How would you react if a finance brand that wants to manage your money had nothing to show for it? 

You’d probably move on to the next provider, or ask friends and family for recommendations. Your reaction probably isn’t that far off from how your own potential customers would see things; that’s how much a brand’s authority matters for a customer’s support, so creating, building and maintaining a reputation contributes to your brand’s success.

This is one of the reasons why it’s important to put an effort into your content marketing; it helps you generate leads and bring in more sales by meeting your audience’s needs, answering their questions and building trust:

• You own all the content you publish when you share it on your website, so you aren’t reliant on large social media companies that, in the event of ownership changes, take your content and audience along with it in case it goes under.
• You show customers you’re genuinely around to help instead of just constantly pushing products, which says you’re an expert who listens and solves their problems.
• You bring in better leads by sharing what your brand stands for through consistent content, so audiences can turn to you to lock in their purchase sooner rather than later.

Content marketing builds authority on your platform, increasing the visibility of your website and raising brand awareness. A solid content marketing strategy also builds trust and loyalty with your audience, which can lead to high-quality leads. Many emerging finance brands may understandably be new to creating valuable content, but we’ve taken you through it in this article.

Why it’s important to build authority with content marketing

Content marketing is a way to reach your audience and develop a relationship with them based on the help you can provide them, within the field of expertise that your brand is focused on. Aside from that relationship-building element, making a point of making your content a core component of your marketing strategy has other compelling benefits:

• Increasing brand awareness is more cohesive with quality content since you’re able to be more focused on sharing one message that’s easier to associate with your company.
• Providing content to the right audience is simpler because you can target content at a specific segment of your target market, which helps you reach them better.
• Seizing opportunities to educate your customers with content that not only adds value to their experience but also makes them easier to communicate with on a higher level.

Content marketing builds your authority as a finance brand by targeting these different areas, allowing you to boost your platform while cultivating trust and loyalty with your audience.

3 ways your finance company can build authority with content marketing

It’s understandable to be at a loss for the first step when building authority with your content marketing, but your finance brand has more options than you may expect when it comes to boosting that aspect of your company’s marketing. We’ve shortlisted a few ways you can build authority with content marketing.

1. Create content for your official channels

As a finance brand that is establishing its expertise and authority online, it’s important to populate your official channels with engaging, educational and even entertaining content. By official channels, we mean your website and your social media platforms. This doesn’t mean you need to dump a dozen posts on your website in one day, though; you still need a plan.

Consistent content can help demonstrate your brand’s trustworthiness and credibility by simplifying one aspect of your customer’s experience with your brand. This means you’re continually creating the same calibre of content for the digital spaces your brand inhabits, on the same platforms and a predictable schedule. Maintaining this consistency also means you’re going to be spending less time guessing what to post since you’ve built up that bank of content.

When customers can expect informative, useful content from your finance brand at certain points in their week, this gives them the impression that your company can also be relied on for helpful responses, practical advice and relevant services. Maintaining this perception by continuing to share quality content is an essential element for future-ready finance brands.

2. Cross-promote your content on reputable websites

As great as your content is, you still need people to see it to meet all your marketing goals. You need to integrate content promotion into your plans to expand your reach and showcase your authority to a wider audience; content promotion, the process of distributing and amplifying your content to increase its visibility and reach, is more than just resharing one post over and over.

It’s crucial to find opportunities that allow you to cross-promote your content on other reputable websites, like placements in credible publications–if that seems intimidating as you’re only getting started on your content marketing efforts, then you can try doing a newsletter swap.

Email may seem less trendy or buzzword-friendly than social media, but don’t discount the possibilities with this format. Generally, emails have a higher click-through rate than other forms of digital media, so your content is more likely to be read if it’s in a newsletter. Subscribers to mailing lists are motivated to consume your content; they could unsubscribe if they weren’t.

Look out for other individuals, brands or companies in your field with email newsletters, and approach them about exchanging content features. This can be as straightforward as them adding a link to your content in their newsletter, and you doing the same for them in your most recent newsletter. This way you get more eyes on your newsletter and attract more subscribers.

3. Discuss the latest industry trends with media outlets

Sharing your thoughts and opinions about industry trends with respectable media outlets increases your visibility and establishes you as a thought leader. These kinds of insights tell audiences that you’ve got a pulse on developments in your field, and can respond to them well. 

Before you go ahead and send your latest newsletter to the first online news outlet you think of, you need to sort out the best way to share those points of view:

• Local TV features are best when your content has a distinct community-focused angle, such as success stories of small businesses you count as clients or how your brand has supported a social cause specific to one area.
• Cable News stories are targeted to the widest audience possible, so framing an opinion as a conversation piece can help you stand out without distracting viewers from actual news that’s time-sensitive and relevant to that cycle.
• Online news outlets carry a mix of both locally- and nationally-focused features, so submitting to these publications means catering to their audience and their angle (e.g. business owners for an entrepreneurial publication, young professionals for a personal finance portal, etc.) while still highlighting the helpful insight in your content.

No matter which media outlet you end up approaching for your feature, don’t lose sight of how this story pickup plays into your overall content marketing strategy. If you’re a finance brand that promotes a balanced investing strategy, then it might not be the best idea to seek publication after a story on people becoming increasingly spendthrift on a personal finance news outlet.

Whether you’re just starting to focus on your content marketing strategy or revamping a heap of lacklustre content as you grow your finance brand, you need to keep in mind that the standard of content that you share will affect your business’ authority in the space. Your audience is looking for content that helps, and the more you help them, the better they will see you.

Are you ready to leverage your content marketing strategy for your brand? Contact us and let’s get started.