this typically work? The adviser hires someone — could be in-house or outsourced to a marketing firm — and the process begins. That’s how it works offline. This is classic business school case: a service provider outsources their work to someone specialized in their profession. It’s symbiotic — the financial professional focuses on investing and the marketing pro does his/her magic. This Ricardian specialization optimizes service levels and provides a better product.
While I’m not advocating scrapping marketing relationships, this doesn’t work online. Content marketing — using content to attract prospects — requires more active participation. Some have called social media, “participation media”. That’s not a bad description. What worked for years offline (still does by the way) doesn’t necessarily translate online.
Online readers and potential clients are looking to connect with a financial personality, not just a one-off article. Advisers who want to play in this game need to understand the rules. They want to know what how an adviser thinks and how he arrives at those thoughts. This is more like a constant stream of content in various formats — blogs articles and short form messaging, like Twitter — than like running a monthly article in a magazine.
If you do — and Sean Hannon does — you’ll reap the benefits of a steady stream of high-quality prospects and even retain existing clients because you’ve created an ongoing communications channel.
