A Strange New World: 9 Content Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors in 2025 (and 3 Things to Avoid)
It’s a whole new world out there. Some of the same old marketing tips still work, some don’t, and others are somewhere in between.
If you’re a financial advisor looking to leverage content marketing for help in 2025, here are a few of the top tactics to use this year.
1. Go All-in On Perspective
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Perspective is your primary content differentiator, and that will be especially true in 2025.
A unique perspective is one of the few things A.I. can’t do, so it’s one of your best ways to stand out.
And the truth of the matter is this: The world does not need another financial advisor writing general educational content. There are literally billions of blogs on financial topics, and probably hundreds of thousands of newsletters on the topic. The internet is cluttered with generalized guidance of every variety, chief among which is probably financial.
On top of that, ever since AI “slop” was unleashed on the internet,
What the world needs, what your clients want, what your clients will pass along to their loved ones, is your perspective. Perspective is the only differentiating factor left in the world of content.
Not accuracy.
Not length of content.
Perspective alone will set your content apart in a lasting way and allow you to connect with both clients and prospects on a personal level.
2. Invest in Growing Your Subscriber List
If you’re tired of fighting algorithms for attention on social media and waiting for Google to properly rank your content in search results, it’s time to invest in growing your list.
Throughout 2024, we had multiple reminders that the internet is rented land and the owners are becoming more and more unpredictable.
By building your subscriber list, you’re building on your own land. No one can take that list away from you or tell you how you’re allowed to talk to them. According to at least one guy on the internet, your email list is your most important marketing investment.
Plus, nowhere else in the digital world can you reach out to individuals – not your podcast audience, YouTube subscribers, Instagram followers. Only email.
Two Simple List-building Tactics Many Advisors Are Still Missing
You can get started right now with the two easiest methods to help you start growing your list:
Add a pop-up to your site
Add subscribe fields to your blogs
3. Send a Weekly Email
As you work to build your list, the cornerstone of your content should be sending a weekly or biweekly email. You don’t necessarily have to write an email every week—you could send a video or podcast episode—but you should have a personalized greeting written in every one.
Need some help writing emails? Click here to check out our ebook, “52 Email Prompts for Financial Advisors.” Every full-page prompt features an outline, supporting statistics to use, engagement ideas, and more! A full year of prompts (or two years if you do a biweekly email) in one book!
If you’re not sure how you want your emails to look, you can get an idea by subscribing to a few other people’s emails: maybe advisors you admire, your competitors, my newsletter (it’s pretty goooood).
Make sure to watch your email frequency. It may not feel like a big deal for you to send three emails over the course of a couple days, but when your readers are already digging through dozens or hundreds of emails every day, seeing the same sender multiple times in one day can easily trigger an unsubscribe. In fact, 44% of people say they unsubscribe when someone sends them too many emails.
4. Get Personal
Impersonal, corporate emails don’t work anymore. If you want to connect with your readers—even your clients—you have to let your personality shine through.
Tell stories from your personal life, use illustrations when you write, mention music and movies that you love—whatever it takes to share a piece of yourself with your readers.
The fact of the matter is that the better someone feels like they know you, the more they want to hear from you.
I’m not saying you have to be informal—I have a lot of love for advisors who keep it professional. If that’s you, then let your firm’s personality shine through by establishing a clear brand voice.
5. Write Down Your Content Marketing Strategy
Only 39% of B2C (business-to-consumer) companies that engage in content marketing say they have a documented strategy. Yet companies with a documented strategy are 414% more likely to report success.
Let this be the year that you stop flying by the seat of your pants and start following a documented plan that is linked to your overall business goals.
If you need some help getting started, check out our free one-page content marketing strategy doc—no email or contact info required!
6. Publish Content in Publications Your Audience Already Reads
Third-party validation can leap-frog you into your prospects’ inner circle of trust. Yes, it can be hard to find the right publications, but it’s worth the effort.
One of the best ways to get published in an external publication is to write commentary or an explainer article on a current event. Keep an eye out for national news that you can lend your perspective on and then clear your calendar so you can get something written quickly.
Several years ago, I wrote an article for Kitces.com on GDPR compliance rules for advisor websites (I know, you’ve been wondering who wrote that classic piece, right?). It was hard, it took several revisions (Mr. Kitces has some seriously high editorial standards), but it was totally worth it. The credibility of being published in a trusted news outlet has given returns many times over.
Put together a list of publications that match your audience, both online and in print. Maybe it’s the local paper, maybe it’s a lifestyle magazine, maybe it’s a blog. Send them an email introducing yourself.
Then, when something happens, start submitting ideas as soon as you can.
7. Get Your Content Marketing Priorities Straight
The internet is full of places you could publish your content, but that doesn’t mean you should publish everywhere. You’re much better off going all-in on one or two channels than taking a shotgun approach that treats every channel the same.
Figure out which channels work for your audience and which channels work for you. Hopefully there’s overlap. If not, you may need to get outside your comfort zone a bit. When I say figure out which channel “works for you,” I mean which channels do you understand and enjoy using?
For instance, I hate LinkedIn Collaborative Articles with the fire of a thousand suns. Sure, I could publish stuff there as many other marketing people do, or I could gouge out my own eyes instead. I haven’t decided which one I’ll do yet—the odds are pretty even.
But I love writing emails and blogs, and I understand how to leverage those channels very well since I’ve been doing it for 10 years now. So the majority of my energy is spent there. Then there’s LinkedIn as a whole, which I have a like-hate relationship with. But advisors love it, so I push myself to use it and I think I’m getting a little better at it…maybe? (See for yourself.)
Figure out what works best for you and your audience and do that.
8. Choose a Few Marketing Metrics, Set Growth Goals for Each, Then Check on Them at Least Every Quarter
“If it isn’t measured, it doesn’t matter.”
Okay, maybe that’s not totally true. But if you don’t understand the history of your marketing metrics, then it’s going to be hard to know which marketing levers to pull to make your business grow.
Be sure to pick metrics that are tied to your business goals, you can easily check, and actually matter to you. Sure, website visitors is a valuable metric, but how will you tie it to your larger business goals? (Also, remember that email open rates mean nothing, so don’t pick those.)
Your metrics could be:
Number of subscribers
Replies to emails
Contact form submission
Number of visitors your blogs get
Number of website visitors from specific sources
In order to measure website traffic, you’re going to need to use an analytics tool. Google’s GA4 is free, but it has a little bit of a learning curve. I highly recommend checking out Andy Crestodina’s content if you want to learn more. He knows a ton on the subject, and he provides clear instructions on how to find what you’re looking for.
9. Establish Partnerships Where You can Guest on Other People’s Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, etc.
Every professional has an audience of varying size. Maybe it’s 10 people on a podcast, maybe it’s 100 people on YouTube, maybe it’s 1,000 people on LinkedIn.
You have an audience. Your buddy who is a lawyer has an audience. That realtor you met at church last week has an audience. You guys should be leveraging each other’s audiences!
Start with the COIs you know best and look at their website. Do they have a blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, or podcast? Ask them if you can guest on their channels and offer them a spot on your own. Try to find a different COI to partner with every quarter.
3 Content Marketing Tactics Financial Advisors Should Avoid in 2025
OK, that does it for the tactics you should use this year. Now let’s look at a few tactics that have changed a bit and should be avoided (or reworked) in 2025.
Stop Prioritizing Keyword-driven Content (but Don’t Give It Up Entirely)
For the last several years, content marketing has relied on a keyword-focused strategy to get results. This strategy required two things:
Knowing which keywords your audience was searching for, and
Google’s search results showing your content when people performed those searches
If you found the right keywords and wrote high-quality content, you could get results pretty easily.
But the search world has had a bit of a shake-up recently.
Google has made a couple changes over the last couple years—the Helpful Content Update of 2023 and the Core Updates of 2024—that negatively impacted the keyword approach. It seems like every day I see a post on LinkedIn from someone whose blog or website traffic is now a fraction of what it was before.
That being said, keywords are still valuable and can still contribute to your rankings in search.
Stop Taking Social Media so Seriously—It is a Hellhole that Should be Limited to 1 Hour Per Week
I’ve heard the stories from advisors who say, “I got all my clients on social media.” Good for them. I hope those clients make them very rich and happy.
But if you’re like me and you hate fighting algorithms for attention, I’m here with some good news: You don’t have to do social.
Here’s the thing: Most advisors have full schedules, which limit the amount of time they can spend on marketing. Your time is much better spent writing a blog/email, recording a podcast, or filming a video than posting something on social media in hopes of a few likes.
Social media is most successful if you’re selling things that cost less than $1,000, or even less than $100. The cheaper the better, as social channels encourage FOMO-induced rash decisions. Choosing a financial advisor does not fit into that category, so you can safely log out.
If you love social media, then by all means, go for it.
Just know this: You don’t have to do it. You may feel like you do, but you don’t.
If you’re curious, try giving up business-related social media activity for a couple months and see if it makes any difference in your business. You can always pick it back up again!
And on that note…
Stop Looking at What Everyone Else Is Doing
Sure, there is value in learning from your peers. But every audience is different and every advisor is different. Now more than ever, blanket approaches make very little sense in content marketing.
Study your audience, not your competitors’ tactics.
Get Out There and Grow!
That’s it for the top marketing tactics for financial advisors for 2025. The only thing left to do is choose which ones you’ll implement. Oh, also, before you go…
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