“To me, finance content marketing is about education,” says Josh Frith, co-founder and managing director of The Dubs. “No one is born with an inherent understanding of finance, markets or economics.”
In taking education as a starting point, a content marketer immediately puts themselves in the customer’s shoes. But, not every customer seeks the same knowledge, in the same way, about the same subjects.
Instead of taking a general approach, it’s important to ask:
- Why would a customer visit your website, in particular?
- What would a customer want to know, before investing in your products?
- What knowledge would make a customer feel confident about trusting you with their money?
- How might your content and products make a difference to a customer’s life?
Take Prudential Financial, a US-based Fortune 500 company that deals in life insurance, retirement and investments.
“Their challenge is to sell products that live over the horizon — that customers won’t see the benefit of for decades,” says Frith. “Asking someone to contribute a lot of money to their future is like asking them to give a lot of money to a complete stranger.”
So, Prudential reframed the picture by asking a single question, “What do you love doing today?”, thereby persuading customers to save for their retirement — not for the sake of accumulating money, but to create the possibility of doing what they love, every single day, for 20 to 30 years.
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Finance content marketing doesn’t work overnight
Whatever your mission as a finance educator, remember that education doesn’t happen overnight. Your goal is to help customers develop deep, meaningful knowledge — however long it takes.
Luckily, that’s one of the very reasons why content marketing is ideal for finance brands.
“Getting a customer to a point where they have enough information to make a good decision takes time,” says Frith. “It takes a lot of research and analysis.”
Hence, to win customers over, your content must be better researched and more informative than that of your competitors. As Frith puts it, “Finance content marketing is an opportunity for a finance brand to show their intellectual capital.”
“ Finance content marketing is an opportunity for a finance brand to show their intellectual capital.”
In Australia, two publications doing just that are ANZ’s Blue Note and the Westpac Wire. Both read like online newspapers, packed with intelligent, timely, well-written reports and features.
It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it
Finance content marketing isn’t finance content marketing without a distribution strategy.
“It’s a fallacy, the idea that all you have to do is make great content and wait for your audience to appear,” says Frith. “Many organisations make the mistake of spending a lot of resources creating content, but miss the mark when it comes to working out who it’s intended for and how to get it to them.”
Targeted distribution goes hand-in-hand with content creation, otherwise your content marketing won’t work.
“Our partnership with Aberdeen Standard Investments is testament to that, says Frith. “We began with a clear goal — to re-imagine the asset management marketing space, which was littered with corporate cliches, like images of men in suits, sitting in front of laptops in dark rooms, working all night long, and strong handshakes in boardrooms.”
“Aberdeen’s Thinking Aloud avoids cliche. It’s an online publication featuring high-quality editorial, bespoke design and intelligent imagery. The content works on multiple levels as a lay person can read it and learn while for the professional investor it provides insights that can help with investment decisions.”
“And to maximise reach and budgets content sourcing and social distribution is managed centrally but delivered globally.”
The result? More than 300,000 followers on social media like LinkedIn and X and millions of pages of content being viewed globally.
Are you ready to get to the bottom of finance content marketing? Get in touch.
