Whether you’re a one-man army running a personal brand or a cog in a giant corporate wheel, you’re aware that content marketing is all the rage nowadays. More than 4 million blog posts go live on the internet every day, with niches ranging from general health and technology to risible cat facts.
So, standing out in this sea of content by investing considerable time and effort in creating high quality, valuable content may seem like a daunting (or even futile) task. Still, according to HubSpot, businesses that blog are able to acquire 67% more leads than the ones who don’t.
And for those wondering, this includes the “boring” niches like finance as well. Even finance professionals have their favorite financial blogs where they can’t stand to miss a single post.
Unsurprisingly then, almost every business, big or small, has jumped on the content marketing bandwagon by simply having a “Blog” section on their website where they publish a few paragraphs every once in a while and call it a day.
Content Marketing is About to Change
That won’t work. At least not in 2019.
Coming back to the finance niche, the savviest of firms that proffer “financial services” – banks, brokerages, internet startups, financial advisors, credit unions, alternative lenders, etc. – are empowering their websites, digital campaigns and consumer outreach with content marketing.
And there is a demand for real-time financial information, people swear by customer data security and look for guidance on all things finance. Websites like StockHead & MoneyControl consistently produce relevant and important finance related information which helps their reader base immensely.
Financial content marketing is there to fulfill this demand.
As of now, 45 percent of financial services marketers claim that their content marketing is carried out on an “ad hoc” basis. Thus, there’s still much room for improvement for companies striving to outperform their rivals and reinforce relationships with their customers.
Financial Content Marketing Tips
You need a result-oriented content marketing strategy if you are to see a positive ROI from all your content efforts. While there are no hard and fast set of rules, here are a few pointers that’ll help create a reliable strategy, especially for the finance niche.
Make Content Consistent and Useful
The first step to win at the content marketing game is a proper game plan. As mentioned before, people seek advice on financial matters all the time. For content marketers, it means delivering high quality, useful content on a consistent basis.
So, create a content calendar that not only ensures you deliver content regularly, but makes you brainstorm all the topics and ideas and put them down right from the off. Also, try to make sure that whatever content you create is absolutely invaluable to your audience. No subjective fluff. For example, Rockstar Finance, a blog focussed on personal finance, has every blog post targeted at helping the audience save money or make money. They post daily without fail, and with intriguing titles that catch your attention.
Understand Your Target Audience
Do you know precisely who your target audience is? What information are they searching for? Creating content for the wrong audience would lead to a huge waste of time and resources.
Finance itself is a very broad niche. Narrow it down and focus your efforts on creating content relevant to the services you offer. That allows you to place the desired call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each post so your readers can easily take the next steps.
Also, use Google’s Keyword Planner to capture and optimize for the right keywords in each post.
Curate and Collaborate
Going at it alone is certainly not your best bet. Even if you post twice a day, every single day, odds of getting the desired visibility (and eventual conversions) are negligible, especially if you’re starting from scratch.
Collaborating with other marketers and bloggers by guest posting is one of the most effective ways to grow your brand and gain new audiences. Moreover, it will boost your search engine rankings and organic visibility too.
So, apart from planning and posting regular content on your own website, you must regularly contribute content to other high authority websites which is crucial for long-term success. Consider the same example of Rockstar Finance, they routinely submit guest posts to the big guns like Business Insider and The Financial Diet which in turn establishes their own authority on the internet.
And it is a two-way street., they don’t write original content every day. They curate it from other bloggers and allow guest posting. It leads to a win-win for both the guest blogger and Rockstar Finance.
Promote Aggressively
Planning and writing great content is just half the battle. Getting all that content in front of the audience is where most content marketers fail.
There are many ways to promote your content: social media, blogger outreach, email marketing, and paid. Figure out which is best for you. If your audience is people seeking advice on personal finance, then building an email list and creating a dedicated Facebook page might be the way to go.
People need an incentive to subscribe to your email newsletter. Offering exclusive content such as a free email course is one way to obtain their valuable email addresses.
On the other hand, if you are a relatively big business with a substantial marketing budget, paid promotions are also worth considering. Paid promotions are not limited to search advertising and paid social media campaigns, but also influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing in the finance sector is quite interesting. While fashion brands are able to leverage the huge social following of celebrities, it’s usually the micro-influencers that can make a huge positive impact for the finance firms. Micro-influencers generally have a following of 10,000 or less, but they cover extremely niche topics and as a result, have a more loyal fanbase. They are relatively much less expensive and using them can be great for boosting brand awareness.
Measure Results
Measuring the performance of your content from time to time is crucial in order to continually improve your efforts. While doing so may seem challenging at first, it gets easier once you clearly and correctly define all the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and track them with an analytics tool like Google Analytics.
Wrapping Up
Financial content marketing isn’t completely disparate from other types of industry-specific marketing ventures. However, the fundamental difference is how protective the customers are as compared to other business sectors they like to read about.
We all use banking apps, invest through online platforms, and rely on web advice for helpful financial information. So, getting your content marketing right can significantly improve your business.
The margin for error is much smaller. Inaccurate web copy could mean regulatory noncompliance, and poor user experience can negatively impact your brand. Thus, marketing with authority, intent and, above all, consumer trust in mind is key.
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