Content
Services

Content Services:
Your story, expertly told.

Content is often at the crux of media outreach and marketing campaigns.

We help clients evaluate their content—what exists today and what do we need to create? We look at our clients’ peers and the industry to identify timely, relevant topics that prospective customers, the media and the industry care about. We draft and edit content of all kinds—and help make the process go smoothly.

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Because we work exclusively in the investment field, we are attuned to the topics and ideas that are driving the important conversations in your market. Most of us come from the industry itself so we can work efficiently and at the most senior levels of your organization to turn insights into a pipeline of content that gets noticed and shared by your clients & prospects and published by important media in your space.

Your frequently asked questions, answered.

What does FurtherFaster mean for Content Services?

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Transcript

I guess the starting place with further faster when it comes to content is furthering your business goals and making sure the process doesn't bog you down. When we start a content engagement, we start with an assumption that there are people in your organization that have interesting things to say. That's almost definitely true.

Think of all the conversations you have on a regular basis, your business leaders and subject matter experts among each other with clients and prospects, others in the industry. There are people in your organization who are thinking thoughts that your audience wants to hear. And in order to capture those thoughts, write them down, get them out the door in whatever format makes sense for the purpose. We need to come in with an understanding of your business, capture the confidence of the person that we're talking to so we can have a conversation that can get at the interesting material, right?

Get beyond just what is the value proposition of the business line say that we're that's relevant to the conversation at hand and get to what might mean something to a center of influence who could pass along your content to a third party of mutual interest say a prospect of yours. That's a good test by the way about a topic. It's something I raise sometimes when I'm on the phone with somebody who might be an author of a bylined article, you know, how can we frame this topic in a way that's going to educate without being too salesy? It's going to make a difference for your business and further your business objectives.

So the key thing is to understand your audience and then whatever the context is, whatever the type of material, to make that process easy, sensitive to compliance restrictions, sensitive to your brand voice, and get it out the door. That's Further Faster.

How do you help with presentation decks?

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Transcript

Okay, the big thing about PowerPoint presentations is that they can be awful. PowerPoint is a tool, and it's a tool that can be used in an unlimited number of terrible ways.

Whether we're talking about a slide presentation in front of a bunch of people, or using PowerPoint to produce a presentation book or some other kind of leave-behind or follow-up, we need to use the tool in a way that delivers the message in a way that the audience cares about and will connect with.

So like anything else, any other piece of content, that starts with understanding the audience. Say it's a presentation, an in-person presentation. Who's going to be in the room? What questions do they have? What knowledge base are they starting with? What are you trying to convince them of? How do we structure it in a way that leads them from one idea to the next, one idea at a time? Sometimes with the takeaway on every slide and an emphasis on how that takeaway leads to the topic of the next slide, so people feel comfortable and taken care of, so people aren't distracted by what you have on the screen and have that material conflict with what you're saying with your words. So critical.

And, it has to look good too. And that doesn't necessarily mean fancy. That might mean really minimal. But everything about how it looks needs to be consistent with the message that you're delivering with your words.

The same of course is true if you're using PowerPoint to leave behind materials, presentation books, as I said. In that case, you can accommodate a lot more words, but the same use of the tool applies unless you're using it to develop something that maybe your design partners would be better to do in InDesign. You're using this tool for a reason, and it's to deliver information in a structured way that takes ideas one at a time, does it in a visually engaging way, and makes people feel at ease.

That connects beautifully with the message development we do at the heart of every engagement, certainly with any piece of content, and it connects to our media practice as well.

How does the message triangle relate to content?

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Usually, the hardest part about a content activity is not the writing itself, but rather the idea and framing the idea in a way that doesn't accidentally break the implicit contract you have with your readers not to sell too hard to them. This is especially true in a blog context. Nobody wants to come to your blog and read about your value proposition again and again. They just won't come back.

That doesn't mean that you can't fold in reference to your value proposition in discussion of, say, your process. Or, connected to your views on the industry.

There's lots of ways to take your key messages, and we develop those in our media practice, say, for journalists. And those messages for journalists needs to be expressive or connected to your value proposition, but certainly not overwhelmed by it because journalists don't care about helping further your business. They care about what you have to say about the industry that connects to a broader story, a broader trend, something new, something that their readers care about.

And you can think like that and find ways to express what you have to say that does connect to your value proposition in just about anything that you produce.

Content and Authority Marketing.

We develop compelling content that articulates our clients’ unique perspectives and expertise to leverage in multiple ways:

Earned Media

Articles, editorial submissions, expert interviews and commentary

Owned Media

Website content, blog posts, whitepapers, marketing materials, client or shareholder communications

Paid Media

Sponsored content, advertising campaign content, enewsletters, whitepaper promotions

We research awards and speaking engagement opportunities for clients to expand their firm and/or leadership authority, increase visibility and make an impact to reach target audiences. We then make recommendations on how to engage, participate and leverage these opportunities in support of business goals. We can also assist with writing the submissions and compiling supporting information (leadership bios, press releases, firm stats, case studies, websites and more).

In addition, we regularly help clients prepare award nominations and prepare for speaking engagements, from webinars to conferences and more.

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Marketing Communications Support.

Our content work is broad. We serve as an extension of our clients’ marketing team on strategic brand development initiatives and paid advertising campaigns. We generate awareness by developing or refreshing a wide range of materials, including:

Presentations & webinars
Video scripts
Fact sheets & brochures
Advertisements

Content Services FurtherFaster Proofpoints.

Showing business owners how financial advisors help

Sharing technical
accounting expertise

Raising financial advisors' visibility

Showing business owners how financial advisors help

Background

Among the leading national wealth management firms, our client sought to provide its affiliated financial advisors with content to help them deepen relationships with business owners—providing them with greater value while growing the firm’s high-net-worth client base.

Scope of work

We planned, researched, interviewed subject-matter experts, drafted, edited and designed a white paper centered on how financial advisors can help business owners connect their business decisions and their overall financial plans.

Outcome

The paper gave voice to financial advisor representatives from around the country, demonstrating to business-owner clients—without becoming salesy—how deeper conversations with advisors can help them add business value throughout the life cycle of a business.

Sharing technical
accounting expertise

Background

Our client, an independent valuation provider lacking the cross-selling benefits of large M&A advisors and Big Four accountancies, needed creative ways to get in front of decision makers at public and private companies and financial sponsors.

Scope of work

We provided financial journalists with a regular cadence of independent expert content—both to grow their own technical understanding of issues and as a source of submitted content. Topics included goodwill impairment, valuing intangible assets and portfolio-wide valuation of illiquid debt and equity securities.

Outcome

In addition to boosting visibility through the media, our content work raised engagement with existing clients and prospects. One proof point of our ability to get into the weeds on complex topics: our client used, verbatim, significant portions of an article we wrote in a comment letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

Raising financial advisors' visibility

Background

This firm’s community-bank origins prevented prospective clients and financial advisors from recognizing the breadth and sophistication of its wealth-management offerings.

Scope of work

We crafted messaging to emphasize benefits of the firm’s unique family ownership and integrated business model. We crafted content to raise visibility of the firm’s practice leaders regionally and in financial-advisor trade publications. We helped streamline content production and bring greater consistency to investment commentary and other client-facing updates.

Outcome

Our client came to be ranked among the top investment firms in its state, alongside nationally known brands. Content from the firm’s experts has appeared in MarketWatch, Kiplinger, Advisor Perspectives and many more publications, both trade and local.

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