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Last Updated on April 23, 2019 by admin
Great fintech content is essential to any fintech inbound campaign. You need content assets that are high-quality, value-adding pieces to attract quality leads. But lead generation shouldn’t necessarily be the only goal of your content marketing.
In a recent blog post, I talked about the erosion of trust within the finserv and fintech spaces. That erosion, along with a lack of clarity and the complex nature of many fintech businesses, can cause hiccups throughout the customer lifecycle beyond acquisition. This is where solid fintech content can step in and save the day, when done well.
The point here is that fintech marketers need to consider how content impacts people at every stage in the game – from unqualified leads to qualified leads to sales-qualified leads to customers to former customers.
One of the most overlooked areas for content is retention. Instead, retention’s best friend acquisition gets all the attention. This makes sense. For many fintech startups in the growth stage (and well-established businesses— hell, all businesses), acquisition/sales is the name of the game. But it’s important not to overlook the retention aspect.
Content marketing for growth and scaling does not have to be rocket science. Finding a way to generate buzz around an exciting new product is fairly straightforward. Here’s the thing – that same buzz can be used to keep current customers excited and engaged with the product and brand.
So what’s the next step in creating fintech content for retention? Take an inventory.
Content Auditing 101: How to Create and Analyze a Dashboard for Content Data
The best place to start in creating content for retention is by taking stock of your current content assets. Completing a content audit can provide the 360-degree view you need to take your content marketing to the next level. Best practice is to do a content audit every 6 months or so, depending on how frequently you’re making updates to your site and publishing new content.
There’s no separate content audit to identify where you can improve your retention-specific content. It’s easiest (and most beneficial) to just run a full content audit on your site and take notes on all areas for improvement. In the process, you’ll also be able to magnify gaps and optimization opportunities within your retention content.
Completing a content audit can be as simple or complex as you choose to make it. For the sake of this article, we’ve shaved it down to the essential steps to streamline the process. You can add in pretty much anything you deem relevant, but what we’ve outlined below is a solid foundation for identifying strengths as well as key areas for improvement.
List Content
Run a Screaming Frog crawl (free up to 500 URLs) of all indexable content and export the “Internal All” file. In combination with a tool like URL profiler (paid/free trial), this should provide a solid base to your content audit. You can get expanded instructions on the best way to do this here.
Integrate Important Metrics
Add in any additional metrics. URL profiler offers a lot of options for appending data, but ultimately, it’s up to you as to what you find important for proper analysis and decision-making. Consider the following:
- Publish Date
- Author
- Conversions
- Organic Traffic
- Time on site for URLs
- # of Social Shares
- General Topic
- Type of Content (web page, blog post, product page, landing page, infographic, etc)
Map Content to Funnel and Audience
Get a little more granular by adding in columns titled “Persona/Audience” and “Funnel Stage”. Filling in these columns for each content row will be a manual process, but it can be helpful to get a more comprehensive view of the content you have and what role it plays.
Make The Dashboard Actionable
This can be as simple as organizing all the information you collected in steps 1 & 2 and adding a few more columns. One of those columns should be “Action” and another should be “Notes” or “Instructions”. Add filters to make it easy to sort.
Analyze & Add Insights
You now have all the information regarding your content at your disposal. The next step is to walk through your dashboard and look for areas for improvement:
- Are there content gaps in your funnel? We’re concerned with retention/satisfaction, so be sure to mark where there are gaps here.
- Is some content too thin? Mark these pieces as “Improve” in the Action column and make a note to flesh out/update/redefine.
- Have you written about one topic too much (or not enough)? Even things out and see where you can transform existing but repetitive pieces of content into something more valuable.
- Are you only catering to one audience (or no audience at all)? Be sure you’re reaching all parties you intend to with your content. Perhaps you have products/services/memberships for both B2B and B2C. Are you producing enough content for both? Take note where there are gaps and see where small improvements/adjustments to existing pieces can re-frame in an appropriate way for your target audience.
The steps above can help drive your overall content marketing strategy and can be expounded upon to infinity and beyond. Let’s snap back into retention-mode for now, though, since that’s our focus here.
Chances are, the content audit above identified some weaknesses in your retention-stage content. Perhaps you don’t have any, you don’t have enough, or the retention content you have isn’t resonating with people. The good news is that you’ve identified the gaps. Next, you’ll want to start brainstorming a content plan that helps close those gaps. Start with a simple list of topics on which you can blog about, then expand from there to include social media promotion, email drip sequences, videos, and more. If you’re at a loss for where to begin, keep reading.
Creating Retention Stage Fintech Content – Be Service-Oriented
So how do you help current customers/clients get jazzed up about something they’ve already signed up for? The key with retention stage content is to be service-oriented and customer centric. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask yourself what you would need to make your experience that much better. Then you will have scratched the surface in terms of using content to improve the experience of and retain customers. Other ideas include:
Be helpful
This is particularly important if you have a complex product or service. Help people get the most out of it. Are there shortcuts, tips, and tricks or other product/service features you can highlight? Customers find these things especially useful right after they sign on, so considering using an email drip sequence to nurture new customers with need-to-know information.
Be interesting
Never underestimate the power of being interesting. Perhaps you have an exciting backstory as to how your service or product was developed. Or maybe your path from concept to launch is hilarious. Share this with your customers. It personalizes your brand and helps prospects and customers alike relate to what you’re doing. This sort of information can call many different places home: A linkable blurb on the home page, the About Us page, the Blog, or even an email drip sequence.
Be Supportive
Let your customers know how to get in touch with you if they need help, have questions or concerns, or need to cancel/request a refund. Great customer service is the touchstone of excellent retention numbers. Clearly communicate (on your website, invoices, receipts, and billing descriptors) how customers can reach you. When they do, be sure you have well-trained and adequate staff prepared to answer questions and take requests. You might be wondering what this has to do with content, and the answer is a lot. You should frequently audit customer emails to look for common threads in questions or concerns and whip those into FAQs pages, “How To” email, blogs, and other pieces of content that streamline the customer experience.
Get creative. The goal here is to create brand advocates as it opens up new opportunities. There may be room to upsell or cross-sell existing customers, and there is always a chance to turn customers into influential brand evangelists. The best marketing is when one of your happy customers tells friends, family, and acquaintances of their positive experience with your business. Producing the right kind of content will streamline the process of taking people from prospects to powerful brand advocates.
The retention stage shouldn’t be underestimated for fintech businesses — or fintech content. With fast-moving technology in a competitive space that requires a lot of user education, having brand advocates and evangelists can make or break growth. Additionally, the feedback received from users, customers and clients can be extraordinarily useful in enhancing your product or service.
