Last Updated on May 18, 2021 by admin
As we near the halfway point in 2021 (what? already??), it can be worth it to review and potentially reevaluate your fintech content strategy for the second half of the year. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that things change fast…and we must be flexible enough to adapt to a quickly shifting landscape.
Fintechs need to up their content game as more and more people engage in digital content — especially B2B buyers who have found their conferences, seminars, and networking events replaced by online alternatives. As we continue in the era of the “B2B renaissance,” there are some important things that B2B fintechs need to consider when crafting a content strategy. For starters, Forrester puts forth the following interesting stats:
- 92% of B2B purchases start with search.
- 68% of B2B buyers prefer to research online on their own, up from 53% in 2015.
- 60% of B2B buyers prefer not to interact with a sales rep as the primary source of information.
- 62% of B2B buyers say they can now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list — based solely on digital content.
It’s clear that content rules the roost, but what type of content should fintech be creating? According to DemandGen’s 2019 Content Preferences Study, roughly two-thirds of B2B buyers want vendors to “use more data and research to support content.” That same study noted that B2B vendors need to work on toning down their pitches hidden (or not-so-hidden) within content: almost all (96%) respondents said “B2B vendors could improve the quality of content by curbing the sales messages.” These are all very important considerations as you embark on the second half of your 2021 fintech content strategy. To help you improve upon your fintech content strategy, we’ve mapped out some other important trends and tips to follow, too.
Create People-First Content
Content is often created around the latest data or commissioned reports. Fintechs and other B2B organizations like to look at data and turn it into content that can be consumed by prospects and customers. While leveraging data to create informative pieces can be good, ensuring that content is produced with a “people-first” mentality is better.
As we mentioned, content consumption has shifted dramatically toward the online channels and buyers are still figuring out how they prefer to consume content and do their own research in wake of the pandemic. Fintechs should embrace a flexible content strategy that serves the needs of their audiences, including their preferred channels.
An impactful fintech content strategy should also strive to look beyond straight facts and data and find ways to inject some humanity and foster connection. As digital content becomes more interactive, modes of measurement must adapt as well. While quantity and traffic may have served us well in the past, engagement and consumption preferences may be more attuned for the novel, nuanced needs of buyers.
It’s also imperative to consider things from your audience’s perspective. It’s not likely that people are running around raving about [Your Company]’s latest white paper. It is, however, likely that people will remember compelling stories. Aim to be authentic and garner genuine interest by telling thought-provoking stories. Experiential stories can be powerful and add value — things that help you connect to your audience and intrigue them enough to invest in your content for the long-haul.
Lead Empathy-Driven Initiatives
We have published several articles about the importance of empathy and emotion in B2B storytelling — especially for fintechs that face additional challenges in building trust and credibility. To truly empathize with your audience and engage with their emotional side, you have to remove the blinders of bias and your own agenda. Developing a fintech content strategy that leads with empathy means truly understanding your audience’s problems, how those problems make them feel, and what they want to achieve. Some of that understanding may come from engaging with people on new channels and actually conversing with them in real-time. Market research and understanding sentiment is great, but it’s more meaningful (and accurate) to attach faces to those feelings.
Fintechs should aim to step away from purely functional content and find deeper emotional connections with their audiences. Obviously, content marketing initiatives serve a function, but they will be more effective when content taps into emotional truths that resonate with your audience. This type of innovative content marketing can yield massive results as many in the B2B sphere have been slow to adopt a more empathy-driven approach.
Get Inside Your Audience’s Brain
Knowing thy audience is one of our top ten best practices when developing a fintech content strategy. In order to create people-first content, you have to understand the people you’re engaging with. Given the substantial changes many industries have undergone over the past 18 months, it’s critical to reexamine what matters most to your audience and to make sure your content is prioritizing those needs. Content that doesn’t do this can easily become irrelevant.
Your audience may also have new preferences about content channels and how they interact with your brand. Finding communities online has become a top priority for B2B buyers who seek out connections with other like-minded professionals. If you can facilitate or create those communities, you can build a home-grown channel for content distribution while helping your audience meet their needs. Again, this requires some level of listening and interaction with your audience to deeply understand where they’re coming from, what they’re looking for, and how you fit into that equation.
Creating meaningful content is both an art and a science. Starting with a data-driven strategy can put you on the right path to meeting your objectives, but that should be tempered with the art of empathy, listening, and engaging to ensure you’re in tune with what your audience expects and needs. In 2021, connection is more important than ever. Embracing a fintech content strategy that puts people first is a recipe for success.
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