7 Content Marketing Tips For Financial Services Brands

Multiple challenges arise when creating content for a finance company.

Handling legalities tops the list, but there’s more. Much more.

Working with many companies in the financial sector and ghostwriting major investors/financial CEOs in the pages of Forbes and other business magazines, I’ve encountered my share of difficulties.

Below, I share the challenges marketers face when creating content for financial services brands—with a heavy emphasis on written content—and the solutions to those challenges.

But first, let’s discuss what should guide your focus when creating content in the financial industry: Google’s YMYL and EAT concepts.

Understanding of Google Finance’s YMYL/EAT Content Guidelines

In the wake of the censorship uproar, Google has set a precedent for creating special algorithmic considerations for information it deems important in areas such as financial advice, current events, politics, legal advice, and so on.

The rationale was simple – bad financial advice leads to severe financial consequences for innocent people.

The last thing Google wants for its brand is to provide bad financial information that negatively affects your finances and your life.

This is why Google refers to important content, such as financial advice, as Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) content.

Google provides an explanation of how they rate and rank YMYL content from their report titled How Google fights misinformation:

“When our algorithms detect that a user’s query is on a ‘YMYL’ topic, we will place more weight in our ranking systems on factors such as our understanding of the trustworthiness, experience, or trustworthiness of the pages we serve.”

With that stated statement, I want you to keep in mind three relevant keywords: expertise, reliability, and trustworthiness.

These properties would later include Google’s infamous EAT, which is part of and hidden in Google’s algorithm Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

Let’s explain from a content creator’s perspective:

• expertiseIs the specific author or publication an expert on the topic?
• AuthoritarianismHow reliable is the website and author? This is based on traditional factors like backlinks, social signals, page traffic, etc.
• TrustworthinessHow trustworthy is the source? For example, does the source have significant traffic, and has it ever had any complaints?

Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm isn’t yet smart enough to understand how effective financial advice is, so they have to consider signals like author experience and authority in ranking content.

This is why the first four results of a search appear [how to do my taxes] Are all trademarks and top-level domains that we recognize or trust:

However, this presents a huge challenge for brands and small businesses looking to tap into the financial sector with organic search.

Additionally, there are other legal and financial concerns that arise from financial content creation.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Executing the strategy comes with additional challenges that are usually more annoying than the creative thinking stage.

This is due to the many legal and bureaucratic aspects behind the doors of most financial services brands.

Here are some of the content marketing tips for financial services brands that I learned along the way.

Financial Services Content: Common Challenges and Solutions

1. Competition in organic search

Due to Google’s strict EAT and YMYL guidelines, no financial blog or website will be able to compete with Turbotax or Nerdwallet.

The most obvious solution is to generate thought leadership for their brand.

Of course, this presents the proverbial pitfall 22.

To build authority, you need disclosure, but Google makes that very difficult for the general topics that provide the most exposure.

Here are some solutions to up our content game and offer unique ideas.

Solution

• Be a thought leader by writing guest posts For reputable blogs, writing a book or e-book related to your industry, or building a brand through social media.
• Target long-tail keywords for unique topics With less search volume it is more targeted to your audience.
• Offer guest posting opportunities to experts For writing on your website and generating some buzz/power.
• Create content featuring multiple financial experts To provide additional relevant information on a broader topic.
• Form partnerships with data or analytics companies For the original search in directions.
• Create a survey on a broad topic To see where trends are changing in the industry.
• Use video and alternative media To create shareable content on your website.

2. Compliance with regulations

Like the medical business, misinformation can quickly get your customer into trouble with the authorities.

Of course, this will spoil your image, which is hard to build when you’re the focus of so much negative criticism.

Unfortunately, financial services, in particular, have some of the most intense regulatory scrutiny when it comes to producing content online, sharing it via social media, and advertising your brand.

FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) is a well-known regulatory agency that monitors everything from social media from influencers to financial services content.

FINRA RULES It intends to “protect investors from false and misleading claims, exaggerated statements, and material omissions.”

In addition to FINRA, there are a number of additional regulations that take advantage of everywhere in the content of financial services.

For example, file Office of the Comptroller of the Currency It has strict rules that regulate the accuracy, clarity and compliance of content specifically related to banking services.

Solution

• Create a disclaimer that protect your customer from legal liability.
• Update their website to reflect regional privacy laws to avoid liability.
• Use knowledgeable writers for financial services.
• Set strict content guidelines On the basis of known regulatory barriers.
• Ensure that your client uses a legal review process to ensure proper compliance.
• Stick to topics you know And their legal team has experience in.

3. Find knowledgeable writers

In the solutions above, I outlined the need to find writers with experience in financial and organizational matters.

However, as someone who has managed a team of freelancers for years now, this is certainly easier said than done.

The biggest problem is finding experts on the subject. Once you find an expert, two more problems arise – the writer is either too expensive for your budget, or they simply can’t write well.

Solution

• Reverse engineer eats. Find writers on high-level SERP articles and offer them a freelance partnership (if on budget–many of the best finance writers won’t touch articles under $1 per word or $750 per piece!)
• Use LinkedIn to Create accurate ads about what you’re looking for, with examples and budget in mind. You will get a lot of noise in there, but you will find someone who is capable. My Passenger success rate is about 10% – yes, 1 in 10 writers are usually able to create the content needed.
• hire f Training of internal writers.

4. Time is of the essence

Financial news and current events move quickly, with government and independent financial reports being released daily.

The last thing you want is a post on a major story that has been stuck in a review for a week. These frustrations are further amplified when working with the Extensive Review Process for enterprise companies.

If your client is providing any type of financial advice or financial reporting, it is essential to improve audits to inject content in real time.

Solution

• Set content guidelines for legal compliance with your client to reduce review times.
• define the priorities Interactive and real-time content Editorial review.
• something about Simplify review with other partners (Maybe taking ownership of the channels or moving forward beforehand).

5. Target the right readers

You will encounter a wide variety of people with different levels of experience in the world of finance.

It’s easy for readers to become overwhelmed with complex financial jargon and procedures, especially when dealing with topics like taxes, cryptocurrency, retirement accounts, and portfolio investing.

Simplifying content so that it is understandable by most readers is important, but also making content that is optimized for those readers is more likely to go further with you or your client’s brand.

You will need to create a strategy that caters to people looking for general financial advice to increase client authority and create targeted content for people who are specifically interested in hiring their company.

Solution

• Simplify top funnel content to attract a wider audience.
• Use a CMS to meet customers in the middle of the funnel With targeted content based on their interaction with your site (content can be more complex).
• Reinforce intention by following relevant advice and POS based on their engagement history.
• Feed this information to the sales staff for follow up With a sales call focused on the customer’s specific pain points.

6. Update stale content

In general, outdated content can be a waste on any site, but it can also leave websites with outdated or incompatible content in a world full of legal problems.

The solutions are simple, but time consuming.

Solution

• Perform a site-wide audit with a website crawler Such as Frog scream And download all URLs in a spreadsheet. After the main run, I’d recommend doing this twice a year or quarterly for larger clients.
• Analysis of trending topics at most smrash or any tool to decrypt or remove content that needs to be updated.
• Delete any time content outdated or no longer compliant with regulations.
• Evergreen content update With much less traffic.

7. Find resources

As you know by now, the financial content is complex.

If you write on behalf of other companies or yourself, it can be hard to justify budgeting for one blog that costs $750+ between research and work.

Solution

• Set a budget that will take the extra brunt of writing long-form content full of financial advice.
• Set clear expectations when working with other content marketing partners regarding time and money.

Although the barriers to financial services and all of YMYL content are higher than in other niche areas, the rewards for investing in content marketing are just as high.

Aim for a mix of evergreen and trending content, follow the tips above to speak to every target customer and meet the strict regulations and legal codes for financial content.

More resources:

• SEO for financial services brands: Key trends and opportunities in search
• 10 content marketing trends worth watching in 2022 [Infographic]
• Content Marketing: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to What Works

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