How financial services brands can drive measurable results through content

The advertising industry is rapidly evolving beyond creating ads for ad placements. In an era of ad blockers, skip buttons, and ad-free radios and TV channels, traditional ads are losing relevance and dying a slow death.This changes everything. From content ideation, distribution and all the way to measurement, the entire marketing paradigm is adapting to the new attention economy. As a result, brands are presented with the unique opportunity to develop an ecosystem where they can deliver content across multiple channels, through branded films, podcasts, webcasts, social, and other forms of in-feed content.In many ways, the financial services industry (FSI) is among the pioneers in this new brand publishing frontier. Although FSI brands face unique regulatory and compliance challenges, they still manage to create amazing, innovative content to reach new audiences and grow their brands. Yet, at the same time, there is still room for improvement. After all, while 78% of FSI marketers use content marketing, only 25% of them consider their organisations to be effective at it, according to the Content Marketing Institute.Here are three ways FSI brands can build content strategies to drive measurable results:Using content to highlight social issues and earn credibilityThe days of hard-selling and outright self-promotion are long gone; it is essential, instead, to put out content that goes beyond just the product. In an industry where customer loyalty is a key priority, one of the approaches FSI brands can use is to take a stand on social issues and deliver relevant content that speaks to their audiences.ANZ (Australia & New Zealand Banking Group) with their Equal Future campaign, which won six awards at this year’s Cannes Lions, is a good example.Originated from an ANZ whitepaper produced in partnership with a strategic research firm, the Equal Future campaign was launched with the aim of creating an active change movement in the professional gender inequality sphere. As part of the campaign, ANZ worked with high-profile personalities including Australia’s first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard and tennis superstar Martina Navratilova for the “Equal Future” video.“Nobody is going to go online and fill in an application form for a home loan. That’s not how people want to interact with that product; they actually want to sit down and have a discussion around their serious fears and concerns. So the role of content in this instance […] is offering people something as a softer call to action, as part of that journey within these complex buying cycles,” said Schalk van der Sandt, Head of Digital at PHD Media in Mebourne, who managed the Equal Future campaign, on mapping content strategies to achieve specific outcomes in the financial services industry.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKQXVYUVajkTo summarise, these were the three “C’s” that contributed to the success of ANZ’s Equal Future:Creating an emotional response: ANZ invested in their content assets to make sure they were compelling enough to make people pay attention and generate an emotional response. The campaign was also appealing enough to motivate people to share, support and put their voice behind the cause.Credibility: ANZ also worked with major publishers and high-profile personalities to source content for a microsite built around the campaign to add credibility and weight to the initiative.Continuity: ANZ ensured that their website was updated on a regular basis with opinion pieces, news, and video content. A follow-up video campaign called “Pocket Money” launched a few months later as a sequel to the first video.Westpac’s content hub The Cusp is another great example of how FSI brands can use content that help them counterbalance the negativity and build trust.Building content strategies around specific outcomesFrom building trust, to educating an audience around your product, to driving more measurable intent, content strategy should be aligned with the outcomes you want to drive.It is also essential to take a position on hard issues above and beyond your product, enabling your brand to build trust, giving your brand a human voice, and making your content something that people can relate to.For FSI brands in particular, education is another important outcome, seeing that the products and services offered can be difficult for consumers to grasp. Brands can make this process simpler by creating content that allows visualization of how its offerings can solve a problem or add value to their lives.Education can also eventually transform an interested lead into a customer. A great example from a different market is UTI Mutual Fund, a pioneer in the Indian mutual fund industry, who launched a youth-targeted campaign to strengthen the brand's proposition. Comprising two video episodes, the campaign was aimed at educating a very targeted audience – Millennials - on the benefits of a Systematic Investment Plan and creating awareness around the need for wealth acceleration.Driving measurable intent through contentWe are now going into what some have defined the “post- -demographic - targeting era”, where audiences are no longer profiled as relevant based on their gender, age or where they live.As media strategies evolve to target audiences based on intent, rather than demographics, FSI brands can leverage three main engagement moments to drive and measure intent through content:Search: the first and probably easiest thing to look at is people who are actively searching for your brandRetargeting people returning to your site or page through retargeting ads. These are people who have shown interest in your product by interacting with your content or product pages, but didn’t ultimately complete the action you wanted them to completeContent discovery: by distributing your content through amplification platforms, you engage with your audience when they’re most reactive to content – while reading the news or favourite blogs, when they are in a ‘discovery’ mode, and willing to engage with your content so long as it aligns with their interests. Of the three moments, content discovery is probably the most powerful signal of intent.To facilitate this process, FSI brands need to leverage data to make informed decisions around content creation and distribution. With the right infrastructure in place to analyse data, FSI brands can effectively segment audiences based on intent and buying personas, and target them with content in different formats.The writer is Isabella Barbato, head of marketing, Asia Pacific, Outbrain.