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Allow me to be the one-millionth person to tell you that it’s time to accept the “new normal.” Indeed, the circumstances in 2020 triggered a massive shift in the digital consumption of information. This means things just got that much more competitive for fintech content marketing.
Smart fintechs will shift accordingly and adjust how they focus marketing resources to boost brand exposure and grab greater market share. But change isn’t usually easy, so we’ve put together three of the top fintech content marketing optimization tips for 2021 to help you shift your strategy toward success.
1. Be Everywhere
The first of three fintech content marketing optimization tips has to do with content promotion. Effective content marketing requires shameless promotion (including self-promotion). If you’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and money into creating high-quality content, you shouldn’t be shy about sharing it.
Leverage your track record with great content to reach out for guest posting opportunities or to ask for backlinks. The key here is reciprocity; work with complementary experts and thought leaders to share, link back to, and cross-promote each others’ content.
Shoot for the stars. You may feel intimidated by the prospect of reaching out to other influencers you admire, but don’t forget that you’re the expert at the topics about which you write. The confidence it takes to reach out will likely be appreciated by influencers, who have also had to build their own influence in a similar way.
Yes, all publicity is good publicity, but free publicity is better. When you create reciprocal thought leader circles, you earn a broader reach over a larger audience.
Don’t stop there. Consider other online opportunities for your content to shine, including online forums and other relevant communities to your business. Posting on Quora and answering questions can elevate your status as a thought leader and be an effective way to post backlinks to your site.
Ideally, promotion is part of a flywheel that is constantly in motion and constantly building off of previous pieces. In this way, effective content promotion has a cumulative effect that makes it easier as you get more established. The key is to promote early and often.
2. Be Free.
Offer your help for free. For B2C fintechs, this may mean offering a free version of your product or service and/or a free trial version of premium products and services. This allows prospective paid customers to test out your offering without feeling obligated to commit to something they aren’t completely sure they want yet. If you offer a free version, this can also enable you to onboard people to the point of reliance. Once people are hooked, they are more likely to pay for the full functionality.
“But I thought we were talking about fintech content marketing optimization tips?” We are. For B2B fintechs, free trials may also apply, but you can also provide insights and thought leadership around industry problems for free. This is where content marketing comes into play. The sales cycle for B2B is typically much longer, so you’ll need to warm people up and build relationships from awareness through to a prospect’s final decision stage. Providing high-quality, free content that helps decision-makers solve problems and find solutions is an effective way to build relationships, earn trust, and transform an audience into paying customers.
3. Hone in on Low-Hanging Fruit
Everyone has it, but not everyone harvests it. Some of the easiest fintech content marketing optimization tips include low-hanging fruit. There are probably a few areas where your content marketing falls short. Some of those gaps will require an intensive rework of the strategy, while others may just take a few tweaks to yield excellent results. To start, run through your funnels and flywheels and see which areas are ripe for improvement.
Awareness/Attract
Driving more traffic to your site can happen in several different ways. Consider:
- Running a/b tests on headlines for existing content. Buffer did this and was able to increase click-through rates by more than 40%.
- Shortening lead submission forms. Neil Patel was able to increase conversion rates by 672% by using this and other tactics.
- Updating best-performing copy. Pillar articles can attract a ton of traffic so it’s important to keep them fresh by regularly updating them with new information.
Consideration/Engage
Once you have people in the funnel, you want to make sure you’re keeping them engaged and thinking of you by the time they are ready to make a decision. You can do this by:
- Setting up lead nurture campaigns. If you don’t already have lead nurture campaigns set up, you may be missing out on up to 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
- Personalizing your emails. When setting up emails or lead nurture campaigns, start with a template, then personalize as much as possible. Doing so can improve open rates by nearly 50%.
- Address gaps in the funnel. Discover where people fall out of your funnel and stop engaging. This may mean updating your lead nurture sequences, changing up the subject matter of your thought leadership, or changing the frequency of posting new content.
Decision/Attain
Leads at the bottom of the funnel are looking for one final nudge that gets them over the edge. Improving results here may mean:
- Adjusting calls-to-action (CTAs). If you are seeing a ton of engagement but most of your audience falls off when it comes time to take action, you probably need to reconfigure your CTAs.
- Retargeting. Just because someone didn’t convert now doesn’t mean they won’t later. Retargeting allows you to intelligently target people who have already shown interest. Kimberly-Clark reports a 50-60% percent higher conversion rate for customers who have been retargeted.
- Sweetening the deal. Sometimes people don’t convert because they just don’t like the terms of what you’re offering. An extra nudge in the form of a better, more compelling offer may be just what they need to take the leap.
These three fintech content marketing optimization tips just scratch the surface — though they can be a significant scratch if done right. The main takeaways are to 1) put yourself out there fearlessly, 2) think about which free offers or content might entice people to try your product/service, and 3) make quick fixes for quick results. There was a massive shift to digital in 2020, so making sure your fintech content marketing is up to snuff will be critical in 2021.
Looking for more fintech content marketing optimization tips? Check out our Fintech Customer Acquisition Playbook.
