Last Updated on May 10, 2022 by admin
Writing for a B2B fintech audience can be challenging. You want to keep things interesting while also educating your audience and compelling them to take action. Striking a balance between entertainment value and educational value can be tough, but it’s workable.
Tightening up B2B fintech content writing can not only enhance the quality of your content, but it can also make it more impactful for your audience. We’ve put together a few ways to do this below.
Enhance Your Writing with Active Verbs
Swap out linking verbs in favor of active verbs to add variety to your writing. Linking verbs – forms of “to be” – serve as connectors between the subject and a noun, adjective, or pronoun. Using verbs like are, was, am, is and other forms of linking verbs tend to tell rather than show the reader what you are trying to describe.
Of course, linking verbs are sometimes necessary. But you can pack a bigger punch by saying “Margaret regaled us with tales from her time in college” rather than “Margaret is a good storyteller.”
Other linking verbs include words like sound, feel, smell, appear, and others. Again, focus on painting a picture for the audience rather than telling them with linking verbs. “Payment transfers from a bank account to digital wallet in real time” sounds a lot better than “funds transfer is fast.
Be Direct. Say What You Mean.
Writers sometimes hedge their writing with phrases meant to soften the sentiment. Phrases like “We think” or “I believe” take away from the power of your statement. Most writing doesn’t require this type of cushion. Instead, get straight to the point. Instead of saying “we believe that P2P payments are the future per research by X,Y,Z Firm,” say “X,Y,Z Firm reports that P2P payments are the future.
Of course, B2B fintech content writing gets tricky in this regard. In highly regulated industries, strong statements must often be hedged with words that provide a little leeway. As in the example above, we recommend finding facts, data, and statistics to back your sentiment and leading with that. It’s more impactful to point to data backing your assertion than it is to say “we believe” or “it may be true that…”
Quit Using Passive Voice
Passive verb forms weaken sentences. While they may work well in journalism where some subjects may be unknown and can’t be fashioned into a sentence with active voice (e.g. “The bank was robbed by a masked intruder.”). If we don’t know who the subject is, we can’t write them into a sentence that uses active voice.
Take a closer look at sentences to see where they can be reworked into active voice. See our examples below:
Passive: Sandy’s credit score was damaged from a few late payments.
Active: A few late payments damaged Sandy’s credit score.
Passive: Digital wallets are widely used by millennials and Gen Z as a way to pay for common items.
Active: Younger generations like millennials and Gen use digital wallets to pay for common items.
Passive voice isn’t always bad. Rhythm is important in writing, so adding passive voice can aid in tempo from time to time. But generally speaking, active voice rules and you should use it as often as possible.
Add Purpose
Write with purpose. In other words, have a goal in mind when writing anything. Another way to look at this is: don’t write anything that doesn’t have a goal. B2B fintech content writing should aim to serve some purpose. You might want to educate your audience or prompt people to sign up for a webinar. In any event, write toward that purpose.
If you’re writing a blog post geared toward helping your readers understand how real time payments work, for example, consider including a glossary of terms. If you’re writing an article with a call to action to sign up for a webinar, be sure you’re teasing what will be covered in the webinar and letting people know that they can get more information by signing up.
Don’t Let Length Trip You Up
Length is a hot topic in B2B fintech content writing. We’ve talked to clients who prefer to keep blog posts to 500 words or shorter while others won’t write anything less than 1,500 words. So who’s right?
Everyone. Going back to our previous point, purpose should drive length. Certain content pieces call for 1,500-2,500 words while others may only require a paragraph or two. The key is to understand the goal of what you’re writing and – more importantly – who your audience is and what they prefer.
Both in-depth content and snack-size pieces are appropriate within different circumstances. You don’t want to short-change your audience by promising a primer on push-to-debit payments only to deliver a short post that only covers high-level concepts. In the same vein, you don’t want to write a laborious article for something that could be covered in an infographic with a few sentences of copy for context.
Balance is important. You don’t want to overwhelm and push people away with ultra-long content pieces but you also don’t want to leave people disappointed by not providing enough information on an important topic.
Editing is crucial. Be sure that there is always a second (and third, and possibly fourth) set of eyes on every piece of content. Ideally, you have processes set up for content quality assurance. Editors can evaluate for length from a topical perspective and also trim away unnecessary sentences or sections until achieving the “just right” length.
Also consider how content will be captured from an SEO perspective. In many cases, longer is better for establishing domain authority. It also presents more opportunities for linking to other content within the website, which can also bolster SEO. Strike the right balance between SEO and purpose considerations to find the perfect length for each content piece.
Conclusion
B2B fintech content writing isn’t always easy, but following some simple guidelines and best practices can make it a whole lot more effective. Whether you have an entire marketing department to leverage or you’re a one-person marketing show, these tips can help you streamline and improve your writing for your audience.
