Financial services firms are facing some big challenges in marketing. Actually, that’s an understatement. Some of the pain points—compliance, customer trust, and the proliferation of digital information—are so pressing that financial services marketers hold off on launching innovative campaigns and stick to the basics: email campaigns, brochures, and website landing pages.
Today’s consumer, however, demands more from financial services firms. That’s because they’ve been burned by mismatched product offerings, excessive spam, and credit crises. Well-intentioned financial services marketers have high walls to scale in order to connect with their target audiences.
That’s where content comes in. Through something as simple as a blog post, infographic, or a video that engages your customers, financial services firms can build meaningful customer relationships. Here are the three biggest marketing challenges that financial services firms face, and how content marketing can help.
1. Compliance
Financial services marketers face heavy restrictions with respect to what they can and can’t communicate with online audiences. As a result, finance-oriented companies will shy away from providing advice or interviewing “experts” for best practices.
There’s a way to push past this challenge, and it’s simpler than you may think: rather than talking about money management, your marketing team can share stories about the topics that influence your customers’ lives.
Finance touches on everything in a person’s life, from their careers to education, home-buying, and even family planning. The way to overcome compliance challenges is to share firsthand accounts about these deeply personal experiences.
Share stories about the topics that influence your customers’ lives. #marketing
2. Consumer Trust
Credit card interest rates, faulty mortgages, and student loan debt are themes that have left consumers feeling demoralized about the finance industry as a whole. When dealing with banks, online audiences are likely to keep their guard up.
That’s where content comes in—storytelling can help uncover the human personalities that create the financial services industry. Financial services firms can communicate their brand values by sharing stories about their teams and customers in interesting and journalistic ways.
Rather than pleading with online audiences and asking explicitly for their trust, financial services firms can let the stories speak for themselves.
Related Content: 3 B2B Financial Brands Doing Creative Content Marketing
3. Proliferation of Digital Information
Consumers are constantly bombarded with information through both online and offline channels. It can be extremely tough to keep track of notifications, promotions, and updates from multiple credit card companies, banks, and insurance policies.
Financial services firms need a creative way to outsmart this noise and engage with target audiences in a more compelling way.
Brand storytelling, through content marketing, can help.
There is no better way to reach online audiences than to produce information that is personally relevant to their lives. By creating content, finance marketers can empower their sales reps and digital channels with instant conversation starters.
Marketing, especially in highly regulated industries, is never easy. There will always be hurdles that seem incredibly challenging. These constraints can foster new opportunities for creativity, however, and through storytelling, financial services firms can build powerful relationships.