Written by: Alex Cavalieri | CION Investments
Building a marketing program for your practice can be complex, time-consuming, and frustrating – but the proof is in the data, Advisors that are
doubling down on their marketing have a leg up long-term on Advisors that continue to ignore it.
One of, if not the most critical, aspects of the building the marketing engine is the type of content you need to create in order to have the most impact and drive the most leads into your practice. While content and distribution go hand-and-hand, distribution will always fail if you don’t have the right content.
How should you think about your content mix? Where does it make sense to focus your time? Breaking it down into 3 simple buckets is the first place we usually have advisors start.
Core content
Your core branded content highlights who you are as an advisor and your differentiators. It should encourage prospects to engage and drive them to convert. Clients who come to your site at the beginning of the buying journey expect to get to know you as an Advisor, quickly and authentically. Your core content’s purpose is to educate prospects on what you do, the history of your practice, your investment philosophy/process, and your team. It should add a layer of authenticity, encourage them to engage, and drive them to convert.
What does this look like in practice?
Website architecture
Everything from the navigation on your website, to the architecture on each individual page. You want to ensure it’s clearly and effectively highlighting your story, philosophy, how clients work with you, and any other aspects of your business.
Message Consistency
All messaging should be consistent across assets. If you’re telling your story on one asset, make it consistent with the other.
Imagery
Consistent and effective imagery is one of the most underrated elements of the Advisor brand. Create and deploy professional images to add a layer of branding sophistication and highlight your people across all channels, including website and social.
Brand Video content
Client-oriented video, telling the story of your practice and how you can help clients goes a long way in an industry that struggles to highlight the human element. Video has a 95% retention rate compared to 10% in written form.
Trigger content
Your trigger content provides clients and prospects with timely/relevant topics across macro and life events, whether there's a market drop or someone retires. The goal of this content is to enable action and reiterate advocacy. Being there during these trigger moments helps build trust, as well as elevates the client experience and encourages the sharing of information and content.
What does this look like in practice?
Macro events
Whether it’s a market drop or political event, these include timely pieces or updates that your clients can interact with passively, consistently.
Life events
At each life stage, a client interacts with their investments differently, with new goals. These pieces should aim to help guide them along this journey.
Service updates
Should aim to keep clients updated on their portfolio, how it’s performing and changes that may be needed, whether that be rebalancing or other adjustments. This can help mitigate any kneejerk reactions to market moves.
Discover content
Discover content is consistent, on-going value add content shedding light on macro events and engaging prospects on broad, evergreen topics. The goal of this content is to live at the intersection of a prospect’s life, exist where they exist, and drive subconscious brand recognition to enable prospects and clients to go deeper down the buying journey. This is the content that they foundationally need in order to make a decision – e.g. the retirement income planning evergreen pieces that philosophically won’t change.
What does this look like in practice?
Foundational education on planning principals
This should aim to inform and engage users on broad topics. These are evergreen in nature and can be articles, videos, audio bites, or images. Retirement planning, college planning, tax information, etc.… Topics, when someone discovers, pushes them to reach out or become smarter on a topic.
Thought leadership on investment theory and macro topics
Should aim to shed light on macro topics or investment events. Depending on your practice, this could include domestic or global topics, which should include your position when certain events happen no matter the timing. As an advisor, you likely have a philosophy when a market drop happens, so reiterating this to your prospects and clients helps create additional trust.
Deeper information on your products and services
This should aim to educate your clients about the specific services you offer. This could be your investment approach or view on specific strategies. This is closer to your core content but should stand on its own as individual pieces.
The bottom line
At the end of the day, building the right content plan doesn't need to be complicated or overwhelming. Identifying the right mix of pieces that can move the needle for your practice is the first step to making more of a marketing impact.
