Finance is one of those tricky topics that most copywriters just don't get. When we get an enquiry for financial copywriting, it's either because the financial service provider tried another writer who didn't meet the mark, or they tried a writer who failed miserably and they've needed to spend hours fixing the work (the latter is the most common scenario we see, unfortunately!)
After many failed attempts at outsourcing, so many business owners in the finance industry decide to take care of their financial copywriting themselves. But is it a good idea? It can be! But it mostly isn't; here's why:
Time is money
As a finance professional, you know all about opportunity cost. Writing your own financial content is the perfect example of this. How much money do you make per hour on average? If you’re spending hours creating content, it could effectively be costing you a huge amount in lost opportunity — not to mention it likely won’t be optimised for conversions or SEO.
For the sake of an example, let’s assume you make about $150 per hour. If you spend four hours writing, it’s cost you $600 — sure, it’s written by a finance professional (you), but it hasn’t been looked over by a writing professional (which brings us to the next point).
You're a finance professional (not a copywriting professional)
While you have the ability and expertise to talk about finance all day long, writing something for the purposes of education and sales is a completely different ballgame. A lot of technical knowledge goes into the writing process, right down to creating the perfect structure, knowing when to use an Oxford comma, and choosing between colons, commas and the em dash! We certainly don’t want to sound condescending; your financial knowledge is astounding! So it’s important the message is conveyed in the best possible way so more people can experience your expertise.
While most copywriters know about these technical writing aspects, they simply cannot grasp the technical aspects of the financial services industry. The amount of times we’ve come across copywriters who don’t know whether to call it the Age Pension or Aged Pension is astounding! So for things like the intricacies of business or trust structuring for tax optimisation and estate planning, or even simply understanding the difference between general advice or personal advice, these things are extremely far outside of your everyday copywriter's scope. Writing for financial advisors and mortgage brokers is completely different to writing for a retail store.
Our financial copywriters specialise in writing AND finance, with RG146 compliance as a minimum requirement and FASEA certification as a bonus!
Ineffective copy costs you more in the long run
If you want to save money by taking a DIY approach to your financial services copywriting, unfortunately, it will likely cost you more by doing it yourself.
Financial copy is written with intent. Each word plays a very specific role in taking the reader on a journey to ultimately encourage them to take action. Even if your copy is perfectly written from a spelling and grammar point of view, it's unlikely to be correctly optimised for conversions. (From our experience, it’s very rare for DIY copy to be perfectly written — we’ve actually never seen it happen! Spell checkers are better than they used to be, but they still lack knowledge of your brand guidelines, colloquialisms and tone of voice).
While you might save a bit of money now writing copy yourself, the lack of conversions compared to what you could have achieved had you used a professional financial copywriter may end up costing you dearly. (And also, we established above that if you’re spending your time trying to produce quality content instead of focussing on what drives revenue for your company, you’re probably not saving money once opportunity cost is factored in!)
Stand out in an increasingly crowded market!
If your website content or other marketing materials aren't getting you the attention or conversions you're looking for, it might be time for an update. Contact us for a quote today and get your content marketing on track.
About Rerise Digital
We specialise in expertly crafting content for a broad range of financial services brands. Whether you need website copy, a high-converting landing page, marketing emails, website content, white papers, a blog, client letters, product disclosure statements, or any other written content or marketing materials, we're here to help convey your value proposition to your target audience in a heavily regulated market. We write for a huge variety of financial services providers and other professionals including financial advisers, commercial lawyers, insurance brokers, commercial lenders, SMSF specialists, fintechs, and many others!