The banking audience is broad and well-informed; to attract it, banks need to connect with it. Data-driven content marketing is the key to achieving this.

Consumers have more and more options to consider when choosing a bank. Thanks to the ease of access to the Internet, people are more informed than ever and know that they have greater control in their relationship with companies. Hence, their service expectations are higher, as confirmed by the Global State of Customer Service study of 2020 from Microsoft.

Today's customers want banks' digital services to be as cutting-edge as those offered by technology companies. Consumer demands also include a desire for personalized, real-time, data-driven service from banks, according to a study by Accenture. 

Data-driven content marketing can meet these demands. By using data correctly, banks can be much more efficient in the way they manage communication with their customers. Data can give banks an edge over their audience and their competition and help them position themselves as true industry experts.

Data-driven strategy to sell to the banking audience

The first step in developing a good content strategy is to know the audience; This is a valid principle for any business. However, banking, unlike other industries, does not have a single audience that it wants to reach, but several.

Indeed, as banks market a wide variety of products and services, they need to reach different audiences. Audience consumption and interests vary constantly according to characteristics such as age, sex, lifestyle, and nationality, among others. In this context, data-driven content marketing is key, as it offers tools for banks to interact with each audience with different orientations and distribution channels.

Basing its digital strategy on data can help a bank bring the right content to the right audience. Data analytics tools make it possible to draw insights from groups of customers with similar profiles to produce appealing content. It's the way to deliver personalized information that convinces and inspires trust. 

The latter is essential in finance and is something that can be achieved with content marketing. By creating relevant content that demonstrates authority and strong knowledge, and meets the needs of the audience, consumers will better understand banking products and services. As a result, the trust that consumers place in banks will increase.

How to speak to the banking audience to sell to them?

“People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy." This quote from author, speaker, and business coach Jeffrey H. Gitomer – widely used in the world of sales and which has become almost a mantra – may well explain why banks have resorted to strategies such as content marketing to engage their audience.

People are not stopping buying. They are constantly looking for products and services that meet their needs, but they don’t want companies that are only looking to sell, they want companies that connect with them. That is why they want companies that listen to them, that offer them solutions and give them advice and counsel to make better decisions.

Bank of America, one of the largest banks in the United States, for example, has the Better Money Habits web portal, where it offers advice on various financial topics, such as savings, income, budget, debt, credit, taxes, etc. Citibank has a similar strategy with its Life and Money website, where it posts lifestyle-focused content with topics on money and wellness, but also on culture and travel. 

With this content, these banks have achieved significant organic traffic and brand authority. Their publications connect with their audience, which is evidenced by the success of some of their content. 

Publications such as Invest: why it is important and how to get started and 8 simple ways to save money, from Better Money Habits, for example, rank well on Google, as they occupy the first places in the search engine results when using keywords such as 'investments' or 'how to save money'. The first article has achieved a traffic of almost 4,000 visits, while the second has managed to exceed 12,000, a significant number if you consider that it is organic and unpaid traffic. 

When analyzing these two contents with True Content – our artificial intelligence-based tool that allows us to know in detail the audiences and the competition of a brand – we found that the sentiment that inspires readers is positive. In terms of tone, for the article Investing: why it is important and how to get started, the main tone is "tentative" and the second "analytical", while the article 8 simple ways to save money stands out first for its analytical tone, followed by one of joy.

Another aspect that contributes to the success of these contents is their readability. The complexity of the text is related to the reader's level of education (elementary, high school, undergraduate, or master's degree). The analyzed contents of Better Money Habits were written for an audience that finished high school, so its complexity is low. In this way, Bank of America ensures that financial topics that may be complex for some users, such as investing, are covered in informative ways.

Data: the key to connecting with the audience

To create content that engages the banking audience, it is necessary to know it. What do they read? What topics interest different generations? In addition, knowing what competitors in the industry are doing and what strategies they are appling can be very useful in designing a solid content marketing strategy. 

At CastleBerry Media, as experts in designing and executing content marketing strategies, we connect audiences with our clients with a strategy based on artificial intelligence and data. This way, the consumer and what they need and want can be understood in depth, in order to develop a successful content marketing strategy.

Whether your business employs content marketing, at CastleBerry Media we offer the tools you need to understand and engage your audience. You can learn, for example, what are the most successful content topics and subtopics in the banking industry, what topics are covered in the media that speak to your audience, or the topics and subtopics of content published by competitors, among other things. 

For banks, data-driven content marketing is the most direct path to growth. Success requires a combination of three factors: reaching the right audience, with the right message, and at the right time. The most effective way to achieve this is to collect meaningful data and develop a smart strategy to employ it. At CastleBerry Media, we can help you do just that - Contact us!

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