Content marketing offers a high-quality opportunity to convert visitors into customers. However, if you want to capture then retain your target customer’s interest, you need to give them valuable information. It’s only when they have the details they need that they can make a decision.
If your financial institution answers questions and offers solutions to common audience pain points, you can increase their loyalty. You can also generate leads which feel understood and nurtured.
The above infographic shows why having an effective content marketing strategy is important. A substantial number of potential buyers place value on the content that brands produce. Therefore, it’s essential to know how to do the job properly.
When you embark on the creation of your bank’s content marketing strategy, you should look at it like a puzzle. First, you need to create a solid framework, like the puzzle’s edges. Then, you complete the center with creative outputs and dynamic data.
Of course, this doesn’t mean content marketing has a precise formula for success. There are so many factors involved that everything can’t possible go as you plan every time. Yet, if you follow these five steps, you’ll have a clear way forward to creating your strategy.
1.Defining Your Goals
The best place to begin when it comes to drafting an effective content marketing strategy is to define your goals.
A surprising number of institutions fail to take this essential first step when coming up with their strategy. They simply look upon their content as purely “for conversions”. It’s true that this is what you’re trying to achieve. However, you must add context around it. Why are you posting this content? If you create and share it, what can you expect the outcome to be?
Above, you can see some of the goals that your content marketing strategy may need to address. Keeping these firmly in mind at the early stage of devising your strategy is imperative. Once you know your concrete goals, you can start crafting your strategy around them.
2.Understanding Your Audience
A major consideration is how to build greater brand awareness with your target audience. It’s only then you can persuade them to consider your brand and finally make the choice to become a customer.
The more new content you create, the more you can strengthen your relationship. Social media plays an important part in this. But avoid simply posting content – take the time to read customer comments and actively ask for their insights.
Understanding who your institution’s target audience are and what’s important to them is crucial to a successful content marketing strategy. Creating a detailed buyer persona is a key step here.
This infographic shows how coming up with a detailed customer persona can be achieved. It also demonstrates why doing this is so important. With increased conversion rates of 10% and improved click through rates of 14%, it’s definitely a vital step.
Some banks make the mistake of opting for a content-centric approach. They create content before looking for the right audience to read it. Others take a fully audience-centric approach – identifying their audience then creating specific content for them. The most successful approach is to aim for the sweet spot in the center.
When you know your audience and what they need but also know your own message you can create engaging content. Combining your goals and your detailed buyer persona allows you to devise a strategy that truly works.
When you don’t align with your target audience, you will never achieve the desired response from your strategy. This applies regardless of the amount of content that you create.
So, how can you begin to understand your audience and know what they need from your brand?
The first step is to understand the customer’s journey. How much do you really know about them? How much research did you already do? What kind of information will catch their attention and create a relationship?
As soon as you’ve identified the common behaviors and interests of your target audience you can start segmenting them. When you have divided your target audience into separate groups, you can begin creating content for each one. As a result, you can supply relevant information for every group instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all model.
When you do this, each customer can see you know them well and want to serve their specific needs. You may supply services for many different types of client. But, you need to market only content that is relevant to each group to achieve maximum impact.
Once you understand your customers well, you can begin customizing their experience in your communications.
3.Determining The Type Of Content To Create
It goes without saying that every content marketing strategy requires content. When you reach this stage, you must determine what type of content you need to create. Drawing up a content calendar at this step is also a good idea so you can plan ahead.
As you can see from the above, there are many types of content that you can include in your strategy. You need to choose which ones are best for your institution’s needs.
Choosing formats that are most relevant to your target audience is essential to your content’s success. What do they care about? Will they prefer a more visual experience? Do they need data or information?
The average customer will interact with different types of media an impressive 11 hours each day. That means that the marketplace is a very competitive one. You need to raise your brand’s game to get the attention of your prospective audience.
Finding ways to make content interactive, engaging and innovative is vital. Including images, embedding videos, adding social streams and putting in downloadable links can all be beneficial. Delivering key information in a wide range of formats is also part of any successful content marketing strategy. This ensures you can appeal to a broad spectrum of people with different preferences when it comes to content.
4.Choosing Topics And Identifying Keywords
Once you reach this stage of your content marketing strategy, you know the types of content you’re going to create. You now need to determine the right topics for your needs and identify keywords.
These statistics show why your financial institution needs to focus its efforts on SEO. Without focusing on search engine optimization, your ROI and results will be less than optimal. Keywords help blog posts and website pages rank more highly on the Google search engine. Since three quarters of searchers stop at the first page of results, this is important.
How do you choose your keywords? Look at what your institution’s competitors are doing. What do they rank for? Examine the gaps that exist between your institution and theirs. Which terms would you like to rank for that aren’t on their list? Have their users made any comments that you can alleviate with your own services and products?
By carrying out this research, you can generate keywords that allow your website to rise through the search engine ranks. This enables you to sustainable build authority with the search engine and increase your website traffic.
However, before you begin creating content that includes these valuable keywords, you need to consider topics.
Unfortunately, successful content marketing isn’t as easy as writing a host of keyword heavy posts. Content marketers must inform and educate their target audience so they can build up trust and create worthwhile conversations.
How do you select the right topics for your brand, then?
Learn what’s popular in your sector by using tools to discover high-performing content in certain topics. Find out what your customers and prospective customers are asking about your industry. Set up topic Google Alerts to discover what is breaking or trending. These are all valuable ways to learn which topics your target audience are interested in learning about.
When you’re armed with the information about topics, keywords and formats, you can then begin the process of creating content.
5.Creating And Distributing Your Content
Finally, it’s time to create the content itself that will boost your organic reach and create more conversions. There are a few guidelines to follow when it comes to the process of creation:
- Write to suit the buyer personas that you have drawn up.
- Use meta descriptions, teasers and titles so your audience are compelled to read the content.
- Put the content’s benefit in the title so readers know immediately why they must read it.
- Create unique content. Avoid regurgitating information that can already be found. Emphasize your point with new research or write in a new style.
- Know the idea you’re keen to put forward and reinforce it with the content. Avoid going off on a tangent or explaining several linked topics in one piece.
- Avoid using overly eloquent or complex vocabulary unless your target audience requires it.
- Be clear and concise. You need your readers to relate to your content and get value from it.
When it comes to creating content, it’s worth considering the benefits of leveraging influencers and guest contributors.
As you can see from the above chart, content marketers have a lot to say about influencer marketing. There are also a number of benefits to using this strategy.
When guest writers contribute to your posts your reach can be expanded. Not only that, but your voice can be amplified through the power of social sharing.
Experts in your industry, bloggers and active YouTubers are all potential contributors to your strategy. However, they must be relevant to your target audience and aligned with the values of your brand.
After creating your valuable content, you then need to distribute it. This is a key step in the process, and surprisingly, it’s one where a lot of content marketers fail.
It’s important to think carefully about the way your content will be distributed. After all more than 86,000,000 blog posts get published every month on WordPress alone. This means content is very easy to find. How do you make yours stand out?
Of course your website, email marketing and social media platforms are all vital distribution channels. However, there are other ways of getting content out to your target audience. These include:
- Publishing condensed versions of your content as LinkedIn posts from one of your institution’s thought leaders. You can then link to that page or post on your institution’s website.
- Publishing on third-party sites with high authority numbers. Make sure that the content is sufficiently different to the original so that you don’t get penalized, though.
- Consider using paid search or social media adverts as a way of getting content before your audience.
These are just some of the options that are available to you when it comes to effective content distribution. Be creative and adaptable and your content will reach its target audience in the best possible way.
Creating A Successful Content Marketing Strategy For Your Financial Institution
These five steps helps you to complete the content marketing puzzle that we mentioned at the start of this post. Follow them carefully, and you’ll be able to create content that is valuable and engaging to your audience. You’ll also be able to distribute that content effectively so your customers and prospects can read it.
The most successful content marketing strategies involve generous, insightful and helpful material that is created to serve the reader. It allows you to establish your brand’s authority as a leader in its field. Even better, it allows you to nurture leads with helpful information, giving relevant content to very user group.
When you implement these five steps, your content marketing strategy is sure to be a success. It will help you to attract a wider audience, and retain your existing customers. It will help to raise your brand awareness and increase trust in your institution. Finally, it will allow you to increase your conversions and drive up sales. As a result, your institution will become more successful, more profitable and more trusted amongst its target audience.