Many financial advisors approach content marketing without a solid plan. They create content when they feel like it. When they do create content, they write what they feel like writing, and in some (few) good moments (there’s something better), they write what they think the customers need at the moment.

To turn this around and help financial advisors gain new customers on auto-pilot with content, I develop winning content strategies.

Companies who produce content for the sake of it will not have the results that content marketing can deliver. There must be a solid content strategy that guides the content creation and promotion process. Content marketing is not a magic wand that transforms your business without planning and efforts. Instead, it requires a winning strategy.

I will work with you to design a content strategy that will help your business grow.

There are eight parts to every content strategy I produce:

1. The Framework

There are three steps under the framework:

• Company: This is where I understand your company goals (long-term, medium-term, and short-term) and how content marketing can help you achieve those goals.
• Customer: This is where I work with you to identify your customer segments, define your buyer personas, and the buyer journey of each persona.
• Competition: I conduct a content gap analysis to understand what your competitors are doing and the opportunities to establish a competitive advantage.

2. The Blueprint

I use the pillar pages and topic clusters system as the blueprint for content creation. Google is moving away from keywords to topical authority. Establishing authority on a topic opens opportunities to rank for tens and hundreds of keywords even when you don’t use them in the text (or use them only once).

The pillar page and topic clusters system is the best system for developing such topical authority.

I will research the topics or categories that align with your buyer personas and identify the pillar pages and topic clusters you can create around them.

3. The Schedule

There are two important stages here:

• Content Audit: The schedule starts with an audit of your existing content. This audit will identify the content that can be useful to the blueprint and the ones you need to delete. Content audit will ensure we don’t reinvent the wheel when it’s not necessary.

• Content Outline: After identifying the useful content you have, I will create an outline of the content we need to create to achieve your business goals. I will also create an outline of content that will support any upcoming company events. The content outline will include the timeline and frequency of content creation.

• Content Upgrade: The content schedule will also include a plan to update and improve the useful content from the previous content audit.

4. The Content Workflow

Once I create a schedule for content creation and upgrade, I will create a content creation workflow. Typically, it includes:

• An outline
• The first draft
• Editing
• Design and formatting
• Final draft
• Publishing
• Storing

5. The Content Creation

The content creation will include:

• Writing new content
• Content upgrade and historical optimization
• Content Repurposing

6. Content Optimization

Here is where I create a plan for optimizing every content for the search engines (SEO). The optimization include:

• On-page optimization
• Optimization for featured snippets
• Optimization for linkable hooks
• Historical optimization

7. Content Promotion

I will design a content promotion plan which includes these channels:

• Social media
• Email
• Blogger outreach
• Republishing
• Content syndication
• Content repurposing
• Guest Blogging
• Influencers
• Paid Ad

The plan will include the channels that align with your buyer personas, the timing and duration of every content promotion plan.

8. Content Analytics

For analytics, I follow these three steps:

• Measurement: Here, I will identify the important metrics to measure performance. Remember, the priority is to grow your customer base and increase revenue.
• Analysis: I will create a system for comparing performance with the goals in stage 1.
• Optimization: Where performance falls short of goals, there will be a system for improving performance.

These are the eight steps I use to develop content strategies for businesses. With this strategy, you will begin to experience the power of content as a customer acquisition tool.

Let’s work together to create a solid strategy for your business that will lead to immense growth.