Evidence strongly suggests that content marketing can be very valuable in terms of building consumer trust and reputations of expertise (Kristen, 2013). This is particularly important in financial services as consumers now demand to see evidence before trusting in financial service providers since the 2008 financial crisis sent trust levels plummeting (Johnson and Peterson, 2014).
Kristen (2013) outlines a number of factors contributing to successful creation of valuable content, and applying this to the online blogs of major players in the JISA industry provides some useful insight into competitor behaviour.
The blogs of the following JISA providers were examined: Scottish Friendly, Family Investments, Engage Mutual, Alliance Trust Savings, Sheffield Mutual and Shepherd’s Mutual.
Make Regular Contributions
While it is essential that all content is valuable to readers, the more regularly organisations are able to share good quality content the greater the visibility of their brand (Kristen, 2013).
The rate of content production among major JISA providers in the UK ranges from approximately once a week (Scottish Friendly, 2015a), to less frequently than once a month (Family Investments, 2015a). None of the providers seemed to operate on a regular schedule, providing content at regular but uneven intervals at best, suggesting that a planned schedule for more frequent and regular releases could benefit all providers (Kristen, 2013).
Make it Informative
Kristen (2013) also claims that informative and functional pieces of content are most valuable to readers and Ashley and Tuten (2014) state that the majority of social media content from organisations is designed to be just that.
However, users go to social media for both entertainment and information (Whiting and Williams, 2013), and in contrast to Kristen’s (2013) claim that the highest value stems from informative and functional content, Berger and Milkman (2012) argue that content which is entertaining will gain further traction and reach greater volumes of readers.
Of all six of the financial service providers examined only two had produced entertainment pieces in their last five content releases, and only one of these did so regularly. While the majority of providers produced functional and informative pieces, Engage Mutual (2015a) produced pieces that contained information but were largely entertaining, such as the article in Figure One below, titled ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b).
Figure One: Engage Mutual ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b)
This is consistent with the work of Ashley and Tuten (2014) suggesting that most financial service providers may be prioritising producing valuable content over content which is more likely to be shared.
Be Specific: Know Your Audience
Kristen (2013) claims that valuable content needs to be directly relevant to the reader, and not generalised. This involves creating life stage and financial status specific content, something which it is clear that all of the JISA providers aim to do, however different products have different customer demographics and this suggests that these organisations should be splitting content by customer segment in order to provide easy to find and relevant content only.
There is little evidence of this occurring on any of the blog sites examined. Engage Mutual are the only site to segment their blog articles by topic, however this reduces ease of which articles can be viewed as multiple segments may apply to multiple demographics as these do not seem to be designed for particular customer segments, as shown in Figure Two below (Engage Mutual, 2015c).
Figure Two: Engage Mutual split content by topic (Engage Mutual, 2015c)
While the articles of all the providers are clearly targeting their customers, it is often unclear which customers they are specifically addressing and there is no apparent method of targeting articles to specific customer segments, something which could improve the value of total content which consumers read (Kristen, 2013).
Be Where Your Audience Are
Ashley and Tuten (2014) claim that the majority of successful social media marketers use multiple appeals through multiple channels to reach their audience. Kristen (2013) supports this action, suggesting that spreading a message through multiple channels increases an organisation’s visibility and opportunity to connect with the intended audience. This may involve, not only using different channels of social media, but enabling an organisation’s content to grace partner websites, online community sites and even non-corporate blogs that the target audience often visit (Kristen, 2013).
All six providers were examined to determine whether they shared their own content on social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook, or through third party retailers and bloggers. It appears that none of the providers share content through third party channels while every provider except for Family Investments uses some form of social media to share and promote their content. Thus reach for content produced by Family Investments will be severely limited in comparison (Kristen, 2013).
Implications for Competitors
Within the JISA providers examined, content marketing strategy appears reasonably consistent. All providers agree that content marketing in financial services is important and at least offer occasional content pieces. Providers such as Engage Mutual and Scottish Friendly seem most engaged in producing and sharing regular content and interestingly these two providers also have the largest followings on both Twitter and Facebook giving their content the greatest reach. It seems struggling content producers could learn a from their example and incorporate entertainment pieces to boost brand awareness online, however according to Kristen (2013) even these providers could improve content marketing effectiveness using greater variety of media and more specific information.
For more information on how to create high quality content read:
Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20
or visit http://bit.ly/15r8DKG to read Ashley and Tuten’s (2014) article on branded social content.
References
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T. (2014) Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploration Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp 15-27
Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 192-205
Engage Mutual (2015a) ‘Health and Wellbeing’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/health-wellbeing/> [accessed 29th April 2015]
Engage Mutual (2015b) ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/top-secrets-to-looking-and-feeling-fabulous-over-50/> [accessed 29th April 2015]
Engage Mutual (2015c) ‘The Hub’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/> [accessed 29th April 2015]
Family Investments (2015a) ‘From the Blog’ [Online] <www.familyinvestments.co.uk/family-nest/blogs/> [accessed 29th April 2015]
Ho, J. and Dempsey, M. (2010) Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 63, No. 9-10, pp 1000-1006
Johnson, D. and Peterson, M. (2014) Consumer financial anxiety: US regional financial service firms’ trust building response to the financial crisis, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp 515-533
Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20
Scottish Friendly (2015a) ‘Welcome to the community blog’ [Online] <www.scottishfriendly.co.uk/community/blog/> [accessed 29th April 2015]
Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369