When looking for a financial advisor or institution, most businesses and people begin by looking online. According to Google, mobile searches about financial planning and management are up 70% in the past two years. While this shows a high demand for financial advice, your business still needs to stand out from other financial institutions — a problem you can solve with financial content marketing. 

Get the expert marketing advice and tools you need to find new financial clients and increase investment from existing ones.

Creating financial content for your website, blog, email campaigns, and social media channels is an excellent way to strengthen connections with your customers. But to be effective, you need to know how to customize this digital marketing tool. In this article, we’ll examine what content marketing is, how it can be used in a financial advice business, how to come up with ideas for effective financial content, and how to promote your financial content.  

What is financial content marketing?

Financial content marketing is a digital marketing strategy where you share your industry knowledge through online materials. These materials can include:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Social media posts 
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • Email

Unlike marketing that directly promotes your products or services, content marketing focuses on offering information to solve customer problems. This content then motivates customers to do business with you. 

How financial content marketing helps your financial advice business 

So, how can you use financial content marketing in your business? And why should you use this powerful digital marketing strategy?

People want to know how to make smart financial decisions when making major purchases or saving for retirement. Businesses need to learn the best solutions to deal with their tax challenges and cash flow management.

And if your financial advice business can provide easy-to-understand blog posts, videos, and other content that provides the explanations your customers need, customers will gain confidence in your business expertise. They’ll develop a sense of loyalty to your business. And they’ll be more likely to use your financial services

More importantly, financial advisors are now in an excellent position to fill a great need with consumers. According to a 2018 National Financial Capability Study, 53% of Americans surveyed reported feeling anxious thinking about their personal finances. Another 51 percent also fear running out of money in retirement.

These concerns offer financial institutions a way to connect with their customers by providing customized financial content that addresses their issues. By providing support, financial advisors build trust with customers. This, in turn, creates long-term clients.

Coming up with ideas for financial content

All successful content marketing strategies begin by defining the audience for your content. Depending on the type of financial services you offer, you’ll want to aim your content at businesses or regular consumers (or both). Each audience needs different types of financial content.

Businesses

Companies and small businesses want content that offers product knowledge. They need to know how to make smart financial and strategic decisions to run their businesses. They’ll respond well to blog posts, videos, or podcasts that offer:

  • Infographics: Businesses need to know how to handle the challenges associated with accounting, taxes, credit, and managing cash flow. You can provide this information through charts, tables, and other visual aids to give easy-to-understand explanations.
  • Product reviews: Blog articles that offer the pros and cons of the best business credit cards or the benefits of different types of loans help educate businesses on what financial products they should invest in. 
  • Industry news analysis: Businesses need to keep an eye on the economy — so by offering your expert analysis on the industries your financial institution serves, you can produce content your customers will read on a regular basis.
  • Customer Stories: Companies are more likely to do business with financial advisors who helped other companies with similar problems. By including articles or videos spotlighting how your financial services or products helped solve business problems, you’re more likely to build trust with your clients.

Consumers

When it comes to financial content marketing, consumers want an emotional connection
Consumers want content that offers an emotional connection to their financial concerns.

Consumers, on the other hand, seek content that provides an emotional connection. They want to be educated on how to deal with the personal financial challenges they’re facing right now — and to be reassured that you can help them. They’ll respond best to:

  • Explainer videos: Creating high-quality videos on your website that answer customer questions about loans, credit card use, and retirement will keep them returning to your website. 
  • Calculators: Student loan debt is a major concern for many millennials, so why not offer an online calculator on your website to determine the most cost-effective loans? You can create similar calculators for tabulating mortgage payments and IRA contributions. 
  • Money-saving tips: Filling your blog with tips on creating a budget, preventing credit card debt, and putting money away for retirement addresses many common concerns. 
  • Special occasion advice: Most customers wouldn’t expect a blog post or email with tips for buying Christmas presents on a budget, but these are the types of financial challenges consumers face. By offering this financial content, you’ll show your business understands what’s important to your customers. 

How to market financial content

Once you’ve decided on the type of financial content that will connect best with your customers, you need to determine the best way to promote your content. Financial content marketing can be promoted through several channels, including:

Blogging

Publishing regular blog post articles on your website is an excellent way to communicate with your clients and generate new leads. You can offer blog posts on money-saving tips, product reviews, and customer stories. It’s also a great idea to answer questions your clients post in comments or on your social media.

When conducting financial content marketing, add blog posts that address customer concerns
Adding blog posts that address customer concerns helps you connect with clients.

Blog posts can also include videos, which makes it more likely that your audience will engage with your blog, particularly when you’re covering a complex topic. A written article on choosing a retirement account may not be very popular, but an explainer video may resonate better with your audience.  

Social Media Marketing

All financial service professionals should have a social media presence. This includes having accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Since many people, particularly millennials, engage in social media on a daily basis, marketing your financial content is an excellent way to establish relationships with your customers and attract prospective clients. 

While social media posts might be shorter than blog articles or emails, they can still share relevant content including:

  • Finance tips
  • Industry news
  • Links to a blog post
  • Podcast links

Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing remains one of the best digital marketing strategies, with an average return of $42 for every $1 spent. Email is also the preferred way for many people to receive their financial information, and it offers a great way to share:

  • Financial news
  • Business tips and trends 
  • Blog post links
  • Client appreciation events

When deciding how you want to market financial content, keep your current reach in mind. It’s much easier for financial institutions with an established social media following, popular blog, or large email list to engage with their customers online. If you need help with your content marketing campaign, Constant Contact offers a free guide for making sense of online marketing

Once your audience engages with your content marketing campaign, you can track the type of content they respond best to — and the way they want to receive it — and provide them with more of what they want. This will strengthen your relationship with your clients, earn you more leads, and increase the success of your business.