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Content marketing requires an ongoing commitment to content creation, distribution, iteration, and improvement. It’s hardly a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor and it’s not for the faint of heart — or those who expect immediate gratification. Yes, there can be quick wins, but the long-term benefits of an effective content marketing strategy far outweigh many of the “growth hacks” that are teased in front of organizations today.
Creating an effective content marketing strategy for your fintech organization means setting and documenting goals. If you’ve done this, pat yourself on the back. You’re ahead of other organizations that have not yet aligned their efforts with stakeholders internally and externally. This article takes a look at the various ways you can meet and exceed your fintech content marketing goals in 2021.
Embrace the New Normal
A lot changed in 2020, and we’re still navigating the weird, in-between space that lingers between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic realities. You may want to revisit your strategy and content calendar to ensure any pre-planned activities or topics are still appropriate. Things have been moving fast since March of 2020, and it’s important to run a check of any pre-scheduled content against the realities of the day. Run through the content you’ve already published to find opportunities to make tweaks or updates where necessary.
Get That Strategy on Paper
Maybe you haven’t documented your content marketing strategy, and that’s ok. There’s no time like the present, and documenting your strategy doesn’t have to be a complex engagement. In fact, you can simplify it down to three key things:
- Why – marketing and business purpose
- Who – audience needs
- How – unique brand story
This is also a helpful strategy if you’re changing marketing priorities or adopting a new business model. The “why” should include your fintech content marketing goals and intentions: What business need are we trying to address through current marketing initiatives? Also, be sure to look at the benefits and risks to the business.
The who can be determined by creating audience personas, which should include demographic profiles, informational needs, goals, and content engagement preferences. Look at your audience personas through the lens of the buyer’s journey. How do their content consumption preferences change at each stage in the funnel?
Finally, determine your unique brand story. Think of it as your content mission statement, as it should include principles for your content marketing and how you plan to differentiate your fintech brand’s storytelling from your competitors’.
Fail Fast, Win Big, Rinse, Repeat
With content marketing, you must be agile enough to quickly learn from your mistakes and your successes. Adopting a growth mindset is critical to keep your content marketing game strong, and the best way to track what works and what doesn’t is to create a process around doing so. This process can be as simple as:
- Regularly review metrics and results from content projects
- Establish standardized measures of success for different pieces of content
- Run through content with a fine-toothed comb to determine whether or not it was successful or not
- Document the findings from the step above so that the entire team can reference these experiments when it comes time to build out future content topics and types
- Make sure all content types and topics are attached to KPIs and goals that can be tracked
Outsource to Grow Your Content Marketing Program
Whether you’re a startup fintech with a one-woman marketing team or a big player with several different teams that fall under the marketing banner, you may want to consider outsourcing. Outsourcing is a great way to fill in gaps from full-time hires. The key is to outsource well. We recently published a post about why finding B2B fintech writers is difficult, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find someone who would be a great fit to expand your content marketing team. Consider building a checklist to make sure prospective writers:
- Have experience writing for your industry
- Specialize in topics relevant to your business
- Have experience working with content management systems, analytics tools, and team collaboration tools
- Have availability and the ability to turn content around in a way that fits your company’s timelines
One of the main reasons content marketing programs fail for fintechs is that they simply don’t have the resources to get everything done. Finding a strong B2B fintech writer or agency can work wonders in helping you reach your fintech content marketing goals.
Perfect Your Content Distribution Game
Content promotion, distribution, and amplification are huge. You could have the most robust library of high-quality content, but if it never gets in front of the right eyeballs, it’s as good as worthless. The only way to reach your content marketing goals is to make sure your content is getting shared with your audience effectively and regularly.
Take a look at your current promotion and distribution strategies to see what’s working and what isn’t. Identify gaps in content distribution that can be addressed by creating a hypothesis and running an experiment. Maybe you’ve never tried paid advertising for content promotion, but you have reason to believe that your audience spends a lot of time on LinkedIn. Document your hypothesis and run an experiment with LinkedIn sponsored content.
There are a million ways to improve a content marketing program, but getting back to the basics is one of the most overlooked ones. Make sure you have a documented strategy outlining your content marketing goals. Use data about what’s been working and what hasn’t to inform that strategy and create new experiments moving forward. Consider bringing on outside players to help beef up your content marketing muscle, and make sure that the content you spend so much time creating is getting in front of the people who want and need it. These are basic concepts but also ones that stand to boost your content marketing program significantly and help you reach your fintech content marketing goals in 2021.
