Fintech companies often struggle to measure the returns of content marketing spending. They know it’s something their competitors are investing in, but they’re not seeing a clear link between fintech content marketing and lead generation.
If you’re heading up marketing at a fintech company, this can become a real headache. Content marketing for fintechs can work. You just need to do plenty of planning and strategy work upfront, before jumping headfirst into publishing and promoting.
In this article, we’ll explain how you can generate leads with fintech content marketing in 2022, while giving you examples of how well-known fintech companies are doing just that.
Define Content’s Role in Your Funnel
Funnel classification helps you solve multiple challenges at once:
- It helps you personalize content. A top-of-the-funnel prospect doesn’t need an in-depth explanation of the company’s product.
- It helps you follow buyer journeys. Using appropriate CTAs, you can guide your prospects deeper into your funnel.
- And it helps you better measure audience interest and intent. Did someone download a bottom-of-the-funnel guide? That’s a sign that they may value other content that helps them make purchasing decisions.
Establish where your fintech content ideas sit in the funnel and be sure to categorize different formats. For instance, blog posts are a great way of building trust with top-of-funnel readers, while webinars and whitepapers are often more suited to bottom-of-funnel prospects who are inching towards making a purchase.
How Airwallex Fits Content to the Funnel
Airwallex’s blog shows good funnel and content classification in action. Their blog posts highlight interviews with customers, answer questions, and provide advice. You’ll see no product-pushing going. Airwallex understands the position of its blog in its funnel. And it invites prospects to dig deeper.
Things change when we examine the deeper part of their funnel.
- Using SEO-optimized product pages (bottom of the funnel) and country-wise guides (mid-funnel), Airwallex positions itself as an expertise-driven company
- Their product pages are populated with CTAs because prospects visiting these pages are more likely to convert to customers
- Their mid-funnel pages don’t have CTAs since these visitors need more nurturing.
With this classification, it’s clear Airwallex knows what their prospects are looking for and how to personalize content for them.
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Distribute Content with Earned (or Paid) Media
You need to look beyond your own channels too. Unfortunately, ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t work for fintech startups. This is why content promotion and distribution are more important than content production.
As fintech marketing leaders know, content promotion takes work. You might consider industry journals such as Fintech Connect or Finance Magnates. The publications of industry associations are also excellent targets. For example, if your product is a BaaS solution, you could consider The ABA Banking Journal or the Credit Union Times.
- Pitch stories about big issues affecting your audience — and propose solutions
- Follow any editorial guidelines about style, word count, and product mentions
- Make editors’ lives easy, to give your article a higher chance of being approved.
Paid media strategies work similarly, except you’ll have to pay for article placement. Paid placements can help your website’s domain reputation increase, thanks to valuable backlinks from these publications.
- This boosts your future content’s SERP automatically
- Your homepage and product pages may automatically receive a lift too.
- A positive piece in well-followed publications can give you a social media boost.
Typically, companies share content on their LinkedIn pages. If no one knows the company exists, this effort is for naught. If you want your content to be seen, you have to work hard to promote it and distribute it.
How nCino’s Uses Media Placements
Backend-as-a-software (BaaS) company nCino uses paid media promotions to establish authority in its niche. The company features in publications, such as Techcrunch, to provide insight into its growth story, technology, and pre-IPO funding status.
nCino uses paid media placements in Entrepreneur and local news outlets to build its brand and reputation, by highlighting its work culture and sharing career advice from its female leaders.
Backlinks from these high-authority publications automatically inform search engines that nCino’s domain is valuable. This doesn’t guarantee high SERP positions. But it reduces the amount of promotional work nCino has to do to get their pages ranking high.
Be a Hub of Expertise for Your Audience
Just as you need to bring your expertise to outside channels, you need to bring outside audiences into your channels. And give them a reason to return. Addressing pressing issues surrounding the industry and hosting forums for discussion are great ways of presenting your fintech as an authority. In other words: act like your own media company.
How Spendesk Curates Audience Expertise
Spendesk’s CFO Connect podcast builds authority and awareness in a single package. The show hosts a wide range of CFOs and gets them talking about their business. It’s a clever approach because CFOs are one of Spendesk’s primary influencers in the purchasing process. By interviewing them, Spendesk builds awareness in a non-salesy fashion and produces content ripe for sharing with a wider range of CFOs.
Problem-Solve First, Gate Content Later
And when you attract visitors to your content, you don’t want to make it too difficult to access it.
This isn’t to say gating your content is bad. Gating makes sense when your content’s highly valuable. Think tools such as ROI calculators and data sheets put prospects first. Or proprietary research, conference session recordings, or webinars featuring sought-after experts.
Instead of imposing stringent gates, ask for minimal information and focus on giving your prospects the help they need. All you need to successfully confirm a lead deep in the funnel is an email address. Run a follow-up email campaign to their address, inquiring whether they solved their issue. Campaign Monitor reports that $1 spent on email marketing generates $44 in ROI. So rethink your gate thresholds and lean more on emails instead.
Cedar’s Ungated Growth Stories
In a fresh twist on case studies, Cedar interviews its clients about their growth stories and features them prominently in all their promotional material. They slide appropriate references to Cedar’s role in solving issues but leave them as soft mentions. At no point does Cedar gate such content or ask for information.
Link Content Marketing to Lead Generation
By marrying a robust lead-generation framework to your content program, you can generate top-notch leads. Yes, it takes a little more thinking and planning before you hit ‘publish’. But the rewards will make the extra effort worthwhile.
