Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
My five-year-old daughter recently decided that she wants to be a gardener. I took her to the store, where she selected various seeds to begin her new adventure. She thought it was as easy as just planting the seeds in our flower bed. I slowed her down a little bit and explained that we would need to buy some special nutrient-rich soil and start the seeds in an empty egg carton in the house before we moved them out to brave the weather on their own.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is incredibly similar. Every time you write a blog, post something on social media, host a webinar or send an email, you’re planting seeds. You’ll have to exercise a little patience, but with proper attention, the harvest will come and you’ll begin to get prospects.
How plentiful that harvest is depends on how well you planted the seeds.
I talk to advisors regularly who struggle with content marketing. They’re writing and publishing, but they’re reaping little to no reward. When I dig around for the source of the problem, I’ve found it comes down to three problems.
1. Their content isn’t focused enough
How to lose: Play it broad
It’s easy to understand the motivation behind playing to a broad audience. If you cast your net wide, you can bring in more fish, right? Well, that might work with fish, but it’s not a great strategy when you’re trying to attract clients.
Have you ever watched a movie or listened to music that was trying to appeal to a mass audience? It probably felt impersonal and generic. You don’t connect with it, and you certainly aren’t interested in seeing or hearing any more of it.
An example of broad advisor content would be a piece explaining financial planning. While that might get some traffic at Investopedia, that’s not where you want to aim.
How to win: Get specific
It would be great if everyone could be your client, but they can’t. If you create catch-all content to try to appeal to everyone, your firm will end up impersonal and generic, which doesn’t appeal to anyone.
Figure out where your specialty lies and zero in on those personas. Then, think about what your personas would search for and write your content around that. No one is Googling “What’s wrong with me if I have a cough?” Online searches are more specific: “What’s wrong with me if I have a cough, chest pain, headache, and swollen glands?” That search might not bring in as many results, but the results are of greater value. Advisors who write specific content are seeing better results.
By Jud Mackrill, read the full article here.
