Everyone has a story to share. We are shaped by our life experiences, both personal and professional. Sharing stories about our own lives, and also the lives of the people whom we serve is very powerful. It gives our connections the opportunity to really feel like they know us.

Every financial advisor I’ve ever met has a story to tell about who they are, what they are passionate about, why they do what they do, and most importantly, whom it is that they serve! Blending these kinds of stories and publishing them online where they can now be found and consumed by your clients and prospects is a tremendous opportunity to not only build a loyal following, but ultimately to grow your business.

This is the power of blogging, or marketing yourself through the content you create and publish online. People love stories, and they especially love stories that they can personally relate to. Marketing through storytelling takes the concept of blogging and content marketing to a whole new level. Not only are stories more personable, they are more inspiring, emotional, motivational, and memorable.

As you learn the stories of the people you are connected to, and they learn your stories, your relationship can inevitably grow stronger both online and offline.

Think about events such as the Olympics, or even the Superbowl. It is fascinating to learn the stories behind the people who are competing. It draws us to them and it makes us care about them! They are no longer names and faces to us, they are people whom we have come to know and love!

5 Types of Stories for a Financial Digital Marketing Strategy

There are many ways to think about storytelling, and it also takes some practice to become a better storyteller! Keep in mind, stories are all around you happening in every moment of everyday. You just have to open your mind and start viewing your life experiences as a conglomeration of stories that can be shaped and shared with your audience.

You’re also going to need a place to publish and distribute your stories, and this is where a blog or blog-driven website comes into play. Otherwise, how will your stories be found?  You must take the initiative to get them out where they can be easily discovered and shared by your target markets! Blogging and social media channels are the modern day tools for building a storytelling marketing strategy.

Here are 5 types of stories for building your digital storytelling marketing strategy:

1)Educational Stories

Educating your clients and prospects through stories is a very effective way to help them understand both simple or complex financial planning and investment concepts. Let’s face it, financial content is dull and dry. If you want to hook subscribers, fans, and followers with your educational content, you need to make it interesting and put it into the context of a story!

If you’ve never read the book entitled “Storyselling for Financial Advisors; How Top Producers Sell“, I highly recommend doing so. There are some very simple stories and illustrations in this book that you can share with clients and prospects to help them better understand financial concepts. This book can help jump start your storytelling creativity as it pertains to financial concepts such as risk and diversification!

Also, Carl Richards’ new book “The Behavior Gap” is full of simple stories and illustrations about managing wealth that you can share with your clients and prospects and showcase in your digital storytelling marketing strategy. (you must give credit to the author of course)

2)Trending News Stories

Most of the news that your clients and prospects are exposed to tends to be negative and fear based. This is especially true with regard to financial and economic news. The mainstream media does a great job at keeping us worried!

Utilizing trending news topics is a great way to drive traffic to your blog, but you need to make that news relevant to your target audience. How does it affect them? Why should they care? Can you think of a story to weave into the news topic?

Share a story about how this news has affected someone you know or work with, or provide a hypothetical story that is related to a current news topic to make it more relevant to your audience. If you can’t come up with a story, find one online and point to it as an example!

Take some cues from Business Insider and look at the way they spin current business, investment, and financial news. Their titles and articles are catchy and humorous, and they do a great job of hooking the reader with the way they shape and present trending news topics!

3)The Stories of Your Clients

Everyone of your clients has a story. If you’ve built strong relationships with them, you probably know their stories. You should absolutely protect the identity of your clients and not share any of their stories without their permission!

Think about the power in sharing a story about a client who has built a successful company in your community. Can you interview the client about how they accomplished this? What about sharing a story about a client who has accomplished an amazing feat or overcome an incredible obstacle in life?

When potential clients or prospects learn from you about the stories and experiences of people who are just like them, they may be more likely to work with you. They will come to believe that you understand their situation as well!

If you can’t tell the specific stories of the clients you work with, tell the generic stories of the target markets you focus on. For example, if you focus on entrepreneurs, what are their common struggles? Are there stories about successful entrepreneurs inside or outside of your community that you can point to? What about stories that have been written about great entrepreneurs over the years?

4)Classic Stories, Lessons, and Quotes

In Michael Port’s Book entitled “Book Yourself Solid“, he shares a classic story about an old man, a little boy, and a donkey. The lesson of the story is essentially that you can’t please everyone, and it’s an awesome reminder to believe in yourself!

So many great stories have already been told and shared, and as long as you provide credit where credit is due, you can pass on the stories that have already been told in a context that is relevant to your readers!

Curating classic stories, lessons, and quotes from others can be a very powerful digital storytelling strategy.

 5)Your Personal Stories