In a world saturated with content – whether that’s social media, blogs, videos, podcasts, guides, research articles, white papers, news, fake news (the list goes on…) – how do you cut through the noise?
Why Great Investment Content is a “Must Have” in this Brave New World
Lessons from the Coronavirus Crisis
There is no doubt that the coronavirus crisis is a watershed moment for investment content producers within the wealth and asset management industry. In the face of unprecedented market volatility, content output rose dramatically to meet the increased demand for allocation updates, economic outlooks, and investment insight. This – set against a backdrop of elevated anxiety and the global shift to work from home – meant that regular client contact, authoritative content and digital channels became more important than ever before.
“If the crisis taught marketers and client-facing teams just one thing it would be this: content which informs, connects and inspires action from clients is a “must have” in this brave new world.”
Enhancing Relationships Through Content
If the crisis taught marketers and client-facing teams just one thing it would be this: content that informs, connects and inspires action from clients is a “must have” in this brave new world. This sort of content has become hotly coveted and increased in value – with those who are producing it reaping rewards as a result. Indeed, after the peak of the pandemic in June 2020, the FT reported that wealth managers who maintained quality and personal communications with clients during the crisis felt they’d actually enhanced their relationships.
So, what’s the secret sauce recipe for creating such content?
The Recipe for Content Success? Focus on the Readers’ Content Experience
For a full list of the 10 best practices for creating and marketing investment content, download Savvy Investor’s print-friendly infographic and check out the Content Marketing Survey and Forecast 2020 here.
Step 1: Get Personal, and Always Think Client-First
Struggling to decide what to write about? Finding a thought-leadership topic can often be the first roadblock. A great place to start is by identifying commonly asked client questions and then shortlisting in-demand topics and themes.
Ensure you’re writing with purpose, and make sure that purpose is clear to the reader. So, before embarking on your next piece of investment content, ask yourself, “What is the reader gaining from this?” Is it a fresh perspective, or more of an exposé? Is it a primer on something technical, or a deep dive on a specific subject?
Think about how you want the reader to feel after consuming the content. For example, is the intention to alleviate any worries, or are you trying to influence decision making? This is best achieved when the writer has greater insight, or different insight, than the reader – so write about something you are confident with or have an interesting take on, and ensure the content is lucidly expressed.
Make sure your title is client-first too, by keeping it simple and descriptive. The Savvy Investor platform shows that papers which avoid cryptic titles and take a “does what it says on the tin” approach, achieve higher engagement, greater pick-up and better targeting.
Step 2: Maintain Engagement by Creating Content that’s Easy on The Eye
Ever opened a document and thought – “wow, that’s dense”? Make your content work as hard as possible by creating reports that are reader-friendly and easy to digest. Ensure that your papers and website utilise white space properly so that content looks uncluttered.
Help prevent readers from checking out by using navigational cues within the content such as headings, sub-headings and chapters where relevant.
Optimise these headings for scannability by writing simple titles that summarise the content beneath. If the salient takeaways can be understood by reading the titles alone, then you’ve done a good job.
“If the salient takeaways can be understood by reading the titles alone, then you’ve done a good job.”
Step 3: Add Visuals, then use these to Optimise and Enrich Your Campaign
Smart phones, laptops, kindles, and tablets have changed the way we consume content and how we want it to look. The Savvy Investor Content Team always recommend that investment marketers enrich documents with relevant high-quality visual aids to make content as attractive as possible. Enrichment shouldn’t be limited to just images, but charts, infographics, icons, coloured text boxes, graphs and tables all help to improve the readers’ experience.
Like the old saying, “a picture tells a thousand words” – where possible, use visual aids to support complex concepts and to display ideas simply. Such aids help to improve understanding and boost overall content quality. You can also add pull-outs quotes and use lists with bullets or numbers where possible to draw attention to important points.
Don’t forget that all of these visual assets can then be repurposed and incorporated as additional components of your campaign. For example, bullets can be used within the body of an email or as talking points on the phone. Pull out quotes, charts and tables can be made as standalone promotional social media posts or used in presentation/pitch decks.
The cherry on top? Digital marketing
The bottom line
It’s all well and good having a great piece of investment content, but success ultimately boils down to your digital marketing and syndication. Done effectively, you will not only turbo charge content reach and views/downloads, but crucially – the data available from digital marketing and syndication allows wealth managers to track engagement, acquire new leads and measure return on investment.
Better data breeds better content – and success to boot
More and more wealth managers are using data to help measure and set success objectives. However, this is still a relatively new process. Investment content producers who use performance metrics, data and lead generation numbers to deeper inform their content strategies will succeed. Data, when harnessed, can help define:
WHAT you talk about
WHICH content type you use
HOW it’s best distributed
Savvy data utilization allows for a nimble approach and helps to focus attention on your highest performing topics and assets, according to your core target market. Remember – you only need to capture data once, but it can be used many times, and in many different ways.
