Richard Taylor on why Content Marketing is Essential for Financial Services Businesses – MPAF32

You might have heard traditional marketing referred to as “interruption marketing”.

You might be watching a TV programme and just as the action gets exciting the ad break kicks in – thus interrupting your enjoyment of the show. Banner adverts on websites also count as interruptions.

Content marketing is different. It’s about producing helpful stuff, possibly blogs, audios, videos, infographics and other material that people actually look for.

Both interruption marketing and content marketing aim to generate sales but the latter is a consequence of the digital world where potential customers go looking for answers.

My guest today is a content marketing champion having worked with many financial services businesses helping them to develop content marketing strategies.

Hear Richard’s advice on how to develop a content marketing strategy. Listen to how you can create customer personas, listen to their needs and then produce content that could attract them to do business with you.

That’s all right here in episode 32 of the Marketing Protection and Finance Podcast.

Richard Taylor on why Content Marketing is Essential for Financial Services Businesses

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Who is Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is an independent digital marketing consultant, specialising in content and marketing automation and social media.

I’ve worked with Richard for many years including digital and content projects during my time as Marketing Director at Bright Grey. He has been partly responsible for my continuing interest in content marketing and social media.

A little-known fact about Richard is that he used to make windsurfers and is now a keen sea kayaker.

Things Richard and I discussed:

Richard’s Favourite Apps:

Richard’s Contact links:

Richard’s favourite books:

Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

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How You can put together a Simple Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Do you shrink down into your chair when you hear the word strategy?

You know it’s important to have a business strategy and a marketing strategy. But it can get so complex. Especially when run as part of annual planning and financial cycles. Everyone gets involved. All with their own agendas. Before you know it you’re drowning in a sea of Post-It notes.

Strategy needn’t be complicated. You can keep it simple.

If you’re thinking about your Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy here’s how to go about putting a simple plan together.

How You can put together a Simple Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Your Overall Marketing Strategy

You do have an overall marketing strategy right? Again some companies get bogged down with complexity. Whilst “Visions” and “Mission Statements” are important, the process of getting to them can suck the life out of many organisations.

Your simple overall Marketing Strategy only need address these questions.

  • Who is our customer?
  • What problem do they have?
  • Why do we solve it better than anyone else?

Once you have that nailed everything else should flow freely including those difficult visions and missions.

Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Traditional marketing techniques include advertising, unsolicited emails and other “interruption techniques”. You know – just when you’re getting to a good bit in Downton Abbey you’re hit by an ad break.

Content Marketing is all about the customer finding you. They find the content you produce and feel good about doing business with you as a result.

That sounds easy doesn’t it? It’s harder than it sounds but easier than many people think. Here are the components of a content marketing and social media strategy.

Customer Profiles

You know who your customer is. So you can create a profile for them. Some people call this an “Avatar” but that sounds like jargon so let’s stick with “profile”.

Keep profiles brief. Here’s one of the Customer Profiles for the Marketing Protection and Finance Podcast.

  • Professional financial adviser
  • One man band or running a small firm of 20 or so people
  • Eager to embrace digital technology
  • Looking to develop their business
  • Wanting to learn about marketing, social media, business development and best practice

Once you’ve defined your customer profiles you can start to think about what questions they are asking. In the above example one question could be “How can I use LinkedIn to find new customers?” Once you work out what questions they’re asking you can start to build your content.

You might hear this technique called the “They Ask. You Answer” model.

Phil Calvert’s interview in the lastest MPAF Podcast is great example of content addressing the LinkedIn question above. Click here to listen to the Podcast.

Content Statement

Come up with a content statement as a quick check list to keep you focussed. Again using the example of the Marketing Protection and Finance Podcast.

  • Core Target Audience: The Adviser Customer Profile above.
  • What Content?: Answers to the questions they have about marketing social media, business development and best practice. Giving ideas and inspiration that they can use to develop their business.
  • Call to Action: Confidence in Roger Edwards Marketing Ltd as a partner to work work with more on marketing strategy, content marketing and social media. Potential clients get in touch for a quote.
  • Tone of Voice: Interview style. Clear language. Chatty. No jargon. One or two take away ideas per 30 minute audio show.

Tone of voice should be appropriate to your customer, but will also probably be the overall tone of voice of your business.

How You can put together a Simple Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Types of Content

You might want to expand the model to: “They ask. We answer. We offer a tool.” You can consider the following types of rich content.

  • Blogs.
  • Videos.
  • White papers.
  • Audio/Podcast.
  • Broadcast media (Radio, Web TV).
  • eBooks/white papers.
  • Webinars.

Digital technology and great resources such as WordPress (for blogs), canva.com (for design), YouTube (for video hosting) mean you can produce content for much less what it would have costed only a few years ago.

You’ll need to decide who puts it all together. Should you have dedicated people running your content and social?

Content Hub and Content Calendar

Once finished, show case your content on your website and create a content hub. Putting together a Content Calender is also a good idea so that you know when you’ll be publishing a particular blog or video.

Now you can start to use Social Media to draw attention to your content. I love a description Jay Baer uses about the relationship between content and social media.

“Content is the fire. Social Media is the Fuel”

Social Media

Choose the social media platforms most appropriate for your business. Don’t try to play on all of them. For financial services firms, Twitter, LinkedIn and possible Facebook (for local engagement) will suffice.

You may already be using these platforms for engagement and pure social engagements. Weave your posts pointing to your content into this activity.

And don’t be afraid to share content more than once. For example on Twitter you’ll be luck if more that 5% of your followers are online when you tweet. Posting several times (with a slightly different message) helps carry your content to a wider audience.

Measurement

And finally measure how effective your content and social activity is. High hit rates are no good unless people are engaging with you. Booking appointments. Asking for quotes.

And that’s it.

That’s a high level structure showing how you can put together a simple content marketing and social media strategy.

Now it’s your turn:

If you are interested in looking at a content marketing and social media strategy for your business please get in touch. We can go into each area in more detail and tailor make something that works for you. Click here to get in touch.

You Cannot Be Serious! 48 Hour Service Level Agreement on Tweet Approval

Do you think a company with a 48 hour turn around on Tweet Approval really “gets” social.

Social media is spontaneous. It’s one of the reasons for the name “social”.

48 Hour Service Level Agreement on Tweet Approval

I’ve described Twitter as chatting in a gigantic and crowded virtual pub. In a social setting you have spontaneous conversations in real-time.

Imagine for a moment you were in a real pub enjoying a pint. Someone approaches you and asks you a factual question about your product or your company. Would you reply straight away assuming you knew the answer?

Or would you say you’ll get back to them in 48 hours once the marketing, compliance and legal teams approve your answer.

Most would reply straight away. Why should social media be any different?

Chatting to a colleague from another financial services provider recently we got talking about marketing and social media. He told me his company operated a 48 hour Service Level Agreement on tweet approval.

I had to ask him to repeat himself.

Again he said his company operated a 48 hour Service Level Agreement on Tweet approval.

First the marketing team would check out the language making sure it was “on brand”. Then someone from legal gives it the once over. Finally compliance ensures adherence to the FCA rules and signed off  the Tweet along with documentation.

Processes like this exist for marketing literature with good reason. But for a Tweet? Couldn’t they have at least introduced a fast track lane?

The SLA means they can plan Tweets for a specific time, say for a product launch. But the process cripples spontaneity.

Is this risk aversion or good business sense? I would argue they should replace the Marketing and Legal checks for good old-fashioned common sense. Then simply be aware of the implications of the FCA rules to make sure you don’t promote a product or give advice.

Tweeting the benefits of a specific product without being able to consider the downside or include risk warnings is against the rules. So don’t tweet these with less regard for compliance issues than you would with your website.

This doesn’t stop you from commenting on issues. Warning about deadlines. Or suggesting that it’s wise to insure your sources of income as part of financial planning.

Let’s not use “regulation” as an excuse not to engage in social media. Don’t use it as a cover for not being on social media. Use the FCA compliance guidelines as far as possible and then use your intuition and common sense.

Now it’s your turn:

You can find more information about Compliance and Twitter in my Twitter Guide for Financial Services Professionals. For a copy just use the subscription form above. Do you agree with my views on this subject? Please leave a comment or a link to your own article.