While many banks and financial institutions continue to turn to content marketing to engage their prospective buyers and customers, the reality is the overwhelming majority are struggling to achieve success.

1. Let Customer Insight Guide
Your Bank's Content
Marketing Strategy
By: Carlos Hidalgo, CEO, VisumCx
Presented By

2. Content marketing in the financial services
vertical is nothing new.
For example, as reported by the Content
Marketing Institute, Credit Suisse has been
publishing its own magazine, The Bulletin, since
1895.

3. However, a lot has changed in the 120-plus years
since then, as buyers and consumers now have
instant, unfettered access to global information
across a myriad of channels.

4. While many financial institutions continue to
turn to content marketing to engage prospective
buyers and customers, the reality is the
overwhelming majority are struggling to achieve
success.

5. According to the Content Marketing Institute,
the following research statistics suggest the state
of content marketing in financial services:

6. • 67% of financial services marketing teams
are creating more content
• Only 25% rank their use of content
marketing as very effective or effective
• Only 16% rank their success at tracking
ROI in their content marketing as very effective
or effective

7. Like in many other industries, financial services
marketers are creating and spending more on
content creation despite the fact they admittedly
are not able to quantify its success.

8. Perhaps one answer as to why this trend
continues is that only 37% of financial services
marketers claim they have a documented content
strategy.

9. So how can financial institutions ensure the
value of their content marketing?
Here are a few recommendations.

10. 1. Design Your Strategy
With the Customer in Mind

11. The centerpiece of any content marketing
strategy must be the customer. Without insights
into customers, it is virtually impossible to
produce relevant content.

12. Understanding how customers engage with the
brand, how they buy, why they buy, expectations
they have for their banking partnerships, and
challenges they need to address, is essential to
providing the information marketers need to
create compelling content.

13. Developing a content strategy from the customer
perspective (from the outside in) will
fundamentally transform how content is created.

14. When you start with the customer in mind, the
content becomes informative and addresses their
challenges (rather than promotes your products).
This in turn increases engagement for a better
customer buying experience.

15. Any strategy that is developed without being
informed by an understanding of the customer is
no strategy at all.

16. 2. Ongoing Conversations vs.
Storytelling

17. One of the prevailing directives in content
marketing today is to tell your customer a story.
The thinking is if you tell an engaging story,
customers will endear themselves to the brand.

18. However, the problem with storytelling is it is
one-way communication with the vendor
speaking at the customer.

19. Furthermore, many brands use the storytelling
approach to tell their customers what they want
them to hear, and if they miss the mark, they can
potentially lose a customer.

20. Rather than construct a story, brands should
look to establish an ongoing conversation with
their customers.

21. A conversation is two-way communication, and
like any conversation, it provides the opportunity
for brands to learn more about their customers.

22. By gathering this customer intelligence, brands
are able to be more relevant with their content
and other customer touchpoints both digitally
and offline.

23. When brands establish a dialogue, they can
analyze their customer's behavioral patterns by
using the behavioral data they find in their
marketing automation solutions.

24. Furthermore, those who have marketing
automation should score their content by where
in the buyer's journey it is consumed rather than
scoring by asset type.

25. Based on this customer intelligence, brands are
able to continually fine-tune the approach and
derive more value from their content.

26. 3. Get Vision into the
Customer Journey

27. Having a clear picture of the customer journey is
necessary if organizations are going to develop
content that is engaging and relevant. Just
creating content is not sufficient.

28. Marketers need to focus on creating the right
content that aligns with the customer journey:
• Brand engagement
• Product content
• Buying (demand generation) content
• Customer support content

29. Simply designing content with no designed
purpose is a fool's errand and will produce little
in terms of ROI.

30. 4. Understand One Size
Does Not Fit All

31. One of the biggest challenges for today's Sales or
Marketing professional is the rise of the buying
committee. Long gone are the days of trying to
reach "the decision maker."

32. In today's complex B2B environment, we are
marketing and selling to multiple decision
makers. CEB research has shown that on
average there are up to seven different roles
involved in a B2B buying process.

33. Each individual that fills these roles has differing
motives, biases toward a brand or product, and
different content and channel preferences.

34. With this in mind, a single content asset will not
necessarily meet the needs of all the widely
varying customer stakeholders.

35. This dynamic is why content marketers need to
tailor the theme of their content to these buyer
needs. Once the theme is determined, they can
determine the most suitable format and channel.

36. The reality is that the majority of marketers think
about the tactic first (email, social, webinar, event,
etc.) and then design the content.
Given that much of the customer and buying
journey is multi-channel, this simply is not effective.

37. In order to engage in meaningful conversation
with customers, there has to be varying content
that speaks to each role at each stage of their
journey.

38. For example, a CFO will most likely engage with
content that varies in tone and also asset type
from that of a director of finance.
Why?

39. Because they have different roles and different
perspectives of the business, and their roles, while
similar, have different requirements.
If this is not taken into consideration, gaining
value from content marketing will remain elusive.

40. 5. Establish the Right
Metrics

41. According to Content Marketing Institute
research, financial services content marketers list
the following as the top metrics they track:
• 71% – website traffic
• 46% – time spent on website
• 41% – higher conversion rates

42. According to the same study, only 35% measure
sales.

43. Content marketers need to establish a common
set of measurements or key performance
indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of
their content.
These KPIs need to show business impact and
determine ROI.

44. Content marketers intent on monitoring ROI
will need to be vigilant about knowing how
content is impacting buying cycles, the likelihood
of content accelerating a purchase, and how their
content is contributing to revenue.

45. By developing a content architecture that is
aligned to the buyer's journey, organizations can
view the individual interactions (content
engagement) through their marketing
automation solution and better understand the
content that is performing best.

46. This kind of market intelligence is what
ultimately elevates a content marketing program
into a measurable tool that drives positive
business results.

47. Summary

48. Customers are inundated with content across
multiple channels.
In order to begin a meaningful conversation, you
need to deliver compelling content that aligns to
your customer at every stage of their buying
journey.
This starts with knowing your customers and
speaking with them rather than at them.

49. Simply investing and creating more content and
expecting different results is insanity.
Take the time to talk to your customers, research
their market conditions and create content with
their perspective in mind.
This will drive further engagement and lead to a
positive customer experience.

50. About Carlos Hidalgo
Carlos Hidalgo is founder and CEO of VisumCx, a customer experience strategy
firm with more than 20 years of experience working with B2B organizations in
delivering multi-channel customer experience. Carlos is the author of Driving
Demand, has been named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead
Management for the last six years, and is recognized by Onalytica as the "Most
Influential Person in B2B North America in 2015."

51. About FPS: We help commercial bank marketers develop compelling, brand-
relevant thought leadership that goes beyond enhancing brand awareness; we
move our clients from strategy to demand creation to drive real business results.
For more information, contact: FPS President Vince DiPaolo at 847-858-9566 or
vince@fpsc.com or FPS Operations Director Ventsi Petrova at 847-501-4120 x2
or ventsi@fpsc.com