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Financial Services Content Marketing is at a Crossroads

by | Nov 21, 2025 | Marketing

You can feel it in every compliance meeting, every awkward LinkedIn post, every financial website that hasn’t been updated since 2019.

The old playbook for acquiring clients in financial services—networking events, cold calling, referral partnerships, the occasional newspaper ad—still works. But it’s getting harder. More expensive. Less predictable.

Meanwhile, the new playbook—content marketing, SEO, social media, thought leadership—feels overwhelming, risky, and potentially at odds with compliance requirements. According to a 2024 study by Broadridge Financial Solutions, only 38% of financial advisors actively use content marketing, and just 22% have a documented content strategy.

That leaves most financial services firms in a strange limbo. Not fully committed to the old ways, but not confident enough to embrace the new ones.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Your competitors are figuring it out. And your prospective clients—yes, even your high-net-worth prospects—are searching for information online before they ever pick up the phone.

Fidelity’s 2024 Millennial Money Study found that 86% of investors research financial advisors online before making contact, and 73% say they’ve ruled out advisors based solely on their digital presence (or lack thereof).

So the question isn’t whether to do content marketing. It’s how to do it in a way that actually works for your business—without sacrificing your sanity, your compliance officer’s peace of mind, or your authenticity.

I’ve wrestled with these questions for the past year while working with dozens of financial services firms. And it’s forced some clarity about what actually matters in financial services marketing right now.

Let’s tackle the big questions.

Should Financial Services Firms Gate Content?

No. And here’s why that matters for your practice.

Traditional marketing wisdom says you should offer valuable content—a retirement planning guide, investment checklist, or market outlook report—in exchange for an email address.

Build your list. Nurture leads. Convert prospects.

It sounds logical. It’s what “proper marketing” looks like.

But it rarely works in financial services.

Why? Because trust doesn’t work that way.

A 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer study found that financial services is one of the least-trusted industries, with only 56% of consumers expressing trust in financial institutions.

That’s up from recent lows but still represents a significant trust deficit.

When someone downloads your gated retirement guide, you know what they’re thinking? “Great, now I’m going to get sales calls and emails for the next six months.”

You’ve just turned a moment of genuine interest into a transactional obligation.

As wealth manager and author Carl Richards writes in his book The Behavior Gap, “The best way to build trust is to be generous without expecting anything in return.

Give value first. Build the relationship. Let the business follow.”

Financial planning isn’t a software purchase.

It’s a deeply personal decision that involves fear, hope, family legacy, and life dreams.

Your prospects aren’t ready to hand over their email address—and definitely not their personal financial information—just because you wrote a decent PDF.

So skip the gates. Publish your best thinking freely.

Let people consume it on their terms, at their pace, without feeling obligated.

The right clients will find their way to you when they’re ready. And they’ll remember that you gave freely without asking for anything in return.

Do Financial Services Firms Need a Blog?

Technically, no. Practically, yes.

Here’s the tension: According to SEMrush’s 2024 Financial Services Marketing Report, financial services websites with active blogs generate 67% more leads per month than those without.

Blog content drives 55% of website traffic for financial firms that publish consistently.

But—and this is important—most financial services blogs are terrible.

They’re written by compliance committees. They’re stuffed with jargon. They say nothing interesting because they’re terrified of saying something wrong. They sit on the website gathering dust while the firm wonders why “content marketing doesn’t work.”

Financial advisor and podcaster Josh Brown put it perfectly: “Nobody wakes up excited to read another generic article about the benefits of diversification. If you’re not saying something new, interesting, or helpful, you’re just adding to the noise.”

So why keep a blog at all?

Because, for most financial services teams, long-form written content is the most natural way to develop and refine your thinking before distributing it elsewhere.

Here’s how it actually works in practice:

You write a thoughtful piece about navigating market volatility or planning for healthcare costs in retirement. It lives on your website. Then you break it apart:

  • Pull three key insights for LinkedIn posts

  • Record a 5-minute video explaining the main concept for YouTube or social

  • Share a condensed version via email to your client base

  • Reference it in client conversations when relevant

The blog post becomes your anchor. Your source material. Your proof that you actually have something to say.

Without it, your content strategy becomes untethered—a series of random posts with no coherent message or narrative.

Michael Kitces, one of the most respected voices in financial planning, publishes an 8,000-word blog post every Wednesday.

His newsletter reaches over 100,000 financial advisors.

In an interview with Financial Planning magazine, he explained: “Long-form content establishes authority in a way that social posts and ads never can. It proves you can think deeply about complex topics.”

So yes, keep your blog. But make it actually useful.

What’s the Point of Content Marketing for Financial Services?

To build trust, credibility, and top-of-mind awareness with people who will eventually need your services.

That’s it.

Financial services firms often get seduced by elaborate marketing funnels and lead generation strategies borrowed from software companies or e-commerce brands.

They try to engineer a system where blog posts become leads become prospects become clients.

But it doesn’t work that way.

According to Cerulli Associates’ 2024 study on financial advisor marketing, the average time between first contact and becoming a client is 8-14 months for wealth management relationships. For complex planning situations, it can be 18-24 months.

This isn’t a transactional sale. It’s a relationship that develops over time.

Your content’s job isn’t to generate leads. It’s to ensure that when someone in your market starts thinking, “I need help with my finances,” you’re the first name that comes to mind.

That’s why consistency matters more than perfection. That’s why showing up regularly beats sporadic viral posts.

Professor Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, notes that “repeated exposure increases familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust. In high-stakes decisions like choosing a financial advisor, people default to the names they recognize and trust.”

You’re not building a lead generation machine. You’re building a presence.

Flipping the Script: Message Before Content

Most financial services content starts with the wrong question.

Firms ask: “What do our prospects care about?” Then they create generic content about those topics—retirement planning, tax strategies, estate planning—and wonder why nobody cares.

Here’s the problem: Everyone is already saying those things. Your content blends into an ocean of similar advice.

We need to flip the process.

Start with the narratives you want to own. The perspectives that make your practice unique. The insights that only you can share based on your experience.

Then create content that tells those stories.

For example, instead of “5 Ways to Save for Retirement” (which exists 10,000 times online), you might develop narratives like:

The Retirement Confidence Gap: Why successful professionals often feel least prepared for retirement—and what that reveals about the inadequacy of traditional planning approaches

The Permission Paradox: How the hardest financial decisions aren’t about math—they’re about giving yourself permission to spend money you’ve saved

Generational Wealth Theater: The performance of legacy planning that makes families look rich on paper while creating dysfunction and resentment

The Complexity Trap: Why the financial industry’s obsession with sophistication often prevents clients from making good decisions

These aren’t topics you researched through keyword tools.

These are perspectives you’ve developed through years of client work. They’re the insights that make prospects say, “Exactly! Someone finally gets it.”

As financial planner and author Carl Richards notes, “The best marketing for financial advisors isn’t about what you do—everyone does planning and investments. It’s about how you see the world differently.”

Creating a Framework That Actually Works

The old playbook was: Write blog posts → Optimize for SEO → Capture leads → Nurture via email → Close sales

That framework is broken. Or at least insufficient.

According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, organic search traffic has declined 23% year-over-year for financial services firms, while social referral traffic has increased by 41%.

Here’s what works better:

Website as Laboratory: Use your blog to develop ideas, test messaging, and create long-form anchors for your thinking. But don’t expect it to drive massive traffic.

LinkedIn as Distribution Engine: This is where your audience actually is.

Morning Consult’s 2024 Professional Platform Study found that 78% of financial professionals use LinkedIn regularly, and 64% say it influences their business decisions.

Financial advisors who post consistently on LinkedIn see 6x higher engagement than those who rely solely on paid advertising, according to Putnam Investments’ 2024 Advisor Marketing Study.

Create native content for LinkedIn—posts, articles, videos—drawing from your blog’s big ideas. But optimize for the platform, not for traffic to your site.

Email as Amplifier: Instead of using email as a traditional newsletter (which gets 18-22% open rates in financial services), use it strategically to drive engagement on social content.

Send your list a personal note: “I just posted something on LinkedIn about a mistake I see successful clients make.

Would love your thoughts.” This drives comments and engagement, which LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards with expanded reach.

Video as Connection Tool: According to Wyzowl’s 2024 Video Marketing Report, 89% of consumers want to see more video from brands they support.

But in financial services, video serves a different purpose—it accelerates trust.

When prospects watch you explain concepts on video, they feel like they already know you before the first meeting.

Podcast as Depth Medium: For practices targeting high-net-worth clients or specific niches, podcasting creates unusual leverage.

You can interview successful clients (with permission), fellow professionals, and thought leaders.

Each episode becomes multiple pieces of content while positioning you as a connector in your market.

The Opportunity Hiding in the Chaos

Financial services marketing feels uncertain right now because the old methods are less effective, and the new methods feel overwhelming and risky.

But that’s actually good news.

Because most of your competitors are sitting still, paralyzed by the same uncertainty.

This is your window.

The financial advisors and firms that figure out content marketing now—not in a gimmicky, salesy way, but in an authentic, helpful, consistently present way—will dominate their markets for the next decade.

According to a 2024 Kitces Research study, financial advisors who consistently publish content grow their practices 3x faster than those who don’t, with significantly lower client acquisition costs ($2,800 vs. $7,100 per client).

But it requires a mindset shift.

Content marketing in financial services isn’t about tricks or hacks. It’s not about going viral or gaming algorithms.

It’s about showing up consistently with valuable perspectives that help people think better about their money and their lives.

It’s about building trust over time through generosity and expertise.

It’s about being present in the spaces where your future clients are already spending time.

The firms that embrace this—really embrace it, not just dabble—will look back in five years and recognize this as the moment everything changed.

The question is: Will you be one of them?

Sources and Reference Links

Author

  • CMO @ FinServ Marketing Agency - We help financial professionals—including advisors, wealth managers, mortgage lenders, and brokers—generate qualified leads and drive growth with proven digital marketing strategies.

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