Bank Content Marketers, a few of you are doing it right. You’ve got useful content that intrigues, makes people laugh and pushes them to dive deeper into your bank’s products and services. That’s fantastic!
But what about the rest of you? You’re giving us CD rates and telling us about IRAs in a way that only a banker could love. All your marketing collateral is in banker-ese that the average layperson like myself, doesn’t understand.
You’ve got to change your game before you lose my interest.
Being a Bank Content Marketer on either side of the pond isn’t easy. Sometimes, and you don’t have to admit it, the subject of finances doesn’t make you jump for joy. How can you make Financial Content exciting?
Good Content Marketing pieces should be at least one of the following:
- Informative
- Entertaining
- Inspiring
But NONE of it should be about actively trying to sell your products or services. Content Marketing works best at the very beginning of the sales funnel. At this phase, your potential customers don’t need to know the details about the Octopus Portfolio. What they need is basic information about how you can solve their financial questions.
Where do your more-targeted marketing pieces fit in? Let’s take a step back and look at a very basic sales funnel.
- Top of funnel – Awareness and education. This is where Content Marketer need to educate, inform, and talk about solutions that are not directly related to specific products.
- Middle of funnel – Evaluation phase. Here is where you give your facts, give comparisons, and offer more tailored solutions to fit your prospect’s needs. Traditional marketers work best here.
- Bottom of funnel – Purchasing phase. Your prospects are on the cusp of purchasing products. This is generally the phase where the sales person gets involved.
Banks are really good at providing ‘middle of funnel’ content. They’re great at the crunchy numbers and broadcasting information, but there’s not as much ‘top of funnel’ activity that captures the imagination of prospects.
To get into that ‘top of funnel’ mindset, think about the process that you went through to choose your bank. What could the bank have provided to you, what information would have been great to have on hand that would have tipped you in their direction? That is what you need to create.