Content is King in Financial Services Marketing

Over the past year, content marketing has become one of the hottest communications tactics in the financial services industry. If you are not familiar with the term, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. Instead of making a pitch for your product(s) or services, content marketers deliver useful information that makes prospective customers more intelligent about your industry. This approach is ideal for financial services, as financial products are often quite complex and there is no “one-size-fits-all” option that works for everyone.

Content marketing can take many forms and it is most often a component of online marketing efforts.  Content can be presented via many formats including articles, video, case studies, info-graphics, blog posts and more. Content marketing is able to reach out to many different consumer groups, as the messaging can be customized for different life stages like saving for college, first home purchasing, retirement planning, etc.  Some great examples of how financial companies have used content marketing in different formats can be found on the Content Marketing Institute website.

B+L is actively engaged in content marketing for both our clients and ourselves. To promote our own services, we publish relevant and useful blog content at least once a week, as well as a quarterly e-newsletter and a bi-annual white paper or research study.  We also create content for a number of clients. In the financial sector, this includes video case histories for North Shore Bank, showing how their customers have utilized various financial instruments to meet their own, individual needs.

In our opinion, the importance of content marketing will continue to grow in most industries and especially in finance, where bringing value to the customer (and potential customer) has moved to the forefront. This doesn’t mean that traditional advertising will be going away, however. We regularly use content marketing in concert with traditional marketing to reach people at different points in the purchase decision and customer relationship management process. Both are necessary tools for marketers of financial services.