Did you know that, across the board, content marketing produces triple the number of leads that outbound marketing does – at 62% less expense? It is because of statistics like these that many IFAs and wealth managers are turning towards content as a way of strengthening their financial marketing.

Those businesses which produce regular, high-quality and original content will likely see their KPIs steadily improve over months. Nonetheless, even these financial firms cannot ensure that each piece of content will be successful.

You can diligently research topics which appeal to your audience, craft emotional and compelling titles, and tailor your content so that your financial marketing encourages maximum sharing on social media. However, human beings are by nature unpredictable, meaning your efforts are still a gamble.

If your article or post fails, it’s common for financial marketers to simply move on and try to forget about it. However, it can often be worthwhile to try and resurrect discarded posts such as these. Even if it doesn’t work, you can gain valuable insights from the process which allows you to better serve your readership in future articles and content.

Here are some practical, useful steps you can take to try and revive failing content within your financial marketing:

 

#1 Use Influencers

Your content may be fantastic, but if it doesn’t appear before the right set and number of eyes, it may as well be written awfully. Either way, your financial marketing will likely have the same impact!

That’s why it’s so important to be effective at playing the social game. In particular, if you’ve been able to build connections with influential people in your niche and industry (by commenting and sharing their posts, for instance), then you might be able to call a return favour with your content.

Suppose you’ve been sharing the content of an influential IFA several times over the past few months, on Twitter and LinkedIn as well as your Facebook page. If you have gotten to know them, then they might be willing to share your post if you ask politely, and if it’s deemed good / appropriate enough.

 

#2 Try a Better Post Time

If you ask 5 different financial marketers what they believe the best time of day is to post your content, you’re likely to get 5 different responses!

One study by CoSchedule argues that the best time to post on Facebook is 12-1pm, either on Saturday or Sunday. They also claimed that, in the case of Twitter, the best time to share was between 12-5pm on a Wednesday.

This is useful to know, but when it comes to your financial marketing, it’s important to determine the best times and says your particular audience is receptive to your content.

Facebook Insights is the platform which allows you to drill down into this kind of information for Facebook. With AdWords, you can also run diagnostics to determine optimal times to show your Google ads.

 

#3 Improve the Post’s Sharability

To make your content travel truly far online, it needs to be easy for even non-tech-savvy users to share it on their social media profiles. Colourful, attention-grabbing share buttons can be useful in this regard, such as ClickToTweet.

If your financial marketing content often features infographics, moreover, you could include the HTML embed code underneath it. This allows other people to easily embed the code onto their own website, which can really help you with your SEO and with generating further brand exposure.

 

#4 Have A Think About Facebook Ads

It can be tempting to think that PPC (pay-per-click) and content marketing are completely separate disciplines in financial marketing, and should be kept that way. At CreativeAdviser, however, we have seen the two work powerfully in tandem to promote content and increase audience engagement with clients’ content.

If you’re struggling to get organic social reach with your article, for instance, you could try putting a small amount of money aside into Facebook advertising in order to promote it.

 

#5 Try Re-purposing The Content

If you’ve tried all of the above, and your efforts are still largely fruitless, then it may be the case that you’re simply using the wrong medium or format for your content.

If, for instance, you published your latest client satisfaction survey as a blog post and no one really noticed it, then perhaps it could work better as an infographic? Or a podcast? Or a whiteboard explainer video?

This might sound like a lot of work, but remember a huge tonne of it has already been done – because you’ve already got the research and raw material. You wouldn’t be starting from scratch.

One important current trend to note: videos are hugely popular at the moment, and are likely to remain so for some time. If you can re-purpose your “failed” blog content onto this media, then new doors of possibility could be opened for you.

 

#6 Ask The Crowd

Suppose you keep publishing content, and some of it works and some of it doesn’t. There doesn’t seem to be a firm predictor of success. What should you do?

It’s possible you do not really know your audience well enough. To make content work in your financial marketing strategy, you need to be seen as a source of great value by your target market.

“Value”, however, is subjective – which is often overlooked by financial marketers and IFAs. You might believe very strongly that your article about developments in your company are very important, and offers great value to your readers. However, they simply might not care or see any value in it at all. Maybe what they really want is educational content about Bitcoin, or the risks and opportunities in pension transfers.

It can be tempting to think you know your audience and market very well, especially if you’re an IFA who has been in the game for years or even decades. However, people change (including your clients) and it’s easy to get stuck in our ways or overlook things that are often staring us in the face.

We often, therefore, can make catastrophic assumptions about what others think of us, how we come across, or how much our content is valued. Don’t make this mistake. Use a tool like SurveyMonkey to survey your client base, and ask them what their pain-points are. Inquire about their values, desires, needs, fears and hopes. Find out what kinds of content they want to consume, and what type (video, podcast etc.) they’d most value.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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