Tag: marketing strategies

The finance world is evolving before our eyes.

In February 2020 just before COVID-19 went global, Deloitte predicted that traditional banks and finance institutions would face an unprecedented wave of disruption over the next ten years.

We already knew it was coming with the rise of consumer fintech like Robinhood, Venmo, and Chime.

Then the pandemic struck, and brick-and-mortar banks closed their doors.

Most debated whether they should reopen their storefronts at all. Others still debate whether they should pivot their physical locations to business hubs and coworking spaces.

Consumers had years to adapt to digital banking and payments before the pandemic. B2B companies, meanwhile, struggled to adapt to life 100% online. Many even found themselves as victims of fraud due to poor digital finance experience.

Financial service B2B companies have their work cut out for them educating buyers and establishing trust.

Financial digital transformation is scary for companies who don’t deal with tech daily or have already gotten burned. That’s why content marketing for financial services is absolutely vital for positioning yourself as a trustworthy and friendly solution.

Why is Content Marketing for Financial Services Essential?

Would you trust someone you just met to control your finances? Of course not.

Well, without content marketing for financial services, your potential customers don’t even have a meeting to base their trust – just a logo and name!

Content marketing familiarizes people with your brand. Over time, with the right kind of content, you can build trust among the right customers to partner with your brand.

Content Marketing Can Generate Demand for Financial Services

Lots of non-tech B2Bs won’t understand exactly what you do, much less why they need your service.

Content marketing lets you explain your solution to them in such a way that they feel like they came up with the answer on their own. The trick is to understand your audience segments and their organizations.

Content Marketing Helps Establish Trust in Your Financial Services

Once someone decides they need the product you offer, you still have to convince them you’re the one they should trust to provide it.

If you’re a new company or unknown to them, content marketing for financial services is vital.

Luckily, the average buyer consumes 13 pieces of content during their journey so take advantage of that to demonstrate your knowledge, expertise, and transparency – not promoting products.

Content Marketing Helps You Connect with Customers Emotionally

Financial marketing content is typically extremely dry and technical. Who said it has to be?

You can keep it professional while adding emotion to your content – and you absolutely should.

B2B buyers are humans too. Friendly, warm, welcoming, and conversational content can really set your brand apart from others, especially videos and blogs.

Consistent Content Can Boost Your Search Rankings for Competitive Keywords

Publishing comprehensive content regularly gives Google’s bots more information to scan. The bots gradually learn more about your site, expertise, and where you deserve to rank.

Eventually, you can prove your worth for those high-volume keywords everyone in your industry wants.

HubSpot recommends publishing three to five original (and high-quality) blogs each week for optimal SEO.

HubSpot

Content Marketing for Financial Services Generates Leads

Content is technically a form of inbound marketing. The more content you publish, the more chances you get to reach prospects and convince them to sign up for your lists or contact your sales team.

Quality Content Lets Leads Self-Nurture on Your Site

Thanks to AI-driven personalization engines, financial service leads can self-nurture as they browse your content. A lead might arrive at your site in awareness and gradually nurture themselves into consideration via your eBooks, whitepapers, and videos.

Regular Content Engages Your Social Media Audience

Publishing content on your website – be it blogs, eBooks, podcasts, video, or infographics – gives you a reason to post on social media.

You can even repurpose blogs into social media infographics or clip videos for social sharing. Once you publish a high-quality blog, it’s extremely versatile to adapt across different platforms.

It’s Cost-Effective and Sustainable Long-Term

While PPC certainly has a role to play, that doesn’t make it any less costly. Content marketing lets you play the long game while delivering instant results too.

A one-time investment in a single blog post can produce thousands of visits to your site for years to come. The more content you publish, the more you boost your reach as you carve out your little space on the web.

4 Important Content Marketing Strategies for Financial Services

These are the most important high-level content marketing strategies for financial services. These strategies below will help you explain who you are, why you’re trustworthy, and what you can do.

1. Thought Leadership

Thought leadership content is critical for financial services because it shows customers that you’re prepared to manage future issues.

88% of decision-makers say thought leadership sways their perception of a company but only 17% say the content they read is good.

Leadership at other companies want to know your leadership style so they can decide if you’re a safe partner for years to come.

2. Multimedia

Video, podcasts, and especially infographics are all must-haves for educating your audience.

3. Personalized Feeds and Hubs

You never know which account is visiting your site and what’s on their mind. AI can’t read minds but with intent data, behavioral data, and quality content, it can come pretty close.

Personalized content hubs use similar algorithms to Netflix to personalize based on industry, account, pain point, and more.

4. Buyer Enablement

Stakeholders want you to make their job easier with useful content. If you can, you’ll close larger deals with less stress for them.

Personalize Your Financial Services Content Marketing with the Right Tech

The right technology is vital to every content marketing strategy. On one hand, your technology shows customers that you’re on top of the latest advancements and capabilities to improve their experience and security.

Technology also helps you get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. It makes your job as a marketer that much easier and more effective.

Learn how Tipalti improved lead conversions by 597% and lead quality by 79% with Hushly’s content engagement tools.

No industry is riper for disruption than financial services – especially B2B financial services.

Despite the surge in automation and technology everywhere else, most B2B’s payments and processing still rely on outdated systems and methods.

Deloitte points out that COVID-19 served as a catalyst for digital transformation:

Deloitte

Researchers at Deloitte also predict that the biggest disruption in global banking is yet to come.

Even among consumer startups, fintech has only recently started gaining considerable traction – mostly by targeting pain points and demographics traditional financial institutions ignore.

Consumer fintech startups like Robinhood and Chime also understand the importance of educating their audience through content.

Their websites are filled with well-organized, plain-spoken, and digestible FAQs for not just using their services, but learning how to invest and manage money effectively.

Chime has their target market nailed down pat:

Chime

It’s smart to follow their lead in marketing your financial content for B2Bs.

How to Create and Market Financial Content Online

Your financial content marketing’s success depends on a few key factors:

• Positioning your solution as more secure than traditional methods
• Identifying pain points, especially issues your buyers might not even be aware of
• Educating audiences about your industry and expertise
• Getting your content in the right place at the right time

Use the steps below as they apply to your company and audience to create and market financial content effectively.

1. Create Detailed Buyer Personas

You must understand who you’re creating each piece of content for if you want it to resonate with anyone. Otherwise, it will be too generic to interest anyone.

Detail matters tremendously for marketing financial content. Each business faces unique challenges in their digital transformation where finance is concerned.

Aside from the usual firmographic details, answer questions like:

• How will their revenue change over the next five or ten years?
• What payment systems do their clients use?
• What is their biggest financial security risk?
• Which obstacles are holding back their digital transformation?

2. Set Up News Alerts for Relevant Pain Points

See why detailed personas are so important now? Once you map the pain points for each persona, put yourself in their mind.

Run a Google News search for each persona’s top pain points and set up alerts:

Google

When you create content, you’ll know exactly what they’ve already read, and you’ll have endless ideas for adding nuance to current events.

3. Map Your Financial Content for Each Stage

Much of your content’s job involves generating demand and building brand recognition so people can trust you. You’ll need to carefully consider what content formats are best for each persona at each stage.

Infographics, webinars, on-demand tutorials, expert interviews, whitepapers, case studies, calculators – work engaging content into each part.

4. Use Financial Content Marketing to Educate

Robinhood has an extensive library of digestible evergreen content to educate new investors:

Robinhood

Like Robinhood, your job is to make complex ideas easy to understand.

Keep in mind that many stakeholders don’t have extensive finance backgrounds. Write in their language and explain terms or concepts as needed. Infographics, GIFs, and short animated explainer videos are useful for this.

5. Show that You’re the Future via Thought Leadership

Thought leadership content shows why you’re a trustworthy authority on the topic.

It’s not about always having a unique take on things either.

Imagine someone finds your thought leadership blog and scrolls back through the years. Are you confident that your opinions and ideas held up? Were you too bold and risky? Or did you neglect to consider the full picture?

Those are the things target accounts – especially enterprises – will look for as they debate doing business with you. They plan for years and decades so they need to trust that your business leadership can hold up too.

6. Commission Original Research to Promote in Places Like Yahoo Finance

Like thought leadership, original research shows that you’re tapped into the heart of finance and your audience. It shows you’re committed to learning, understanding, and figuring things out as they come.

Plus, original research is a goldmine for backlinks to the stats.

Make sure to publish press releases or news articles for each piece of research and submit them to relevant places like Yahoo Finance.

7. Connect with Influencers to Market Your Financial Content

Influencers have already established trust in your target markets, so they provide the perfect places to market your financial content.

Always analyze each influencer’s followers to make sure the firmographics match those of your personas.

Likewise, thoroughly vet each influencer’s background. You can’t predict their future behavior, but you can make sure the credentials and experience in their bio are correct.

8. Get Your Content on Google News and RSS Feeds

Applying for Google News is easy but, if approved, earns you instant access to millions of people each day. Look for other RSS feeds that relate not to your industry but your audience personas.

Make sure you choose a target keyword for each piece of content to optimize the title, subheadings, images, and copy. Google and other feeds will scan your content as they decide where to place it in personalized feeds.

 9. Personalize Your Website Content with AI

Speaking of personalization, don’t neglect your on-site content experience either. AI-driven tools use algorithms to personalize each visitor’s content feed – just like Netflix.

Everyone will see the content you made for their unique vertical and business needs. Using these tools, other financial service companies can generate 597% more leads.

Optimize Your Financial Content Marketing Experience

You really can’t afford to market your financial content without the best tools available.

That’s not hyperbole either.

As a financial services company, you must show potential customers that using cutting-edge technology correctly is always your top priority. Your ability to effectively personalize your site’s content experience with AI-powered streams, smart forms, and custom ABM campaign pages instantly builds trust.

Show potential customers that you prioritize the latest technology on your front-end and they’ll be more likely to trust that you’re running the latest security features as well.

Websites are really all about making a positive and memorable first impression – especially in B2B financial services. What first impression are you giving?

Give your leads a comforting and exciting first impression with Hushly’s full suite of AI-driven personalization tools.