Straight off the bat, the answer to ‘why do content marketing?’ is simple. With an overwhelming majority consumers turning to the internet for advice on anything from mortgages to pensions, you’d be remiss not to cash in on the traffic these searches generate.
The trick to standing out in the competitive financial services landscape is to stretch beyond traditional marketing. Knowing how to create a content calendar filled with well-thought-out ideas can be an invaluable asset, allowing you to position yourself as an authority in the industry. The benefits are two-fold:
- you’re educating your target audience (thus earning their goodwill and trust).
- while also boosting your visibility and brand recognition.
Is Content Marketing effective for financial services?
Effective content marketing presents financial service providers with a unique opportunity to transform their subject area from intimidating, overcomplicated topics to easily accessible customer guides.
There is a wealth of opportunities to build trust with your audience through SEO-focused content marketing, especially if you take a strategic approach to long-tail keywords.
Targeting relevant traffic
Think of your prospective customers and the questions they might search for. If you’re regularly creating high-quality content that addresses the most common finance pain points for clients, you are building up your relevance and capturing more qualified leads.
After all, if someone is already searching for ‘how to apply for a small business loan with bad credit’, chances are they are looking for an expert to help them do just that.
Content marketing and AI overviews
We love exploring how AI can give your business an edge. This extends to content marketing as well. The recent introduction of Google’s AI Overviews and other similar AI-driven search engines is the perfect opportunity to build your online content strategy around natural language queries.
Enhancing keyword visibility
Paired with long-tail keywords, which have less competition and offer a more niche topic focus, AI in search gives you more freedom to focus on quality of insights over quantity of keywords you can fit within a page. With the help of AI, search engines can better understand the intent of individual queries, matching them with authoritative content instead of ranking results pages purely on exact search term matches.
What’s more, focusing your content strategy on long-tail keywords will hit the sweet spot for voice search queries, which are only becoming more prominent with the spread of AI assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
Building trust
The benefits of this approach are many. Informative content pieces focused on specific customer questions not only pull in more relevant traffic but also boost the potential each page has to generate engagement and conversions. And, in a sphere like financial services, where trust is paramount, addressing the exact concerns of clients searching for information can tip the balance in your favour.
Read more about the importance of trustworthy content.
How to create a content calendar that works
If you want to ensure your content marketing is effective, you need a strategically planned content calendar to lead all your digital activities. Putting all key elements in one master document, including SEO research and goals, article or web page topics, and a schedule for the publication of each item, is a great way to stay consistent.
Creating a content calendar also helps you maintain a top-level view of all your themes. This way you can ensure you’re covering seasonal trends, like retirement, divorce and taxes, as well as maintaining a steady stream of more evergreen content. Leave some room for reactive content too, so you have capacity to quickly turn around a piece on new regulations or the latest financial news.
Power up your marketing, with Balance
Ultimately, why is content marketing worth it for financial services? It’s a cost-effective and flexible way to attract customers with more focused search intent. Plus, as you build up your vault of trustworthy, helpful content, you’ll be improving both your search rankings and your authority.
Our expert team of content creators and strategists can support you with a range of tasks, from onsite content optimisation and content upcycling to larger content campaigns and ongoing blogging. Whatever your needs, we can offer a content marketing solution tailored to them.
Find out how we can help you generate sustained value for your financial services website through content marketing.
