A picture is worth a hundred words
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this but… financial content can be dry and hard to understand. And visuals can help people grasp a concept.
What if you have a client who is trying to figure out how to repay student loans? You can print out an article listing the pros and cons and each, or you can build a visual table that shows how each repayment plan works and how they’re different, so it’s easier for them to visually process what might work for them.
Or consider how visuals can help clients understand the market.
FAANG stocks are a good example. We often talk about tech stocks driving the market to clients who have no idea what that means. So what’s going to help you explain that concept more? A lot of words about weighted averages… or showing them this chart?
People learn in different ways, and a lot of people are visual learners. So charts like this one may not work well in isolation (we know that from clients) but they can help drive a point home in the right context.
Plus, there’s an element to this that goes beyond education. People share infographics (as in, designed content) THREE TIMES more than any other type of content. We’re also more likely to remember images than text, so if you want your clients to be able to recall important information, visuals can be a big help.
The problem: graphic design is expensive. It’s one of those things that really requires a professional touch. And if you’re hiring a designer who understands finance and won’t make silly mistakes — labeling the Y-axis for a Dow chart in dollars instead of points, for instance — it can cost even more.
Then there’s the text issue. If you’re doing more than adding a chart… say you want to do a full blown infographic (like the one you’ll see below), many writers don’t understand how to minimize word count to let the visuals do the talking. The best infographics are 350 or so words. How many financial advisors (or writers) do you know who keep things to 350 words?
So now we get to the solution. This is one of the few times I’m going to talk about a Content 151 product in a blog… and it’s because I think graphic design is a real problem facing advisors. I spent some time thinking about how to solve that problem… and I did. So, here’s how it works.
You select a design style. Here are two versions of our “Cost of College” IG that looks at how college costs are changing, so you can help your clients estimate what they’ll need to plan for.
At left, an excerpt from our classic design style; at right, our modern look.
2. You select your information. Often, we include more information than necessary. If you advise your clients against for-profit schools, we can take those statistics out. If you only work with clients in one state, we can take out the bars on the 49 others.
3. Customize the look. You send us your brand colors and we customize the IG to fit your look and feel.
4. You add your personal touch. The designs feature “advisor edge” callouts where you can do this, plus theses infographics are uploaded as jpegs, meaning advisors write customized (and searchable) introductions and conclusions, on top of customizations within the graphics themselves.meant to have are meant for this. We also suggest taking the introduction out of the infographic and making it part of the blog, so you can optimize it for SEO and ensure these posts fit in with the rest of your site.
Et violà! A customized infographic for your clients. The way we develop and produce the IGs ensures yours won’t look like any other advisor’s version. And since you’re not starting from scratch, the price point is much lower.
Questions? Want to hear more about IGs or what content we have available in IG format? Leave a comment below or shoot me a message at shawna@content151.com.