Some Fintech Companies That Understand Content Marketing

In a previous post, we considered why content marketing is essential to the future of fintech. We discovered the top five challenges upcoming and established fintech companies face-regulations, cybersecurity, competition, human touch, and early adopters/new customers-and how content marketing could contribute to providing solutions and removing every hindrance on the road to more fintech revolution.

Now we turn to some fintech companies that already understand the importance of content marketing, as evident from their content creation efforts.  We’ll look at the four types of content we introduced, the challenges they solve, and the fintech companies making great efforts to produce them.

Let’s get started!

Affinity Content

Affinity content describe content that communicate a company’s identity and values to its target audience. They help the customer to understand both the core competencies and values of the company.

On most occasions, affinity content explain a company’s view or perspective on certain crucial issues in the industry. For example, a financial advisor needs to explain whether they favor an active or passive investment approach.  

The primary purpose of any affinity content is to build trust and mutual understanding between the company and its audience.

Affinity content and the future of fintech

So which problems do affinity content solve?

• Regulations: If your fintech company is compliant with industry regulatory standards, shout it on the rooftops. In the business world, it’s not enough to be excellent; you need to say it.

Producing affinity content that show how much you care about regulatory standards and what you have done (are doing) to meet them will make your audience trust you.

• Cybersecurity: Just like regulatory standards, you need to let your audience know what you have done (are doing) to ensure their security when they interact with your platform. When it comes to trust in the fintech industry, you can’t do it enough.

• Competition: Once you show your commitment to compliance and cybersecurity, you earn customers’ trust. Trust is the foundation of customer loyalty; when you have the former, you are poised to getting the latter. With the latter, you already have a big edge over your competitors.

Examples

Chime is a fintech company that provides banking services to its customers.

On Chime’s homepage, a section briefly summarizes the protections they offer to users: security, privacy, and protection.

Blend is another fintech company that provides banking services to customers.

Instead of a section on their homepage, they dedicate an entire page to explaining why customer’s security and compliance are important to them and what they do to achieve those.

On that page, there is a section where they display some cybersecurity certificates they have earned. Such trust seals go a long way in building or confirming customers’ trust and loyalty.

Next, they give a detailed explanation of the steps they are taking to ensure better security- training every staff member to be skilled in security to create a security-conscious organization. Therefore, instead of just having a dedicated team, they want every member to be a security expert in their own rights.

Imagine if Blend was doing this but never talked about it. Creating a security-conscious organization where every member is skilled can be a core competency, an edge over their competitors.

True Accord is a fintech company that uses machine learning, among other technological solutions, to help organizations recover debts.

True Accord has three sections under the heading “Compliance-” collections compliance, information and IT security, and licensing compliance. Right there on the homepage, you can access these sections. They devote much space to explain why security and compliance are important to them and what they are doing to excel there.  

Summary

Create affinity content that shows your target audience your commitment to compliance with regulatory standards and their security on your platform.

In addition to static pages, you can also create content (blogs, videos) to reiterate your commitment and emphasize your actions whenever there is any disturbing news about non-compliance and cyber-attacks.

If an organization publishes a report about how many fintech companies don’t meet regulatory standards, use it as an opportunity to reiterate the fact that you do comply with regulatory standards. Do the same when it is a cybersecurity issue.

Don’t rely on static pages. Continue to be a part of the conversation. Remember, you can’t do too much to earn and keep customers’ trust.

Authority Content

Authority content seek to position you as an expert before your target audience. Why is this important? Consumers love to go with the expert. In a world where news and information are democratized, customers are careful of who they listen to. The advantage for you is that consumers now have more trust in people they consider experts in a niche.

For example, Neil Patel is a trusted expert in Digital Marketing, Brian Dean in everything SEO, and Warren Buffet in investment.  

Authority content and the future of fintech

What will authority content do for you?

• Competition: When you are the expert in your niche (focus on your niche rather than your industry, the riches are in the niches), you are already heads and shoulders above your competitors.

• Early adopters and new customers: Once you can establish yourself as an expert in your niche through authority content, you won’t have problems finding early adopters and new customers. To be more accurate, you won’t have problems with early adopters and new customers finding you.

• Human touch: When you create authority content with the audience’s needs in mind, you will create better relationships with them. Customers love businesses who “get them,” by which they mean businesses that understand them and meet them where they are.  

Examples

A crucial way to build authority is to find out your target audience’s needs and create content that both showcase your authority and meet their needs.

Authority content is not about showcasing your knowledge for its sake but meeting the needs of your audience in a way that showcases your authority.

Morning Star, the popular investing platform, has a resources section where they teach on various investment topics and educate their audience to become better investors.

Blend does a great job here. In addition to blogs, they publish guides and whitepapers and record webinars that educate their audience on various banking solutions and disruptive ideas.

True Accord does the same. They dedicate a section of their website to “industry insights,” where you can find blogs, roadmaps, and webinars, among others.  

Adding the human touch

It bears repeating that authority content is customer-centric. You are not just showing expertise; you are doing it where it matters most to your audience.

I love what Varo, a fintech company providing banking solutions, is doing here. They are not just writing thought pieces on the technical terms and developments in banking; they show expertise where it matters most to their audience.

In 2020 (and even now), “COVID-19 unemployment benefits” and “COVID-19 stimulus checks” were quite important to people. Varo took the opportunity to provide important information and some commentary to their target audience. Those who read those blogs will have that “they get me” feeling.

Expertise and authority do not mean sitting at your ivory tower and writing whatever gives you goosebumps. Instead, you are interacting with the people and writing authority content around their needs. That’s how to add the human touch to your tech and disruptive business.

Tala, a lending platform, takes this “human touch” thing to another level. On their blog, you find interviews with some of their key staff members, documentaries about financial inclusion, and some sneak peek into their activities.

When you read Tala’s blog, you feel you are interacting with other humans rather than a platform. In the tech world, that is very valuable.    

Summary

Create authority content that meet the needs of your audience. Exert your expertise in your industry. Don’t be an expert in a corner or top executives’ meetings in your industry (unless they are your customers). If there is a place where you want to “blow your horn,” it’s when you are interacting with your customers.

If there are news reports relevant to your industry, be the one creating content on it. When there are developments in your niche, be the one providing commentary and thoughts. Be the primary destination for the people in your niche.

But remember to prioritize the needs of your audience and create that human touch.

Attraction Content

Attraction content describe content that seek to create awareness for your business. They are majorly SEO-optimized content designed to generate new customers by ranking high on search engines.

Attraction content and the future of fintech

• Early adopters and new customers: By ranking well for keywords that are important to your business, you can get early adopters and new customers on autopilot.

• Competition: When you own the first search result for keywords important to your niche, you have a big edge over your competitors.

Examples

Chime does this well by targeting keywords that are important to their target audience. They create SEO-optimized content with amazing headlines.

They don’t just understand their target audience’s needs; they turn those needs into keywords and create content that will attract them.

And this commitment to attraction content is working well for Chime. 756k organic visitors per month is a good accomplishment for a fintech company like Chime.

Summary

Learn SEO and create SEO-optimized content to take advantage of the most important keywords in your niche.

Consider guest posting on popular sites that your target audience visit. Also, do more than creating blogs; infographics and charts are very helpful for SEO purposes.

Action Content

If you understand storytelling as a content strategy, then you will see that action content is not really a different category. Every content you produce-affinity, authority, and attraction-should have action content.

Action content also include the copywriting you do all through your website and social media channels.

However, my primary concern with action content is the former- storytelling as a content strategy, where action content is everywhere.

Action content and the future of fintech

• Early adopters and new customers: Including action content in your attraction content will help turn readers into consumers.

• Competition:  When you learn to make people buy from you without being “salesy,” you have become a marketing rock star. And since most of your competitors are still struggling to create ads that interrupt people, you have a massive advantage.

Examples

Morning Star does a good job of using action content in an otherwise authority content. In an article about ESG Investing, they strategically include how they help investors who want to invest in ESG firms. You come to this article to learn about ESG investing; you leave subscribing to a service they offer.

Chime also does a good job here. In an article about secured credit card-an attraction content-they introduce how Chime can serve you. They show you how their app can help you schedule payments to avoid defaults. Also, they provide alternatives to secured credit cards-Chime’s credit builder card.

Summary

Whatever type of content you create, let there be action content in it. Don’t just write good copywriting on your website and social media channels; make every content an opportunity to sell without ‘selling.’

Conclusion

Many fintech companies are crushing content marketing already. They are creating great affinity, authority, attraction, and action content that are transforming their businesses.

Take a cue from them, go out there, and crush your niche. Content marketing will help you solve the challenges you face and pave the way for you to contribute massively to the fintech revolution.

Keep creating.

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