What are the challenges and opportunities in creating educational finance content?

Finance is a part of our everyday lives, from investments and loans to insurance and accounting. Because it’s so essential, your finance brand has the unique opportunity to reach your target audience by creating finance content that is educational and relevant to them.

NYT Licensing has collected incredible figures that demonstrate the necessity of financial content in the world. There is a 70% average engagement rate for financial services content, indicating that consumers want to learn more about the financial products and services they’re using.

Your target audience may also have different preferences for content. NYT Licensing reported that the top three content marketing activities for financial marketers included social media marketing (77%), digital display advertising (62%) and video content (53%).

This denotes that there is fierce competition even in the marketing landscape of the finance industry as companies push to engage their audiences with different types of content.

These figures signify that finance brands must invest in creating top-quality content, but it’s also important to be aware of the unique set of challenges that come with financial content. This will ensure that you can leverage these challenges and create opportunities to your advantage.

3 challenges in creating financial content (and the opportunities that come from them)

As a finance brand, it’s important to be prepared for potential issues that come with developing your content. We’ve shortlisted three challenges that come with creating educational finance content, and how to find the opportunities in them.

1. Marketing in a hypercompetitive industry environment

As one of the most competitive industries in the world, the financial industry is oversaturated with content in the marketing landscape.

Imagine all the sub-sectors within the industry — tax advisory, credit unions, accounting, investment banking, or insurance companies — as well as the established and emerging businesses for each corresponding sub-sector, are competing for audiences’ attention.

Many of these businesses recognise the importance of marketing their products and services, and most of them are creating some measure of marketing campaigns to attract their target audience.

The hypercompetitive environment in the finance industry can be a significant challenge for your brand in terms of creating unique and memorable content that engages your ideal customers.

Opportunity: Familiarise yourself with your marketing strategy and tools

The first step you need to make in creating impactful content is to develop a solid marketing strategy and familiarise yourself with it (as well as the marketing tools you use).

Your marketing strategy can also help you in addressing the challenge of marketing in a hypercompetitive environment. A top-quality content marketing strategy can gradually but consistently build your audience, enabling you to increase brand awareness and provide the right content for your target customers.

Your marketing strategy can serve as a guide in developing themes and key messages that you can use in creating your content. This ensures that you have high-quality content that increases your credibility and trustworthiness as a brand.

There are several strategies you can use to enhance your finance content:

Develop Q&A content – It’s important to identify which financial topics your customers are struggling with and directly answer their questions. Simplifying complex information can make your content customer-friendly.
Make financial information accessible – Avoid using too much jargon and data as this can alienate your customers and turn them away. Focus on the core message of your financial information and make sure that it’s conveyed concisely.
Establish clear visual content guidelines – Having a clear visual aesthetic for your marketing collaterals can increase brand awareness and recognition, encouraging your audience to associate with your brand with specific colours, fonts and images.

2. Meeting the expectations of digital-first customers

Digital-first customers expect a seamless experience across the entire buying process with businesses. It’s crucial to integrate multiple sales touchpoints on your platforms to ensure that your customers have a hassle-free experience of buying your products or booking an appointment or service with you.

As technological advancements continue to disrupt multiple industries, it can become more challenging to meet the expectations of digital-first customers. For example, your customers would want to get an exclusive marketing e-newsletter that includes an offer leading directly into your brand’s mobile app rather than sending them to your web page.

A finance brand, particularly as a start-up, will naturally have limited resources in upgrading its tech to enhance the customer experience, which is why it’s important to be strategic in how to meet the customer’s expectations.

Opportunity: Create customer-centric content and experiences

If you lack such resources, consider skipping the app and providing an outstanding digital experience through a well-designed and user-friendly website instead. This will ensure that you have a strong digital platform that your audience can use to explore what your brand has to offer.

Another cost-effective way of meeting your customers’ expectations and providing customer-centric experiences is by creating valuable content that alleviates the major pain points in their daily lives.

HubSpot has developed a few tips for creating customer-centric content that drives growth:

Establish a brand voice – Make sure your brand resonates with your target audience. Using a brand voice that has a personality (whether it’s quirky, humorous or serious) ensures that you engage your audience on a personal level.
Map a repeating method for customer-centric growth – Create a repeatable and scalable process that ensures success every time it is implemented.
Develop a content strategy – Your content strategy will ensure that all your marketing initiatives are cohesive, focused and relevant to your audience.

3. Dealing with limited internal resources

A lack of internal resources — both human and technology resources — is a common challenge faced by many small, emerging financial services providers. While most providers try to invest in upskilling their current internal resources, it can be much more challenging to create highly skilled internal marketing teams, as this requires significant resources that smaller financial services providers lack.

Opportunity: Partner with a professional content agency

Partnering with a content agency can help you develop and implement an effective marketing strategy that achieves your marketing goals and contributes to your overall business objectives.

A content agency is a cost-effective solution in replacing an internal marketing team, as they have the expertise and knowledge to address any obstacles in your strategy and ensure that your marketing initiatives are successful.

Marketing in the finance industry is filled with challenges, but the key is to find opportunities in these obstacles.

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