Content has become an important facet of the wealth manager’s toolbox to support, retain and attract clients. But what sort of content works and how can technology help to make sure that the right content is pushed out, at the right time and in the right format?

Creating high quality, thought leadership and useful product marketing content is now the de facto approach to building an audience, nurturing prospects and generating leads. The wealth management industry is no different but has been somewhat slow to get involved. Thomas Bosshard, CEO, at Adviscent explains: “Core services such as tax optimization and portfolio optimization used to be at the forefront of any advice given by a wealth manager but are now commoditised. Advice is now the core business and we see content as a key element within that.  A relevant, contextualized and visually appealing content offering can support various business goals.”

David Magee, head of EMEA at New York-headquartered ForwardLane and Teresa Leno, founder of Minneapolis-based fresh Finance, both emphasise the importance of content when it comes to attracting and retaining customers.  Leno comments: “As the population ages the younger generation demand more from their wealth manager. They want to feel some trust in their wealth manager and having content delivered to them over a medium of their choice is one way of doing this for both potential and existing clients. It reduces churn and helps to attract new clients.”

Magee meanwhile describes content as ‘the current sweet spot’. “The client offering needs a marked improvement and this is one way to do that,” he says.

What types of content work?
But while vendors are all about sourcing various types of content and pushing it out in the right format, they also leave the wealth manager to decide what they want to send out and to whom.

Kurtosys and Forward Lane both source a wide variety of content but the onus is on the wealth manager decide where to distribute each piece of content. Clearly the technology has a role to play here is in influencing the type of content likely to be suitable.

Thomas Bosshard comments: “Technology helps to mass customize the content which is already available. A fit for purpose technical solution therefore generates efficiency gains for content producers because they have to produce the content only once and will be able to deliver it to multiple channels. Consumers like client advisors, clients and prospects benefit from an enhanced user experience because they are able to access the information in the right format at the right time independent of their preferred channel.”

ForwardLane places great emphasis on personalisation, so as to build the relationship with the client. Magee comments: “The content goes to the client with a note explaining the reasoning behind why they might find it useful. The type of content is deciphered using client data- around portfolio holdings, risk appetite and other data types that might be held within the CRM- such as interest, hobbies philanthropic activity, family situation etc.”

The way that content is delivered is varied: video content is consistently a winner for most industries with often 5x more engagement in social media. Good quality white papers will always have a place in marketing, as will well-written blogs and opinion pieces. Podcasts have had a recent renaissance and seem particularly popular in financial services. As with any content, the frequency and consistency is important to grow an audience.

And the channel too varies significantly. In an age of digitalisation e-mail is no longer the only way of reaching people. Social media plays a significant role.

Luke Hinchliffe, Head of Digital Marketing at Kurtosys comments: “LinkedIn is the number one channel for business users and video content has now become very popular for this medium. Twitter is successful for some, but never really became vastly successful for asset managers since people are more attracted to genuine people accounts rather than corporate accounts.  But individual advisors and prominent financial spokespeople have enjoyed success across Twitter and Instagram, especially used in conjunction with events and charitable work.”

Leno also believes in the power of social media, citing it as a key channel. “Because the software can personalise the content it looks like a personal post too and this strengthens the bond between advisor and client.” she says.

How technology can play a role?
The role of technology when it comes to content is one of staunch supporter. Its job comprises a few components; firstly to help decide what sort of content would be suitable using a variety of data sources and then build on that using AI and Machine Learning to ‘learn and improve’ what investors want to read or watch.

Next the job is to make publishing the content as simple and easy as possible and to make sure it gets to where it needs to go in the right format and with the right level of personalisation.

A third element is being able to use predictive analysis to determine  whether the content is actually hitting the spot and then feed that back to the beginning of the loop. Finally, better CMS platforms can enable publishers to tag and categorise content quickly and easily, improving search and the end user experience for readers.

Hinchcliffe comments: “I believe that all types of content should be explored, but should be carefully measured for success. As with any digital marketing, if you don’t have any analytics or metrics you can’t measure the ROI or improve your strategy.”

“Targeted content can be greatly improved with the right technology platform.  Asset and wealth managers have an easier road to displaying the correct content since most websites ask their users to ‘attest’ who they are before entering,” he adds.

And Magee explains how AI can work well within this space by using a ground up machine learning system. “We would basically write algorithms for each wealth manager and their way for finding content for clients, then we train the system to follow that method.  An initial 8 weeks of back and forth and then we start to get somewhere. Once the data loops are starting to work then things can be improved on,” he says.

Content marketing seem then to be fantastic opportunity to build an audience and attract prospects, but as is always so within wealth management, careful attention should be paid to personalising and humanising the messaging.

Luke Hinchliffe comments: “In an age of robo-advice and AI, many people, including millennials will appreciate genuine human interaction rather than automated responses. A blend of technology and human interaction could make for a better strategy, and ultimately a better customer experience. Using various channels and platforms for content is all very well, but it’s important that a real person is also there to personally engage with both prospects and customers.”

Business and solution profiles of the firms featured in this article are available on our directory-based platform via the below links:

Adviscent - https://www.thewealthmosaic.com/vendors/vendor/adviscent/
ForwardLane - https://www.thewealthmosaic.com/vendors/vendor/forwardlane/
fresh Finance - https://www.thewealthmosaic.com/vendors/vendor/fresh-finance/
Kurtosys - https://www.thewealthmosaic.com/vendors/vendor/kurtosys/

You can also find more content technology solutions in our Client Engagement & Management and Client Marketing & Prospecting business need categories.