Content Marketing for Financial Companies

2. BlackRock Journey
• Raise brand awareness in a crowded marketplace, focusing on investors and
financial advisors. Differentiate through branded content.
Challenge
Strategy
• Content: Use retirement as a unifying pillar
• Distribution: Build syndication channels via relationships and support with
technology
• Audience: Tailor audience to content, and tailor content to audience
10
Solution
• Enhance blog to include more retirement content, more form factors, ease of
sharing (esp via RSS).
• Distribute blog and other content via social channels
• Increase use of LinkedIn paid promotion because of deep client data based on
job titles and seniority, as well as affinity follows
• Leverage Larry Fink as Influencer

3. FINANCIAL
ADVISORS BLOG HNWI
YOUTUBE LINKEDIN
BLOG FACEBOOK TWITTER

4. Determining ROI, Step 1
• Created a “simple” spreadsheet to show the value
of Owned, Earned and Paid across the traditional
categories of Awareness, Consideration and
Engagement
• Noted spend for social (“paid”)
• Compared with spend for digital efforts
• Was able to show that social achieved 6x more
ACE than traditional digital, and we knew more
about the consumers to inform additional content
LinkedIn Owned Earned Paid
Awareness
Consideration
Engagement

5. • The magic is in earned. How is this calculated?
• A LinkedIn example from 2014 shows the value by ACE
• 129% of the campaign total
Viral Clicks
Social Actions
Impressions
Follows
Total Campaign Spend: $xx,xxx
• Paid Clicks: xxxx
Viral Clicks: xxx
xxx Social Actions (includes Likes/Comments/
Shares from Paid and Viral)
xxx,xxx Impressions (from Paid and Viral)
xxx New Followers (includes Paid and Viral,
based on a $18/CPF)
Total average Campaign CPC: $x.xx
Total eCPC: $x.xx
Determining ROI, Step 2

6. Why LinkedIn
For BlackRock
• The clients and prospects are there
• We can tailor our spend
• It’s super mobile friendly
• It works
 250K+ FAs on LinkedIn in the US
 FAs are 151% more likely to engage
with content on LinkedIn than average
90% of FAs who use social media for
business turn to LinkedIn, 3 out of 5
had success in gaining new clients with
1/3 generating over a $1MM in new
AUM
Of 40% of HNWI who frequent LI on
a weekly basis, 26% indicated that
they use it for a financial purpose
with 28% taking some kind of
action after reading financial
content
That engagement is being driven by
greater trust in the platform; 51% of
HNW investors trust content
shared by brands on LinkedIn
HNW Investors’ needs change at
different life stages. LinkedIn has:
US Profile Changers: 5.1 Million
US Retirement: 12.5 Million
US Geo-Changers: 1 Million
Financial AdvisorsHigh Net Worth

7. Tailored Messages To Target Audiences
OVERARCHING MESSAGE
Retirement - Larry Fink
TAILORED MESSAGE
Financial Advisors
TAILORED MESSAGE
HNWIs

8. April 2013:
Started Sponsored
Updates
OwnedPaid Earned
Followers accelerated
organically to over 100k
4x
greater engagement than Finance
average
CTRs,
Avg. Engagement > 1.4%
1.25x
in added value
earned inventory
12 Month Summary

9. QUESTIONS