Is your fintech blog boring and not engaging your readers? If your blog posts look a lot like these: “Great news! [Company name] closes Series B funding” “[Company name ] featured on [publication name]” “[New product feature] is here!” It may be time to shake things up. Fintechs, like many tech companies, use blogs as a PR channel, publishing content focused on them and their products without speaking to topics that potential customers are looking for. A fintech’s blog could be so much more than a PR or news channel. For example, it could act as a content hub to help educate rather than mark ..read more

When asked to recall your favorite online content, you probably don’t think about stuff made by banks. Unless, of course, your job is to make content for a bank. That’s not a knock on finance content at all, by the way. It’s just that flashier B2C brands often muscle their way center stage, showing off the products and services that people genuinely love shopping for: sneakers, beauty products, vacation packages. When most of us sit down to research where to bank, we’re not really jumping for joy. Believe it or not, the caution with which consumers approach money actually makes finance content ..read more

Plenty of financial services companies have been drawn to the appeal of content marketing in recent years. Open an app geared toward stock trading, and you’ll probably discover a dictionary of investing terms that rivals Investopedia. Or maybe you’ll find a blog full of fun, light-hearted advice pieces. Many of these exist in service of a product or brand. But what if the main product was trust? Situated somewhere between newswires and fintech companies, Morningstar has been steadily building its reputation since 1984. Now operating in 29 countries, it’s emerged as a financial information lead ..read more

Contently Case Stories tell the story behind the amazing work Contently customers are doing. On March 11, the content team at MD Financial was finalizing their Q2 content plan, built around themes like spring cleaning your finances and home-buying season. Then Prime Minster Trudeau announced Canada’s response to the COVID-19 situation. “Our world flipped,” said Shawna Dennis, who leads all of marketing for the physician-focused financial services company. By March 13, the entire marketing team was mobilized around an entirely new content strategy. Within a week, they had launched a hub of COVI ..read more

When asked to recall your favorite online content, you probably don’t think about stuff made by banks. Unless, of course, your job is to make content for a bank. That’s not a knock on finance content at all, by the way. It’s just that flashier B2C brands often muscle their way center stage, showing off the products and services that people genuinely love shopping for: sneakers, beauty products, vacation packages. When most of us sit down to research where to bank, we’re not really jumping for joy. Believe it or not, the caution with which consumers approach money actually makes finance content ..read more

Paul is a 27 year-old engineer from Minnesota. He’s the kind of millennial who likes to brew homemade beer in his garage while listening to Coldplay, Bon Iver, or The Lumineers. Paul and his wife of one year, Sarah, have been thinking about starting a family. For now, though, he’s happy visiting relatives and sampling his homemade brew in his free time. Paul sounds like a pretty cool guy, only he isn’t real. Paul and Sarah are two fictional personas brightpeak financial has created in order to understand different segments of its target audience—married Christians between the ages of 20 and 45 ..read more

I once made the mistake of visiting a bank to open a new credit card. After a lengthy wait, the banker began by asking about my plans for the weekend and favorite sports teams. The small talk, while pleasant, wasn’t bringing me any closer to that credit card. I wondered if there was an app I could have used instead. Turns out, I’m far from the only young consumer looking to escape the in-person process for the ease of mobile banking. According to a January 2017 Salesforce study, 31 percent of millennials use mobile as their primary banking option, nearly double any other channel. Millennials ..read more

Silicon Valley startups will do whatever it takes to grow. Lately, content marketing has been the means for that growth. Venture capitalists are using publishing as a way to show off investing expertise. Just about every startup has a blog or a magazine. High-quality content not only boosts a company’s cool factor, but also has positive effects on every department, from sales to PR to recruitment. At this point it’s surprising when a startup isn’t investing in content. But Venmo, the mobile payment platform that allows users to easily split purchases, has been mos ..read more

Financial marketers are obsessed with millennials, but millennials aren’t so fond of banks. A new infographic from Facebook IQ reveals that 44 percent of millennials feel like their banks don’t understand them, and 36 percent go so far as to “describe their current bank in unflattering terms.” (Cue the frowning emojis.) This might read like a problem, but it’s also an opportunity. With 45 percent of millennials open to switching banks, financial institutions are in the position to convince them to make a change. What can savvy banks do to reach younger consumers? For starters, keep i ..read more

In the finance industry, something incredible has happened over the last couple of years: Plenty of companies now embrace content marketing—or at least try to. Chase launched a robust newsroom, filling its homepage with ambitious stories and reporting; ANZ hired a team of journalists to publish deep market analysis; and Merrill Lynch built an entire publication to help financial advisors take their game to the next level. Those are just a few of the brands making a big effort to connect to consumers in a new way. (Full disclosure: Chase and ANZ are Contently clients.) Yet even t ..read more