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Vince Lombardi is famous for the way he started every spring training season. The new and veteran players would gather in the meeting room, and Lombardi would stand in front of them. When he had everyone’s attention, he would hold up a pigskin and say, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
We all know the importance of going back to the basics – the “blocking and tackling” that form the foundational principles of our profession. But just as often, we become distracted: by new trends, wrangling logistics, dealing with client issues, and solving the day-to-day challenges that are integral to running any business. Before we know it, we’ve forgotten that the original goal was to move the football from one end of the field to the other.
To succeed with your content marketing strategies for the remainder of the year, focus on getting back to those first principles. Here are a couple of trends that will dominate as a winning content strategy this year.
Deeper focus on your ideal clients
A successful content strategy should hone the focus of your content to be more attractive to your ideal clients. I’ve written previously about how vital it is to thoroughly understand who the clients are with whom you need to be spending your quality time. The main way you do this is by writing an ideal client persona. (And you already did that – right?)
Now that you’ve got your written description, put it to work with your content strategy. SEMrush’s 2023 State of Content Marketing Global Report indicated that the most dominant factor in the success of businesses it surveyed was audience research. Look at your ideal client profile and ask yourself these questions when developing content:
- What are their needs?
- What do they want most?
- What value does this content offer them?
- What are they saying about these topics when I talk to them?
- What do they say they wish they knew more about?
What factors lead to success in content marketing?
If you asked similar questions when you were developing your ideal client persona, then you’re on target. The more your content appeals to your ideal clients’ interests, the more you’ll be seen as a source of authoritative, helpful information. This, in turn, will fuel organic growth, both in new assets from existing clients and the acquisition of new prospects and clients who share similar interests with – and will be referred by – your ideal clients. By consistently offering refined, relevant content to your clients and those who find you online through searches for terms of interest to them, you’re forging and solidifying relationships with the people who will contribute most to your success.
Deeper focus on quality
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig located the core of his spiritual and philosophical quest in a single word: quality. He concluded that people perform better, feel better, and succeed more when they genuinely care about whatever it is that they are engaged in – when they perceive quality in what they are doing and the focus of their efforts.
It’s the same with your content. It needs to have quality: something about it that makes people care. It needs to have something that makes your ideal clients – and people like them who aren’t yet your clients – care.
This goes beyond SEO concerns. You need to create content that lends itself to higher rankings in search results. But the most important thing is the information conveyed, the way it’s conveyed, and its effectiveness and usefulness for readers. If you’re taking the trouble to attract people to your website or your social media channels, you want them to stay long enough to obtain an impression. You do that with quality content.
Which factors help the most to boost your ranking?
High-quality content will secure higher rankings in search results. Google, for instance, is continually refining its algorithms to select for quality. As you think about the quality of your content, ask yourself questions like these:
- Is it relevant to my ideal client? (Sound familiar?)
- Is it written clearly and professionally? (Poor grammar and unclear word choices are a quick turn-off)
- Is it focused on a single topic of interest?
- Does it offer specific benefits or actionable knowledge?
- Does it encourage a desired action from the reader? (read: “Call to action”)
- Does it cite relevant, authoritative, up-to-date statistics or other data?
- Does it invite engagement?
- Is it authentic? (Will readers perceive an organic relationship between what they read and their real-time experience with you? Does it reflect your “style”?)
Thinking through these aspects of your content in the context of your ideal client will get you more interactions, better discoverability by those who match your ideal persona, and a content marketing effort that integrates seamlessly with the strategic direction you’ve set for your firm.
Back to the basics – of content
None of these trends are fancy or new. I haven’t said anything above about ChatGPT, AI, or any of the other “hot” topics circulating in content-creation circles. But focusing your communication on your ideal clients and giving them high-quality, relevant content are fundamentals that will continue to have an impact forever.
As Vince Lombardi reminded us, those who execute the basics well succeed in the long term. Isn’t that what you want to do?
Gretchen Halpin is the co-founder of Beyond AUM, which provides growth, client experience, and advisor experience support to financial advisors to drive business success. Over the course of her 25-year career, Gretchen has founded more than five businesses in addition to serving as the chief strategy officer for one of the financial services industry's leading wealth management firms. She has been featured in Advisor Perspectives, Financial Advisor Magazine, and Forbes for her insights and has served as a speaker at numerous industry conferences, including NAPFA, Financial Planning, and Invest in Women. She also serves as a facilitator in Financial Planning Association's Women and Finance Knowledge Circle community.
Are you looking for help to boost the quality of your content? If you’re interested in improving your firm’s marketing strategy, contact our team today to start the conversation.
Read more articles by Gretchen Halpin
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
