If They Found You, Would They Call? Bloggers Help Answer the Question

Here’s the critical question,” says Dave Grant in Financial Planning magazine – “If he found your website, would he give you a call?”  “Your website,” Grant tells financial planners, “should tell prospective customers a number of things:  firm services and philosophy, investment management methodology, as well as blog posts about different financial planning topics.’

As a blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer (with a background in financial services), I especially appreciated Grant’s specifying that a website “shows whether your firm is on the cutting edge and how it values technology.” Grant tellingly adds, “Your site needs a blog at a minimum.”

The author describes a situation in which a prospect is seeking a financial planning firm.  

• Firm A has a template website and says the planner has been in the profession 25 years. His bio photograph shows him to be about 40 years old.  Why is that photo so out of date?
• Firm B has exactly the same template (instant turnoff, says Grant), with a “latest update” that is 18 months old.
• Firm C has dynamic graphics, blog posts only days old talking about current topics, with fresh, interesting bios.

So why don’t more financial planners update and improve their websites and include fresh, relevant blog content writing? It’s interesting that, in general, financial planners often work with their clients to create an overall financial plan, then hire professional money managers to implement those plans with specific investments. "If were spending a lot of time on investment selection, reported one Certified Financial Planner® in the Journal of Financial Planning. “I couldn't do the premier job that I want to do for my clients. There just aren't enough hours in the day."

“Outsourcing tasks lets companies focus on growth,” reads a recent USA Today headline.

Blogging for business, as Grant is trying to communicate to his financial planning colleagues, is an essential customer acquisition tool in our increasingly web-based world. Yet the creation of effective SEO marketing blog posts is no mundane task, and few business owners, even with the help of talented employees, can spare the time to post relevant, new material with enough consistency and frequency to improve search engine rankings.

The critical question remains: “If they find your website, would they be likely to give you a call?” Fact is, blog content writing services can be a big, big part of the answer.