07 May How a financial copywriter keeps your message clear
Do you work in the financial industry in Brisbane? Do you find yourself having to explain complicated products, services, concepts and terminology to your clients? The onus is on you to overcome the communication barrier. To do so, you must break down the key themes and make them understandable to non-experts.
Financial jargon can simply be overwhelming for people who don’t understand it, so you must be able to clearly articulate what they need without sounding like a confusing mess. It takes both time and the knowledge of why your target audience wants to know this information.
At Search And Site Authoring, we’re here to help you phrase these messages clearly and turn them into compelling marketing communications. If you notice your clients keep asking for what, to you, seem to be simple explanations, that’s a sign that your written collateral is missing the mark. It’s a sign to call in a financial copywriter.
Reasons to call on a financial copywriter
Financial copywriters work for banks, advisers, accountants and investment firms to produce written material that is both technically accurate and approachable for a non-expert readership. They research, interview and correct written material about an organisation’s products, details of services and any relevant industry developments. These messages are often highly targeted for specific markets and demographics. Everything from blog posts to brochures to entire websites – your financial copywriter can do it for you.
Some of the reasons financial professionals like you rely on copywriters that speak their language as well as the language of their target audience include:
- The need for clarity to help get the customer up to speed. Educating your customer is a great way to show them you care and instil loyalty.
- With so many new products and approaches being developed, you likely lack time to figure out how to rephrase all the new information for your customer base. Your copywriter can handle that.
- Giving clients a personal, genuine voice that makes sense to them when you’re not there to explain it personally. That is, that customers can take away and read in their own time.
Essentially, what copywriters do for businesses that have a complex or technical value proposition has two steps. First, they understand what you are trying to say. Second, they build a persona of who you’re seeking to talk to – specifically to figure out why they have arrived in the buy space. Simply, why are they ready to pay attention to you today? In your sector, those triggers could be anything from welcoming a new baby into the family to getting a promotion to being let down by their current bank, adviser or accountants.
For whatever pattern of reasons they come to you, your financial copywriter can tailor a message that turns their receptiveness into curiosity and turns that curiosity into an enquiry. Because that is really what is all about, making your phone ring and inbox fill up with responses from people you can help.
Pulling this off isn’t always easy. You could perhaps liken it to an act of translation between people who speak the same language but who each have different reading levels, different agendas and different definitions for certain words. The copywriter must understand what you’re trying to say and what your target audience wants to hear. When they have done this, they wrangle the English language (and their knowledge of SEO) to bring the two into alignment. Don’t think of it as “dumbing down” the jargon, think of making it friendlier and simpler.
How does this all work in practice?
For example, if a total newcomer to the field contacts you and asks “what does my financial plan need?”, you can already see that the answer is a lot more than just a short checklist. There is no instant purchase or conclusion here because you, as their prospective adviser, need to know a lot more about their situation first. Somehow you have to bring this newcomer around to understanding that their financial plan will likely require finding an adviser to trust year on year all the way to their long-term goals.
A dump of product information at this point: not helpful. And yet, this is often all that financial planners have to give them. However, if you have marketing collateral developed by a financial copywriter, you might already have the right brochure or information sheet that rephrases your key messages as simply and clearly as required. In essence, your financial copywriters are not just writing words, they’re rethinking what you’re trying to convey in terms of your target audience’s needs. And then the copywriter makes sure everything you say fits seamlessly together with all your other marketing comms.
What it all means
If you work in the financial industry, it’s likely that your services are stated in jargon and not easily understood by the public. When it comes to good customer service, making sure your client understands what they need is a must for retaining their interest or getting them on board with your product. This is where financial copywriting comes in. They will take the technical jargon out of your content and present it in clear language that is easy for people to understand.
At Search And Site Authoring, we have the experience of working in this industry to know how confusing it can be for incoming clients. Email us at info@searchandsite.com.au if you would like us to provide more insight.
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