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For most advisors, marketing doesn’t come naturally. Writing blog posts, recording videos, networking – those things are uncomfortable, even if they’re necessary to grow your business. It doesn’t help that a lot of the research on how to add clients is based on relying heavily on content creation.
Even if you are confident in front of the camera, behind a microphone, or writing about technical financial topics, there are many roadblocks that can get in the way:
1. Not enough time;
2. Trying to cover too much ground in your content;
3. Writer’s block/creator’s block;
4. Imposter syndrome; and
5. Other, more pressing, responsibilities in your firm.
Consistency is key to a successful marketing strategy, so how are you supposed to stick with a plan when hundreds of other to-dos get in the way?
Say goodbye to over creation
When you first launched your RIA, there was all the time in the world for marketing. Even if writing a blog took you several hours, it didn’t matter, because it was critical to the success of your business. However, spending all your marketing energy on content creation can hurt your business development in the long run – especially as you grow and find yourself short on time and ideas.
Instead, build a scalable marketing plan that focuses on repurposing your content. I call this the “reduce, reuse, and recycle” strategy. When you reduce the amount of content you’re creating, you’re pushed to find ways to reuse that content in other marketing channels. You can also focus on creating evergreen content that’s easy to recycle year after year because its message stands the test of time.
Recently, I was at the Digital Summit in Seattle and attended a talk that put a visual and a name to this method of marketing: The hub-and-spoke model.
The hub-and-spoke model for content marketing
The hub-and-spoke model of marketing has been around for decades. At its core, it deprioritizes high-volume content creation, and works to focus a marketing calendar on specific content “hubs.” Here is how each component of the strategy looks:
Hub – Your hub needs to be a longer form of content. It can be a blog post, white paper, or webinar recording.
Spokes – The spokes branching off your hub content are supporting pieces of collateral. They might be short social media posts, email marketing pieces, 60-second videos, etc.
This allows business owners and marketers to focus their energy on creating high-quality, impactful content hyper-focused on specific topics or keywords. They can repurpose that content in different ways to create a more scalable strategy and maximize their SEO efforts.
By applying the hub and spoke model to your marketing plan, you can create content hubs (or cornerstone pieces) with multiple spokes that repurpose their cornerstone content. This not only creates a scalable strategy, but also allows you to diversify the type of content you’re publishing, connect with more people on different platforms, and actually spend less time creating and reinventing the wheel.
Creating a hub-and-spoke marketing calendar
One of the first questions advisors ask when I walk them through how this model of marketing works is: How do I determine what the hubs of my strategy should be?
Your content hubs are the cornerstones of your business. They can represent:
1. Common “triggers” that prompt prospective clients to reach out to your firm;
2. Keywords you want to rank for in your local area, or in your niche; and
3. Questions you hear often in client meetings.
Your content hubs should address all these items!
For example, let’s say that a common trigger for a prospect reaching out is having to navigate Social Security after the loss of a spouse. In this case, the hub content could be a cornerstone blog post (2,000+ words) about how spousal benefits work, and how to time taking Social Security in retirement if you’re a widow living on one income.
Different spokes supporting this cornerstone content could be:
1. Social media graphics created from the text itself.
2. Short videos recorded by reading sections of the text that are posted to YouTube and your website, and uploaded as MP4s to social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
3. An email course about each key point in the blog post sent out to clients who are widows, which is also promoted on your web site as a lead magnet.
Let’s look at a visual:
Get ready to scale your strategy
With a hub-and-spoke model of content marketing, you and your team can build a scalable marketing calendar that focuses on topics that matter to your target audience. You’ll be able to easily capture your expertise, improve your SEO, provide educational resources to your current clients, and grab the attention of prospects who find you through your digital-marketing efforts – all while spending less time and resources on marketing and content creation.
Zoe Meggert is the CEO of Perfectly Planned Content, a marketing agency that specializes in creating story-focused marketing strategies to help financial advisors move the needle. Zoe aims to empower advisors to attract their ideal clients, lay a foundation of trust for lifelong planning relationships, and build businesses they love.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
