One study found that there are 4.57 billion internet users throughout the world. If you want to reach such a large group of people, you’ll need to have a content marketing strategy. When it comes to having a financial content marketing strategy, it’s understandable to want some help. Fortunately, I’ve got some helpful tips for your financial firm to get its content marketing campaign off the ground.
Table of Contents
Why does financial content marketing important?
At first, it might seem like content marketing and the financial services industry don’t quite make a good match. But that’s not true. Instead, many leading financial institutions use content marketing as an important part of their overall business strategies. Whether you work for a bank or credit union or other business in the finance industry, you’ll want to learn why financial content marketing is so important.
Great content attracts audiences
Companies from all walks of life, especially financial institutions, are now realizing that content marketing is great for connecting with a target audience. Think about it, people get bombarded with advertisements each day. The goal of most of these advertisements is to quickly get someone’s attention.
Instead of doing what every other business is and pitching to potential clients, you’re taking more time to create content that builds a deeper connection.
Lowering advertising costs
One of the most important things to keep an eye on in the financial services sector is money. If your company is spending money on a financial content marketing strategy, there’s no point in spending your profits on something that might not work.
When you use content marketing, you’re choosing one of the least expensive digital marketing strategies. Research shows that a digital content strategy costs 41% less than paid advertising. Choosing a low-cost marketing method means less financial concerns for your business.
A content strategy creates trust
I don’t want to do this, but it’s time for a proverbial pill that could be hard to swallow. Ready? Okay, here goes: most people don’t trust financial services companies. Much like lawyers and car salespeople, whether they’re good people or not, there’s going to be some initial distrust with these professions among people.
I know how hard this is, I worked as a car sales person for a few years.
The good news? Engaging financial content marketing can create trust! Instead of being one of many financial services firms in the world, your company can stand out and work on building trust through its content creation efforts.
What types of content should financial services companies create?
With content marketing being such a large part of an inbound marketing strategy, you can use this strategy in many different ways. But some strategies work better than others. Here are the most effective platforms when it’s time to produce content.
Social media posts
If you want to excel at financial content marketing, it’s time to start using social media channels. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other appeal to both older and younger generations alike.
Understandably, many in the financial services industry don’t want to look like they don’t fit in on these platforms. That might be the case if you start talking about complex topics right out of the gate. One of the best ways to create a personalized experience for social media users is to connect with them on a personal level.
What are the main pain points your customers are dealing with right now? Chances are, many of them want to do more with their money. You can also use financial content marketing to answer questions about money that your customers commonly ask about.
Blog posts
Not quite ready to tackle social media? In the meantime, a good blog post is a great way to take part in proper financial content marketing. For example, awareness-stage blogs can tackle topics that prospective customers might want to know more about. Your financial institution might be targeting topics that are more in-depth.
Whatever your goals are, a well-researched blog post can help you achieve them. For example, you can start creating content about how to overcome common financial challenges. You can also use common tax challenges as a source of content. Your options are almost endless.
Take 20-30 minutes for yourself or your financial services marketers to generate ideas, you’ll be amazed at how many ideas are generated.
Plus, with SEO-friendly content, your posts could soon start ranking highly in popular search engines.
Video content
In the past, lots of people watched television. I mean, they still do. But online content in video format has taken a huge portion of TV’s viewers away, especially among younger audiences. You don’t have to be an actor or director to start video marketing.
Check out YouTube and type in a few searches related to financial terms. You’ll see many financial brands pop up, each with their own videos. As the saying goes: if you can’t beat them, join them.
Podcasts
Creating digital content through social media posts or blog updates aren’t the only ways to reach an audience.
An increasingly popular way to reach people through financial content marketing is by starting a podcast. This content method is great for people who want to get their finances in order, but don’t have time to sit down and read a long blog post.
Starting a podcast gives you the chance to dive into financial literacy topics that could interest your audience. Plus, podcasts are low-cost ways to reach people and change their financial lives. All you need is a topic and a decent microphone. If you want to go the extra mile, record a video podcast.
Infographics
Financial information isn’t the easiest thing for the average person to understand. If you need a way to break down financial topics, consider making a few infographics. An infographic combines images, text, and designs to create an eye-catching picture.
You can use a tool like Canva to make high-value content in infographic form for free. Create and share these infographics. Soon, your website could become a trusted resource for financial information.
Ebooks
You’ll also notice many financial services brands making and distributing ebooks. An ebook is just a shortened term for an electronic book. These books are great ways to reach prospective clients.
For one, electronic books cost little to money to create. Second, they don’t take an insane amount of time to write. The key with ebooks is to create quality over quantity.
8 financial content marketing tips that work
By following these tips, you’ll have a financial content marketing strategy that amazes your customers. It will also have your competition jealous of the results your firm gets. Use these tips to build brand awareness and market your business online.
1. No complicated terms
One of the most important keys to having a successful financial content marketing plan is speaking to your audience. As you begin preparing your first pieces of content, try to watch out for any jargon. It’s great that you’re excited about bears, bulls, and commodities. Just make sure that you’re explaining anything that a new customer might not know.
When it comes to learning about finances, some people want to dip their toes into this pool rather than dive in. So, it’s a good idea to make sure you have shorter topics for people that just need a quick question answered.
2. Create calculators for your website
Most people in the financial industry love working with numbers, which sometimes involves doing lots of math. I hate to break it to you, but most of your customers hate doing math. To put it another way, most everyone in the world doesn’t enjoy doing math equations.
How can people not liking math play into your financial content marketing strategy? By including calculators for your customers and readers that takes the work out of planning their financial futures. It might seem like a simple gesture but it can be effective.
For more information as to how this can be successful, look at SoFi as an example. This company’s website has a wide range of calculators for visitors to use. By helping out its users and making things simple, they have a network of thousands of visitors each week. If you do this, your financial firm’s website could start seeing a boom in traffic.
3. Choose topics that matter
For most people, finances stress them out. I mean, there’s a reason why so many marriages end in divorce due to financial problems. When you’re thinking of topics to write about for your financial firm’s website, choose ones that matter to them.
To come up with ideas, take a moment to think about questions you commonly answer. Most likely, you can already hear the customers asking you these questions in your head. If 10 out of the 40 people you help in a day are asking the same question, it’s likely that many more others need answers to this same question.
Whether you’re taking care of financial content marketing for a small business or large corporation, topic selection is crucial to the success of your marketing campaigns. If you need more help, here are a list of potential topics to get you started:
- Financial planning in your 30s/40s/50s/etc
- What are the best ways to invest my money?
- What’s the difference between financial term A and term B?
- Why should I partner with a financial advisor?
4. Mix things up with images, video, and infographics
While you might enjoy reading lots of text throughout a typical day, the average person needs to mix things up. With that in mind, make sure that you’re breaking up chunks of content with images, videos, and infographics.
I’m sure you know what images and videos are. However, you might be unaware of what infographics are. They are an awesome way to break up lots of content into one large image. You’ve probably seen one before and got some knowledge from it.
5. Launch a podcast
It’s easy to think that all of the content you create has to be text-based. Fortunately, that’s not true. You can start attracting more people to your financial business by launching a podcast.
In the past, it wasn’t always easy to set up a podcast. With that said, it’s now much easier than ever before to launch a podcast about almost any topic.
Since we’re talking about financial content marketing, you already have a topic. You don’t need to have hours of content to talk about or a list of guests to interview. As many podcasters will tell you, the key to success in this industry is getting started.
It’s always important to create a quality product. But don’t let fear of failure stop you from getting your first few podcast episodes under your belt.
6. Create lots of long-form content
Understandably, most people feel that their finances are extremely important. After all, what can you do in life if you don’t have your finances in check? Considering that, most of your readers will be looking for long-form content.
To put it another way, long-form content provides in-depth knowledge about a topic. Generally, long-form content would take someone at least five minutes or more to read.
You can have the easiest time creating this type of content by thinking about topics that require lots of explanation. By creating a nice table of content and including visuals with your content, it’s easy to make something long-form that everyone will find useful.
7. Re-purpose content you already have
Chances are, your financial firm already has content. Fortunately, you can do what’s known as re-purposing content to have even more success with your firm’s financial content marketing efforts.
A few popular ways to re-purpose content are:
- Turning blog posts into videos
- Taking text-based content and making it into a podcast
- Creating infographics from text
There are many great ways to re-purpose your content and make it fresh for a new audience.
8. Create interactive content
The world of digital marketing moves fast. Certain content formats that used to appeal to financial clients a decade ago, such as magazines or newspapers, are far less popular now. With that in mind, a great way for financial services brands to appeal to audiences is by offering interactive content.
For example, interactive financial services content like quizzes or tests can be great ways for financial advisors to reach their target audiences. You could create tests to see how well customers deal with managing finances or investing.
In closing, financial content marketing doesn’t have to be boring. If you’re not taking part of some type of content marketing plan, now is the time to start. Before you get started, it’s understandable if you want to do a bit more research. If you’ve got the time, head back to Content Marketing Life for all kinds of tips and strategies.
Alex Eagleton is a copywriter and digital marketer passionate about helping companies connect with customers. Throughout the past decade, he’s worked with companies including Referral Rock, Connecteam, and Ramsey Solutions. He’s a versatile writer who understands how to align with companies, truly matching their voices and tones.
When he’s not writing, he enjoys spending time with his dogs, reading, and playing guitar.
You can reach him by emailing alex@contentmarketinglife.com.