Evaluating Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Written By : Greg

Looking forward to the year ahead, most financial advisors set goals such as attracting more prospects and improving client retention. But in order to achieve improved results, you must also improve your strategies. Follow these two steps to revamp your content marketing strategy, so that you can reap the full rewards of your efforts.

Create the right content. The whole point of your marketing strategy is to regularly reach out and connect with your target audience – so your first and most important task is to craft effective, relevant messages! You have to speak your audience’s language, so to speak, or they won’t hear you. When you create blogs, videos, social media posts, or targeted emails, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is my target audience? For financial advisors, it’s often the over-40 age group, those who are beginning to think about and plan for retirement.
• What are the primary concerns of my target audience? They are probably concerned with topics such as retirement planning, the cost of health care, Social Security, Medicare, life insurance, estate planning, and so on.
• What questions does my target audience have for me? What kind of questions do your clients usually ask you? Think back to recent conversations and you will probably seen some trends.
• What do they already know? What issues tend to confuse them? How can I help? You’ve probably noticed that your clients tend to have some basic financial knowledge, but if they aren’t financial professional themselves, there are gaps in this knowledge. Your content shouldn’t be so elementary that you bore your audience, but it shouldn’t be so complicated that a layman can’t understand it. Your goal is to answer their questions, without overwhelming them with too much complicated information. Keep in mind common misconceptions about retirement planning, and seek to clarify them in a simple and straightforward way.

Distribute content to your target audience. Relevant, informative, and helpful content is the core of your marketing strategy. But all of the great content in the world won’t help you, unless your target audience actually engages with it! In addition to the questions above, ask yourself how your target demographic wants to interact with you. Consider the following facts:

• 46 percent of Facebook users are age 45 or older
• About 200 million Facebook users check in daily via their smart phones
• 49 percent of LinkedIn users are over age 45
• Four out of five adults are online – those who aren’t cite disability, poverty, and other barriers as the reason. For the average financial advisor, whose target demographic is more affluent, this means virtually all of your target audience is online in one way or another
• Email is still the most direct and personal way to initiate contact

Considering the diversity of online points of contact – various social media platforms, email, blogs, and more – it makes sense to also diversify your communications. If you only reach out to your audience on Facebook, for example, you might be missing opportunities on LinkedIn. And of course, email remains a constant for most people. Diversifying your outreach is like fishing in several different spots; you will catch more fish of greater variety.

When it comes to online marketing, remember that content is everything. It’s the key to your interactions with prospective and current clients, so it pays to closely analyze every detail. When you create content for your target audience, you are offering them something of value. The hope, of course, is that they will show their appreciation by making contact with you. Therefore, select and present your content as carefully as you would a gift. With that attention to detail and presentation, your content marketing strategy will continue to pay rewards throughout the year.

Filed under: Financial Advisor Marketing, Social Media for Financial Advisors