Article summary
Is your fintech marketing content oriented towards driving growth and sales? How can you review and make sure your content is hitting the sweet spot?
Identify and prioritize addressing demand drivers.
Examine content connected to marketing channels.
Repurpose intelligently, and across your funnel.
Track the right metrics using analytics - Not just engagement and page visits.
What is the best fintech marketing strategy? The answer is: There isn't one. The best fintech strategy is one that suits your unique needs. However, every digital marketing strategy has a few pillars that drive results.
Content marketing is one of these pillars and is a staple of every B2B inbound marketing strategy. Here's how content helps you boost revenues and user growth:
Helps you build authority in your niche.
Helps you answer pressing customer issues.
Connects you with your audience better than other digital marketing channels.
Helps you respond quickly to current industry trends.
Most marketing teams understand content's power to boost growth. However, browse most B2B fintech blogs. and you'll notice a lack of prospect-oriented material.
Here are four tasks you must execute to create content that connects you to your prospects and boosts growth.
Table of contents
Task #1 - Prioritize addressing demand drivers
As jargon-like as it sounds, the name "demand driver" is apt. A demand driver is anything that convinces prospects to search for and choose your product.
Here are some examples of demand drivers:
Pressing industry problems unsolved by current products
Issues caused by changing regulation
Changing consumer attitudes requiring thought shifts
Competitor action
Broad macroeconomic trends such as inflation, recession, etc
The bottom line: Addressing demand drivers will help you resonate better with your prospects.
How can you identify demand drivers?
You might struggle to identify demand drivers at first. However, there are a few ways to unearth them. Here they are:
Ask your sales team about repeated customer concerns
Monitor industry influencers for common topics
Check competitor marketing material to identify strategy shifts
Interview prospects and identify issues
If designed properly, your buyer persona template will help you identify demand drivers too.
Top tip: When interviewing prospects during the buyer persona creation process, have them rate issues on a scale from one to five (critical to not critical.)
Your existing content's popularity and engagement also offer clues about what your prospects want. Dive into your analytics package and see where the bulk of your traffic is coming from.
For example, if some content clusters receive more traffic than others, you can figure out what your users want.
How should you address demand drivers?
Identifying a demand driver is different from addressing it. Many content teams get side tracked by the latter task. Here are some helpful tips that will help you structure your content properly:
Dive deeply into an issue. Get to the bottom of it and answer as many questions as possible.
Offer numbers and statistical proof that back your claims up.
Highlight case studies that prove you can solve prospect issues.
Quantify your solution's impact as much as possible.
Speak your audience's language. Don't speak English if they speak Greek.
Example
Versapay offers a suite of solutions that eliminate problems with accounts receivable (AR.) AR refers to payments your company receives from customers. Technological innovation now helps companies automate AR processes, yet problems persist.
Here are some of the issues Versapay's customers face:
AR teams do not understand customer issues. This leads to miscommunication and fraught relationships.
Payment-related data is siloed. CFOs and Controllers lack easy access to insights.
AR managers deal with a mix of manual and electronic processes. The result is more work as tech stacks grow.
Versapay positions itself as a "Collaborative AR network." The company preaches collaboration between all parts of an organization as the solution to simplifying AR.
Given the technological bent of modern AR processes, technical infrastructure is critical. Versapay proposes that collaboration between CIOs and CFOs is critical since this brings infrastructure in line with financial needs, and vice-versa.
The report is chock-full of statistics, drawn from Versapay's research, and speaks the target audience's language. It features language that connects business benefits to internal processes.
Here are some examples of such language from the report:
"Delivering an excellent customer experience across all areas of the business is a key driver of digital transformation in AR."
"How would you calculate the return on investment (ROI) of digital transformation in accounts receivable?"
"...collaboration between the CFO and CIO is critical to the success of digital transformation."
This report ticks all the right boxes when addressing demand drivers. It establishes Versapay as an authority while fostering a connection with its prospects.
Task #2 - Examine content connected to marketing channels
When marketing a fintech, you're likely to use a combination of digital strategies. Paid ads, lead magnets, marketing funnels, etc are some of the different elements present in every strategy. Examine all of them and evaluate the quality of content within each element.
Paid ads
Paid ads have at least two pieces of content attached to them:
Ad copy
Landing page copy
Getting paid ad copy right is tricky. You must include enough keywords in your copy to let the ad network's algorithm know what you're talking about. You must also include those keywords in a logical flow so that human beings can make sense of your copy.
Top tip: Don't overthink ad copy. Use your keyword and connect it to a problem-benefit statement. For example, look at the Google ad results for "ar automation platform:"
A few points stand out immediately:
Salesforce is targeting the wrong keyword and has the wrong copy
Pipefy's ad copy doesn't address search intent
Cloudfactory is targeting accounts payable and lists benefits clearly
Pipefy's ad is the only one of these three related to AR. However, the company's ad copy is unclear. What does "Accounts Receivable template" mean?
The company has also included its name in the headline, a decision that can go both ways. Is Pipefy's brand strong enough to get people clicking at the mere sight of their name?
One hopes Pipefy's marketing team conducted enough brand marketing research before choosing this option.
Some better choices for Pipefy's ad copy would be:
Automate accounts receivable - Get paid fast
Accounts receivable automation - Collect faster
Accounts receivable with automated invoicing and collection
And so on. All of these choices implicitly state the problem and explicitly list the benefit.
The second piece of content connected to paid ads is the landing page. Let's look at Pipefy as an example.
The landing page hosts a video, a great content choice. However, this video is soundless and moves far too quickly for a viewer to grasp what is going on.
Calls to action (CTAs) are littered throughout the page and stand out clearly (GREAT!)
The page's copy does a reasonably good job of communicating benefits (Meh..)
For instance:
"Say goodbye to misplaced invoices, toggling between legacy systems, and dealing with delays or penalties." - This sentence speaks directly to audience issues - An excellent choice.
"Don't miss any due date" - This is confusing language. AR deals with receiving payments. "Missing a due date" is connected to making payments (AP.) What is Pipefy trying to say here?
"This is a jumpstart on frameworks requiring standardization and streamlined communication" - Fluff, fluff, and more fluff.
Overall, Pipefy can do a much better job of communicating the benefits their product brings to finance teams. They're using an esoteric keyword to target a broad audience - a poor choice.
The bottom line: Conduct a similar analysis on your landing page content. You might be losing conversions or paying too much for irrelevant traffic.
Lead magnets
Several fintech marketing strategies use lead magnets incorrectly. How often have you seen an eBook or a whitepaper behind a gated form? Many fintechs pat themselves on the back for achieving high "conversion" rates with these lead magnets but fail to generate sales.
Top tip: Keep your lead magnets as short and free as possible. Instead of an eBook, create a checklist. Instead of a whitepaper, create an infographic.
Your prospects will read content if it engages them. However, if you're seeking leads, your audience doesn't know you yet. Asking them to devote 30 minutes to reading your eBook is unrealistic. The only leads you'll receive are other content marketers looking to quote stats or research.
While that's great for SEO, you'll not generate sales quickly. Keep your lead magnets simple and deliver value instantly. Check out this helpful checklist below, for instance.
The bottom line: Can you create a checklist that helps your prospects figure out where they stand? Dive into your buyer persona data and start designing!
Funnels
Funnels aren't an element as much as they are a pillar of your marketing. Content is present in every stage of the funnel, and you must review your assets. But what should you review them for?
Top tip: Check whether your funnel is doing a good job of qualifying prospects. Are you filtering the right people out? Are you qualifying people and delivering high-quality leads to sales?
Many fintechs have disorganized funnels, with content achieving multiple objectives. While this looks good on paper, the reality is you'll throw too much at your prospects before they're ready.
It's a bit like explaining how the brake energy harvesting mechanism works on a car the moment a prospect enters the showroom. Too much, too soon!
Top funnel or TOFU content must offer prospects a path to explore further. Bottom funnel or BOFU content must assume the reader is interested in evaluating the product.
B2B fintech content is an exception. In these cases, it's fine to address BOFU and TOFU visitors in the same piece.
Example: Take a look at this article on Ramp. It doesn't beat around the bush and position Ramp as an ideal solution. However, the title suggests a TOFU search intent.
Someone landing on this article might search for "how to deal with a recession for small business" or some such query. The person typing this query might be looking for practical tips, a solution, or both. Hence, Ramp's article covers all search intents.
The bottom line: Are you satisfying the right search intents? Is your content separated based on funnel position correctly?
How nimble are you?
Money and finances are highly emotional topics. There's always opportunity and crisis in these sectors - remarkable opportunities for you!
The best fintech digital marketing strategy creates space for content that quickly addresses current needs.
Top tip: Leave space in your content calendar for topics that quickly address emerging issues. You'll capture the SEO boost these topics offer and quickly establish authority in your field.
Example: Ellevest is a big noise in the personal investing for women space. This article in their magazine addresses rising concerns about inflation and savings depreciation.
Readers can access helpful links throughout the piece. There is no CTA here, nor is there any intention to sell. It addresses reader concerns and moves on.
The bottom line: How helpful are you? How soon can you produce content that addresses emerging prospect concerns?
Task #3 -Repurpose content intelligently
Content famines are a major stumbling block to increased engagement. Publish too much too soon, and you risk running out of things to say. There are a few problems with this approach.
First, you're prioritizing quantity over quality. Second, you're probably relying way too much on SEO research if you find yourself running out of things to say.
Top tip: Create content theme months. For example, in January, talk about one issue and talk about another issue in February. Create different forms of content to avoid sounding stale.
Repurposing is essential in today's environment since prospects engage with content in different ways. Some prefer video, some prefer audio, some prefer text, and so on.
Here's a simple monthly content production plan:
One newsletter per week.
One BOFU article per month.
Two TOFU articles per month.
Two podcasts per month - escalate to weekly eventually.
One live event per month.
Weekly video releases - B2B fintechs may not find this necessary.
These releases will deal with the same issue while approaching it differently.
Do not adopt the stale approach of breaking up a whitepaper into smaller blog posts, and so on.
Example
DNS infrastructure solutions provider NS1 offers a great repurposing example. Below is a TOFU lead magnet (an infographic) that addresses common issues prospects encounter.
NS1 can repurpose this infographic in multiple ways. For instance:
They can break it into a detailed blog post
Dive into a single issue and host a webinar
Create BOFU content based on a single issue
The third option is what it chose to do. The video below targets one issue prospects encounter and demonstrates how NS1 solves it.
Many content teams think repurposing means using the same content in a different format. However, as NS1 has shown, you can repurpose content across your funnel and drive sales.
The bottom line: Think laterally when repurposing content. Create multiple forms, zoom in on a single issue, zoom out, create BOFU from TOFU, etc.
Task #4 -Track and adjust
Tracking and adjusting is the most important part of content creation and your broader fintech marketing strategy. It's also the step that most marketing teams get wrong.
Top tip: Performance tracking goes well beyond counting pageviews and likes. You must translate analytics data into business-relevant language.
To achieve this goal, you must organize analytics data.
Group your content
Every fintech has pillar issues to talk about. For example, an insurtech will talk about topics related to backend process automation, distribution campaigns, and product design.
When measuring engagement, you must go a step beyond individual content engagement and track engagement at the content pillar level. This will help you achieve the following:
You'll know which clusters receive the highest engagement
You can track which channels drive the most traffic to your pillars
You can create better repurposing strategies
If you're like most fintechs, you're probably using Google Analytics to track engagement. You can set up content groups within the Admin section of the analytics interface.
Top tip: Create content groups based on page titles that contain your pillar topic's keywords.
You can now track audience engagement at the content pillar level and draw better conclusions.
The bottom line: Group your content now and begin tracking engagement at that level.
Channel groups
How do visitors find you, and which strategies are working best for you? Most marketers will think the answer to this question is something like:
Organic channel - Google search etc
Paid ads
Referral traffic - Backlinks etc
However, GA doesn't group traffic numbers according to these channels by default. If you want to answer questions like the following, you must set up channel groups:
Should we focus on organic search or paid more?
Are our backlinking efforts paying off?
Is Youtube a good channel for us?
Which channel's content needs an upgrade?
Which channel brings in the most sales?
Here's how you can create channel groups. Navigate to the Admin section of your GA account and select " Custom Channel Groupings" as in the image below.
The bottom line: Group your traffic by channel and figure out which generates the highest ROI.
Track in-page events
Most fintech digital marketing teams mistake page visits for content engagement. For example, let's say you've posted a video 10 minutes long on a page. You notice that the page receives higher than average visits, a duration of 5 minutes, and has a high bounce rate.
What's going on here?
Are people arriving on your page, viewing the video, and leaving halfway? Or is the average duration skewed by several people leaving immediately and the rest viewing the video to the end?
Top tip: Google Analytics doesn't track in-page events that do not trigger JaveScript calls. Video playbacks, PDF downloads, etc are not tracked as a result. You must use Google Tag Manager to set up a trigger and link that to a goal within Google Analytics.
The bottom line: Start tracking in-page events to measure true engagement. You'll get rid of vanity metrics and create better marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Creating and executing a fintech content strategy can be daunting. The tips in this article will boost growth and revenues for your fintech app.
If you need more assistance, work with a fintech writer and content strategist with a proven track record. (Hint: I'm talking about myself)
Get in touch with me here to learn more about how you can use content to boost growth!