Many advisors have not quite grasped the value of having valuable content to share. When sending out an enewsletter, using social media or updating a website, if the content is worth reading, it can have many benefits. These include educating clients, keeping in touch with prospects and strengthening relationships with strategic alliances.

The main issue often comes down to not having enough resources. Do they have the man hours to create their own articles and videos? Do they have the person that can edit the content, upload it to the website and share it with the world through email and social networks? When the answer is “no”, these organizations become stagnant, which isn’t a good thing.

A Solution To The Inability To Share Good Content

Vestorly might just be what the doctor ordered. On its site, it describes itself as digital content management and fundamental analytics for financial services. A more simplistic explanation is that this service allows advisors to share curated content, which can also be customized to have original content from the advisor mixed in the communications.

In a one-on-one interview, Justin Wisz, CEO of Vestorly, talked about an engagement problem. “There is major disconnect in how people want advisors to engage them,” he said. A lot of the content shared today really is not what the audience wants.

Wisz went on to say, “A lot of advisors do not bother to get started with marketing. It is too big a dragon to slay. They’d rather not start or outsource it—or hire someone junior to accomplish it. It ends up in a rise of overhead. We can solve that problem.”

He believes that the advisor’s relationship is really the differentiator, but online it is really hard to differentiate. Because they are already getting information online, it is nice to have the advisors participate in that dynamic. By sharing valuable information through the use of technology, advisors can reignite relationships and get to be a part of their lives.

More About Vestorly’s Offering

The service is mobile-friendly, it can be in real time and can be personalized for the audience, groups or even individuals.

Wisz explained that his company aggregates content people want to see. “We are creating a holistic experience that actually matches what people do online.  We built a search engine for all the content on the web,” said Wisz.

A true benefit of the service is that it reduces “friction” in a business. A content marketer using Vestorly can spend ten minutes a week sharing content instead of ten hours a week without it. The organization accomplishes this through data science and automation. Even if a company has a marketing coordinator, a tool like this can free up that person to do other things.

Lastly, the service has usable performance metrics.  “We built the equivalent of a browser,” explained Wisz. This keeps the reader in the advisor’s digital world, which goes against the current content model most people use that sends the traffic to other people’s sites. Because they are taking actions like clicking on things in the branded reading portal, a lot of information can be gathered on each particular person.

This allows Vestorly to keep the viewer in a closed reading experience. Because of this, Wisz said, “We can get the data on what people want to read.”

 

The Next Level Of Content Sharing

It will be interesting to see if advisors can get to individual mass communications. In other words, instead of blasting out the same thing to the entire email distribution list, can they get more segmented? Some advisors have graduated to breaking up their email lists into groups, but very few have personalized the communications down to the individual.

For this to happen, the Vestorly users need to get comfortable with the “automated rebalancer.” That means the software uses historical data on each email recipient to determine what that person should receive in future communications. It is a leap of faith, but a very cool feature if it works.

Wisz noted, “Firms can customize it per person right now, but they have to get to the point where they trust the engine. Some are doing that, but not nearly enough.”

Jeff Bradanini, director of marketing at Beirne Wealth Consulting, LLC, has segmented their lists into private clients, defined contribution and defended benefits, so they can send customized content to those different audiences. He stated, “Since we started using Vestorly, we have heard some great feedback from our clients. Tangible proof that it is working is seen in improved overall readership and the email engagement is higher, with more people clicking through to visit our website.”

Vestorly’s Costs And Ideal Clients

The best pricing depends on if an advisor is associated with a broker-dealer or custodian that has an enterprise relationship with Vestorly.

Vestorly’s current clients range from small businesses that do not have the resources to create their own content to some large financial service enterprises. Wisz final thought: “We’re for anyone that wants to engage their audience with interesting information and see results.”

Mike Byrnes is a national speaker and owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC. His firm provides consulting services to help advisors become even more successful. Read more at ByrnesConsulting.com and follow @ByrnesConsultin.