5 Reasons for Advisors to Use Financial Wellness in Their Content Marketing
A solid content marketing strategy includes articles, infographics, webinars, interactive tools and social media.
Content marketing isn’t just the wave of the future — it is the wave of the present. Many people ignore direct mail and use internet ad blockers, making it more and more difficult to reach your target audience. But content marketing can change all that.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is using interactive and educational information to target a specific audience. This goes beyond simply having a blog on your website. A solid content marketing strategy includes articles, infographics, webinars, interactive tools and social media.
This may sound overwhelming, which is one reason that 62% of companies outsource their content marketing. But the benefits are undeniable. Content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing at less than half the cost.
Using Content Marketing as an Advisor
What content should you provide as a financial advisor? Simple commentaries are not enough to keep your clients engaged.
Fifty-three percent of Americans say thinking about their finances makes them anxious. This makes financial wellness a ripe topic for marketing content. Nearly every American could benefit from more financial education.
What is the best way to deliver this financial guidance? A recent employee survey from Enrich and Wellable shows that many people prefer to receive this information through digital content, as opposed to individual in-person sessions, at a rate of 2 to 1.
Integrating your practice with an onli1ne financial wellness platform would be more efficient than any other type of advertising in terms of both time and cost.
Here are five ways using financial wellness in your content marketing could help grow your business:
1. Increase your engagement.
Many advisory clients barely interact with their advisor. Often, this is by choice. Busy people do not want to be inundated with updates about their investments.
But it is important to stay relevant to your clients. By creating content for them to explore on their own, an advisor can engage more with their clients without bothering them with unsolicited calls or emails. And the automated platform engages the client for you, giving you more time for investing.
2. Provide extra value.
Although most young Americans would prefer a different fee structure, charging a percentage of assets under management is still the most prevalent way advisors make money. To enhance your value as a fee-only advisor, you can provide extra benefits through a financial wellness program.
Younger clients especially can benefit from learning more about finances. And they prefer interacting digitally, making an online financial wellness platform an attractive option to add value to young clients.
3. Personalization.
A strong financial wellness program will have artificial-intelligence-driven content. The more a client interacts with the platform, the more the platform learns what the client may like to see. This increases engagement, which leads to more educated and happy clients.
It also means the platform can appeal to a wide variety of clients. Financial wellness topics range from credit card debt to managing retirement savings. Let the program do the legwork to find out what matters most to each client.
4. Platform reporting.
Using a financial wellness software program with in-depth reporting can provide valuable insight into what information your clients are consuming.
Comprehensive reporting will tell you many things about your clients, including financial goals, types of debt, risk tolerance, and the types of insurance they hold. Some financial wellness programs also have a financial behavior assessment that can give you insights into why clients have certain financial habits.
Knowing your clients better will provide more opportunities for personalized advice and calls to action.
5. Brand recognition.
Choose a financial wellness platform that provides white-label options so that you can integrate your brand into the software. The more your logo and advisor headshots are put in front of your clients, the more present you are in your clients’ minds. This is useful when they need further services or are asked for referrals.
Conclusion
In the age of the internet, the benefits of content marketing cannot be overstated. Financial wellness programs provide advisors with a wealth of content to engage clients.
Partnering with a financial wellness platform can help put your name and content in front of more people, bringing in more leads and more accounts. According to DemandMetric, 82% of consumers feel more confident about a company after reading custom content. And confidence is the name of the game in finance.
Kris Alban is executive vice president of iGrad, a San Diego-based financial technology company that provides artificial intelligence-powered financial wellness solutions to employers, financial institutions, and universities. Its Enrich Financial Wellness platform is used by more than 20,000 employers and more than 300 financial institutions.