How to differentiate your content strategy
Earlier this month, Cloudflare reported that for the first time, more web traffic came from bots than from people. More and more of what those bots read—like more and more of what we read—is itself produced by AI. These trends point to something that has long been true: a content strategy should center on material that differentiates both the firm and the named author.
"Could AI have written that?" If so, you're probably writing a non-differentiated explainer of some kind. Your content may still surface in AI summaries, attributed to your firm—useful visibility, but not the same as a visit. In a Pew study, researchers found that viewers of a Google AI Overview clicked through to a cited source about 1% of the time.
Clients want to hear from you
Content matters because your clients and prospects want to hear what you have to say. The surest way to an effective content strategy is to put the audience first. What are they thinking about? Can you reflect back to them what’s on their mind and offer your specific perspective?
Asking these questions can help you avoid putting too much effort into what we might call “baseline content.” Baseline content includes explainers, guides, FAQs. These are important to the point of being foundational, yet they aren’t distinct—anyone can produce them—and, increasingly, so can a model.
Differentiating content, by contrast, is material no other firm could have produced, because it's grounded in a specific voice of a specific investment professional (or team) or a specific relationship. It's about—or from—someone in particular and usually requires their direct input.
That kind of content tends to take one of two forms:
- You can demonstrate a process or an outcome: show what happened for a real client, most powerfully in their words. Outcome-oriented differentiation is a way to talk about what you do without sounding salesy, because the frame of reference is the client’s. Granted, this is often difficult for regulated investment firms.
- Or you can take a point of view: show a command of the market, the mechanics, or a decision that only your investment team could explain. Market commentary is the most familiar entry in this category, but market-event explainers also qualify—though AI tools are pushing more basic commentary into the “baseline” category.
The first type is centered on the client; the second on your expert. The following table explores both categories in comparison to baseline content.
| Baseline content | Differentiating content: Demonstrate an outcome | Differentiating content: Take a view | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The test | Could another firm have written it? | Could the client tell it themselves? | Does it take a position or share from experience something only this author could offer—vs. explaining what anyone could look up? |
| Sourced from or attributed to | Research, public data, product and marketing teams | The client and (for a wealth manager) the advisor; the client’s own situation, the result, their own words | The investment professional or financial advisor—command of the relevant industry, the mechanics, the decisions |
| Drawn from | External, often internet-based information | Interviews; client emails | Interviews; remarks to media; proprietary data; talks, webinars, conferences; planning sessions |
| Forms | Blog posts, explainers, FAQs, product pages | Blog posts, client stories, manager-and-client Q&As, testimonials, video and podcast | Blog posts, articles (including placed externally), Q&A with the investment professional or advisor |
How content sounds
The difference between baseline content and differentiating content may show up in how it sounds.
For example, posts called “What rising rates could mean for your portfolio" or "Five tips for tax-efficient investing” are probably in the baseline category. Over time, these will probably become less important because AI models can turn out similar material on demand.
Differentiating content might sound more like:
- "Our take on private credit repricing” (taking a view)
- "What allocators are telling us about liquidity right now” (taking a view)
- "How a foundation rebuilt its fixed-income sleeve after the 2022 drawdown” (demonstrating an outcome)
Both modes of differentiating content require the same thing: a person, and their input. The hard part isn't the writing; it's getting to the client and the investment professional (which is one reason why drawing from existing source material is so effective) and structuring the ideas so they’re salient to your audience.
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