Any digital marketing agency can seem more or less competent as long as it’s being dealt a good hand, just like every stockbroker in America must have seemed like a financial wizard up to 23 October, 1929. It’s really only when we see a downturn in the stock market that broker content solutions truly come into their own.

Key takeaways:

• Though facts are important, any marketer will tell you that emotions – positive or negative – weigh at least as heavily.
  
• A broker’s crisis communication starts with avoiding unrealistic expectations well before trouble strikes.
  
• When something like a downturn in the stock market occurs, clients will be reassured by more frequent and expansive communication.
  
• It’s easy for people to fixate on the negative when they don’t understand the bigger picture. Providing a balanced view goes a long way to soothing ruffled emotions.
  
• If a broker’s content creates a sense of composure among current and potential clients, its brand will be remembered well after the crisis has passed.

Broker content strategies to retain clients

Retail investors who are having a bad day, week, or month in the markets may well look for someone to blame. Whether you represent an online trading platform or more of a boutique broker, content creation has to take this emotional response into account during a panic.

Now, your clients’ emotions are certainly real and aren’t going to stop influencing their decisions any time soon. Telling everybody to: “Just calm down!” won’t get you anywhere. So, let’s take a look at a few broker content tips to keep in mind when things get a little turbulent and you need to reassure your clients to make sure of retaining their business.

Lay the right groundwork

Whatever you say today is going to be evaluated partly on the basis of your previous statements. This is why crying wolf or promising the moon will only hurt you in the long run. It’s often helpful to think of broker content marketing as a conversation: you’re not just telling people what they need to hear but building a relationship with them.

Done right, this can be invaluable when the unexpected, inevitably, happens. Done poorly, a market downturn can wipe out your credibility overnight. Fortunately, most broker content marketing tends to be on the cautious side, so it’s unlikely that your readers will ever catch you in a direct contradiction.

Still, effective communication is about more than conveying facts. In particular, don’t rely on boilerplate, including the cliché: “Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results”, when discussing the risks of investing. Readers’ eyes skitter right past these phrases like a hockey puck sliding over ice, even (or perhaps especially) if they’re italicised or highlighted with an asterisk.

While responsible broker content solutions already involve not making any promises you can’t keep, you’ll want to make sure to take responsibility only for that which is within your control and qualify your opinions explicitly.

On Octa’s Facebook page, for example, we find this:

While the advice on buying precious metals is technically correct and I see the word “could” in there somewhere, not including a link to an article containing more in-depth guidance represents a missed opportunity (and may just come back to bite them later).

Overcommunicate – early and often

Let’s revisit a fundamental concept from communications theory, namely the feedback loop:

Source: Communication Theory.org

Now, in a normal, face-to-face talk, the feedback loop is short and unobstructed. If you don’t understand the meaning, context, or intent of some message, you can simply go: “Huh?” and wait for clarification.

What your broker content plan needs to take into account, though, is that the feedback channels between your online readers and you are longer, noisier, and may barely even exist. Current and potential clients could be tuning out or misinterpreting your messages without you having any idea.

More than ever, a crisis is the time for your content marketing to display your concern for your clients and confidence in the future, frequently. Clarity and solid information are all-important, even if this means repeating yourself.

As a content channel, email may become more useful, as people aren’t likely to see messages about something they’re worried about as spam.

The GuruFocus newsletter, for instance, now lands in my inbox every morning as well as afternoon:

I don’t know if their accelerated email content plan is a result of the recent turbulence in the markets. If so, however, letting their subscribers feel like they have a finger on the market’s pulse is a smart move on their part.

Place things in context

Today’s news cycle is measured in hours. This is why molehills turn into mountains, only to be forgotten in a week’s time. So, when a blip occurs, ask your digital marketing agency to provide some historical perspective, discuss possible reasons behind recent movements, and (carefully!) speculate on different investments’ future prospects.

The goal isn’t necessarily to diminish what is happening or give any specific advice (“Buy the dip!”) but to flesh out readers’ understanding of events beyond the bare-bones information newspaper headlines provide. Currently, for instance:

• A number of exchanges have experienced a dip recently – after going hell-for-leather since November of last year.
  
• Several well-known funds have liquidated certain positions – but this seems indicative of a correction, not a crash, especially if they’re keeping their money in cash equivalents rather than bonds or gold.
  
• Some tech, and especially AI-linked, stocks are taking a beating – though it’s hardly the first time that investors have re-evaluated a new, not-yet-profitable technology.

Futureproofing and contextualising a broker’s content plan – that is, ensuring it will make sense, in hindsight, whatever happens – isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Still, you don’t actually have to offer any earth-shattering insights or crystal-ball predictions. All you really need is a broker content strategy that provides a balanced view, including just enough analysis to enable an intelligent reader to see both the forest and the trees.

Use the crisis to bolster your brand

If history teaches us anything, it is that eventually the dawn will break, the rain will stop, and the market will recover. Being sincere and transparently supplying the right kind of information even before this becomes obvious will stand you in good stead later.

If, for example, you advise your clients to hold what they have, clearly explain your reasoning. Use accurate, clear-cut phrasing, support your opinions with facts, and guide readers to additional resources where appropriate. Whatever a broker’s content strategy, neither sensationalising nor downplaying the issues should be on the cards.

Financial services have a special legal and ethical responsibility to spread reliable information. Journalists, too, are supposed to follow certain professional norms, though this obligation is more theoretical in their case, especially online.

To give one example:

The thing is, though, that the right kind of broker content plan can easily make these kinds of histrionics work to your advantage. If you can position yourself as an approachable voice of reason while newspapers act as if the sky is falling and other brokers’ crisis communication deteriorates into jargon-stricken platitudes, your content marketing will have scored a huge win.

Final thoughts

A broker’s content marketing is always a great tool for getting its brand out there, but it takes on special significance during a crisis. You never know when we’ll see a drop in the market or the emergence of a new Bernie Madoff.

It’s inevitable that bad things are eventually going to happen to your investors, it’s likely that some of them will get scared when this happens. Whether or not they then pull out of the market depends on whether your content marketing has succeeded at building trust, both before and during times of uncertainty.