The effectiveness of gated content formats

91% of marketers say lead generation is their most important goal. Despite this, only 5% of marketers ‘always’ gate content, 34% ‘sometimes’ and 25% ‘often’. While gated content shouldn’t be your only lead generation strategy, it should feature prominently in your content marketing plan. But what makes a good gated content strategy?

At the end of the day, if your gated content isn’t of interest to your audience then they won’t subscribe and provide their contact information. Additionally, recognising different mediums require different strategies is key to ensuring your gated content strategy is a success.

Gating whitepapers is highly effective for financial marketers as they offer in-depth analysis of complex financial topics. These cater to the sophisticated needs of potential clients seeking comprehensive insights and can establish your finance brand as a thought leader. This helps attract high-quality leads and potential clients.

Webinars provide an interactive platform for financial marketers to showcase expertise. The real-time nature of webinars allows for immediate engagement and clarification of complex financial concepts. Additionally, the follow-up opportunities post-webinar are strong, making this format a robust lead-generation tool.

E-books are versatile and can cover a broad range of topics in detail, making them a valuable asset in your brand’s content arsenal. They’re particularly effective when addressing the lifecycle needs of clients, from retirement planning to investment strategies. E-books can be easily shared, increasing the likelihood of capturing additional leads through referrals.

Each of these content formats serves a unique purpose in the lead generation funnel and their effectiveness can be amplified when used in combination. For instance, a whitepaper can lead to a webinar invitation, which can then promote a related e-book, creating a cohesive journey for the prospect.

Best practices for creating valuable gated content

Gated content should be well crafted to resonate with sophisticated financial audiences. Here are some best practices:

• In-depth research and insights: Financial advisors and their clients expect content that goes beyond surface-level information. Comprehensive research, market analysis, and proprietary insights can differentiate your content. This not only attracts high-quality leads but also establishes credibility.
• Personalisation: Tailoring content to specific client segments can significantly enhance its effectiveness. For example, an e-book on retirement planning for millennials should differ from one targeting baby boomers. Personalised content shows an understanding of the unique needs and challenges of selected client groups.
• Engaging formats: While the depth of information is crucial, the presentation is equally important. Infographics, charts, and case studies can make complex data more digestible and engaging. Interactive elements in webinars, such as Q&A sessions and polls, can also enhance the user experience.
• Clear value proposition: The gated content should clearly articulate the value it offers. A compelling description highlighting the benefits and key takeaways can entice users to provide their contact information.
• Compliance and accuracy: Financial content must adhere to regulatory standards and ensure accuracy. Misinformation can not only lead to legal repercussions but also damage the firm’s reputation. Collaborating with compliance teams during the content creation process is essential.

Metrics for measuring success

Advisors should track metrics aligned with lead generation goals to evaluate the effectiveness of gated content. Key metrics include:

• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who provide their contact information to access the gated content. A high conversion rate indicates the content is perceived as valuable.
• Lead quality: Assessing the quality of leads generated through gated content involves tracking their progression through the sales funnel. Metrics such as lead scoring, engagement level, and the rate of leads turning into clients provide insights into content effectiveness.
• Engagement metrics: For webinars, metrics like attendance rate, duration of participation, and engagement during the session (e.g., questions asked, and poll participation) are key indicators. For e-books and whitepapers, download rates and time spent on the content can provide valuable insights.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Calculating the ROI of gated content involves comparing the costs of content creation and distribution against the revenue generated from converted leads. This helps determine the overall financial impact of the content strategy.
• Feedback and adaptation: Gathering feedback from leads and clients who accessed the gated content can provide qualitative insights. This feedback can refine future content, making it more aligned with client needs.

Gated content can significantly enhance lead generation when executed strategically. By leveraging diverse content formats you can attract and engage high-quality leads. Monitoring key metrics ensures content remains effective and drives meaningful engagement and conversions.

The post How to use gated content to capture qualified leads appeared first on Financial Marketer.

There’s no doubt today that content is a valued player for marketers, with inbound marketing platform, Hubspot reporting that 70% of marketers are actively investing in content, the top priority being to generate leads. And with an estimated 80% of B2B marketing assets being gated, it’s already proving to be an effective strategy for many finance brands. So, what are the considerations when determining whether gated content is the right strategy for your finance brand? 

How to use gated content?

Whether your objective is brand awareness, engagement or acquisition, it’s essential to be able to measure the impact of your content marketing efforts. And crucially, to be able to engage with customers ongoing—be they B2B or B2C. As strategies behind measuring content marketing become more sophisticated, one technique to demonstrate content ROI is to quantify the value of leads brought to the business. Here’s where gated content comes into play—using gated content can help maintain the integrity of articles, whitepapers, research reports and other forms of content that finance brands are producing and help generate valuable leads for the business. 

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Finance brands and gated content

The Financial Times and The Financial Review are two examples of leading publications that have embraced gated content by using a paywall. And while the subscription model may be more common for media publications it’s proving relevant for finance brands too. Ophir Asset Management has embraced gated content to help generate leads for its newsletter database, using the insights and commentary of their internal investment experts as the value-add to capture investors’ interest and personal details. By finding a unique angle or insight, or through weightier pieces of content, finance brands can not only capture leads but gain a sense of a potential customer or client’s area of need or interest. However, it’s not as simple as gating a piece of content and the leads will come. 

Is the decrease in traffic worth having gated content?

When gating content, there will always be a drop off of users who see the lead generation form as a barrier to entry. This means finance marketers need to weigh up the value of the warm leads generated versus those that drop off. With the average cost per lead for financial services sitting at $160 compared to $55 for education and $34 for retail, finance brands have a lot to gain from capturing relevant and engaged leads without the cost. 

With the average cost per lead for financial services sitting at $160, finance brands have a lot to gain from capturing relevant and engaged leads without the cost.

Does gated content damage your brand?

In many instances, gated content could mean fewer people see your content, which in turn raises the question of whether this will affect brand awareness and brand authority. But it doesn’t need to be a case of one of the other. In fact, they should help support one another. By maintaining the quality of ungated content it provides proof of the value and quality of your brand’s content and confirms that it’s worth users giving up their personal details.  

Another way to make sure you’re not impacting your brand in a negative way is to make the user journey to content as seamless as possible by reducing the number of form fields to only the details that are necessary. There should also be a calculated customer journey path from capturing their attention on social to funneling customers through your ungated content and finally onto the gated lead gen opportunity. 

Will Google penalise finance brands for having gated content?

Having gated content does mean Google isn’t able to scrape content and links on your website and therefore can’t index keywords or pages, which can impact your website SEO. To overcome this, finance brands should include teaser content including keywords and phrases separate to the gated content that Google can index. This also gives individuals a sense of what they’re signing up for. 

To further improve your SEO ranking, consider these best practice SEO tips. And if you’re unsure how your website SEO is performing, use our free SEO website audit tool.

Gating to achieve a higher ROI on content

It’s important to remember, not all content needs to be behind a gated wall. Finance brands can hook users with an engaging article, or short-form piece of content to demonstrate the value of content being produced before using weightier content formats such as whitepapers, guides or reports to do the heavy lifting to capture and convert leads to a customer or client. Quality gated content is a piece of the content marketing puzzle that when used effectively can play a valuable role in the overall customer journey.

Interested in understanding what point in the journey to gate content and how to find the sweet spot between gated and ungated content, read more.    

As finance content marketing specialists we can help you create content for every stage of the customer journey, get in touch. 

The post The benefits and pitfalls of gated content for finance brands appeared first on Financial Marketer.

“Too many of us remain dependent on a gross excess of statistics,” he preached in his book based on the writing seminars he hosted for his colleagues. “Jettison some of those numbers and replace them with illustrations from life that hammer stories into the reader’s memory.” What readers crave, he added, is a narrative.

Jettison some of those numbers and replace them with illustrations from life that hammer stories into the reader’s memory.

Finance research reports deliver death by detail

With 76% of buyers suggesting they would hand over their details for a good whitepaper and 63% for an ebook, the extra time spent on writing and presentation is worth the investment. So, let’s examine the good and the bad from three big-name finance brands.

• Brand Finance, an American business valuation consultancy, released the 2020 edition of its Global 500 whitepaper in January 2020. It ranks the strongest and most valuable brands worldwide. Each year the results are reported by hundreds of publications around the world, and it’s a strong example of effective newsjacking.
• The Beyond 100 content series of British bank Barclays investigated the economic and societal implications of an ageing population. Shunning PDFs to work across multiple channels, its videos earned close to 200,000 views on YouTube alone.
• Finally, Australian bank NAB surveys the mental health of Aussies quarterly for its Wellbeing Report, which provides insight into its customers beyond simple numbers.

Research report structure and distribution

The number-heavy nature of finance research can result in hard-to-read reports. The Global 500 created a clear narrative with a simple structure that placed the top-line findings at the start; the detailed figures, methodology and databases at the back; and the main results, broken down by region, vertical and leadership, in the middle. But it served a smarter purpose, too: Brand Finance wrote multiple press releases, each with different headlines and intros that angled the same research to various potential clients – a great example of blockbuster content in action. The result was localised coverage in the Middle East, Singapore and Australia, as well as in niche sectors as varied as gadgets, fashion and automotive.

Channels and atomisation

Think beyond a PDF to ensure your findings and follow-ups stand out. Barclays presented Beyond 100 as a long-form online written feature, which in turn formed the basis of a podcast and four videos. These videos mix interviews and narratives with CG animations to explain complex ideas in an easy-to-digest manner. The 2018 series was then followed up again in 2019 with Beyond Human Limits, which examined how emerging innovations could transform our lives in biotech.

Brand Finance pulls a similar trick each year, furthering the main report with more detailed examinations of different verticals. And don’t forget that atomisation doesn’t only have value online – the report was first unveiled live at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Research can be an excellent basis for a live presentation, so pitch to industry conferences and events six months in advance.

Visuals

It’s too simplistic to see graphics as just a way to break up text, so vary formats and create a bespoke design. Global 500, for instance, told its story through graphs, charts, infographics, photos and pull quotes. Each was conceived to present the raw numbers in the most accessible way. NAB’s report failed here, with charts crammed full of so much data they were difficult to read. Remember, HubSpot’s content marketing statistics reveal articles that contain images get 94% more views than those without, so think harder about what graphics you choose.

Analysis

Firstly, analyse your numbers: suggest why something is happening and what the real-world consequences might be. Brand Finance did this frequently, such as pondering if Apple’s struggles “could be the opportune moment for Google”. Secondly, add additional research and context. We’re not just told IBM’s Ginni Rometty placed well in the rankings, we’re also informed she’s the tech giant’s first female boss. NAB, too, regularly compares its results with previous years to explain emerging trends.

Qualitative

Just because you’re in the numbers business, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace qualitative questions. NAB puts reactions from respondents at the heart of their findings. “I was too ashamed to ask family for money and didn’t want to hear lectures,” admitted one customer when asked why they took out a loan in difficult financial circumstances.” Take Blundell’s advice and place human beings – that’s your potential customers – at the heart of the story.

Audience

Before you commission research, consider: how do your content pillars align with your audience, what issues affect their personal or professional lives, and what genuine insight can you offer? If NAB’s primary aim was to target Millennial or Gen-Z customers, then focusing on an issue close to their hearts, mental health, was a smart move to build trust. Barclays showed off their innovative credentials by talking to tech leaders. And Brand Finance reached big corporations by showing off their services to potential clients continually benchmarking themselves against each other.

The Dubs produces custom research that benchmarks finance brands against their competitors and ranks performance in the market. To find out how we’ll make this the cornerstone of your content strategy, get in touch.

Related articles

• Do webinars belong in your financial services content marketing mix?
• The trick to long form content design
• How to make heavy going finance content engaging

The post How to turn a stodgy finance research report into a cracker read appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Before we get into the technical benefits of long-form content, it’s worth pointing out the consumer benefit of a well-informed piece of writing – your audience will thank you for answering their questions and your brand image bolstered by this position of expertise.

Now, on to the less obvious benefits…

Google loves long-form content

The search engine benefits of long-form content are enormous. Google loves content-rich sites and even offers users the option to view in-depth articles as part of their search.

This follows a trend for longer and more specific search terms being used to find results. For example, instead of searching for ‘home loans’ you might look for ‘fastest way to secure a home loan’. According to WP Beginner, 70% of searches fall into this long-tail category.

The wealth of content in long-form copy makes it more likely to rank higher for these long-tail search terms, boosting the chances of your page being found more often.

But that’s not the only SEO benefit. Longer-form copy is more likely to attract backlinks from other sources – increasing your domain authority. It also positions you as a subject matter expert, making Google more likely to rank you highly for relevant searches.

Long-form goes social

You’d be forgiven for assuming that reports comprising thousands of words get lost or ignored in the fast-paced world of social media. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

BuzzSumo recently reported that long-form articles (between 3,000 and 10,000 words) generate more shares than any other length of content. The increase is particularly evident with X, where posts linking to longer copy generate a buzz.

Long-form articles (between 3,000 and 10,000 words) generate more shares than any other length of content.

Heaps of potential

Don’t forget that one of the best things about long-form content is that it can be transformed into so many other things. Compiling your expertise into one authoritative Blockbuster content piece gives your content teams the freedom to atomise the content, cutting it into shorter articles and listicles, or even to change the content type entirely and use the information as a springboard for new infographics, podcast discussions or email marketing campaigns. Putting in the initial effort to deliver something comprehensive will trickle down into quality content across all of your marketing efforts.

To ensure your content holds up, be sure to get inputs from subject matter experts from across your organisation.

If you’d like to find out more about making your long-form content a palatable read, be sure to look out for our next blog with tips and tricks for presenting your content in an engaging and effective way.

For help producing a piece of long-form content that will engage your audience from start to finish, get in touch.

Related articles

• Why Mary Meeker’s yearly report is a blockbuster hit
• Blockbuster marketing: swap entertainment for expertise
• Retention: the strategy many finance marketers forget

The post Why long-form content should be in your strategy appeared first on Financial Marketer.

We find out from Elizabeth Glover, Marketing Director at Zuora, a company that provides software to subscription-based businesses.

Why is the world moving towards subscription models?

As consumers, we’ve shifted away from the burden of owning products, towards buying experiences. We want flexibility, not stifling contracts; customisation, not generalisation; constant improvement, not planned obsolescence.

Whether it’s about getting from A to B, listening to music or even securing our homes, the Internet has driven a disruption in our personal and professional lives, as we opt for subscription services like Box, Uber, salesforce.com and Adobe. 40 million adults in Britain now subscribe to at least one product or service.

We want flexibility, not stifling contracts; customisation, not generalisation; constant improvement, not planned obsolescence.

How does the subscription model benefit businesses?

A subscription model is designed to put customers first and to build loyal, long-term relationships. It provides businesses with data and insights into what customers want and how they want to buy it, which allows the mapping of growth to value. Successful businesses, like Apple and Amazon, are seizing the opportunity to get closer to their customers, by offering valuable services that generate new, predictable revenue streams.

Last year, subscription business revenues grew about five times faster than S&P 500 company revenues – and achieved ten times the sales growth of both the Australian Securities Exchange Index (ASX) and the German Stock Index (DAX).

What does the growth in subscription models mean for financial service companies?

Arguably, banks and other financial institutions are the world’s longest running subscription businesses: most customers become members of a bank when they leave home and never switch. Often, this is because their choices are limited, not because they are delighted with the service.

But, in a recent UK-wide study of 1,000 consumers, conducted by CitizenMe and commissioned by Zuora, we found that customers are willing to pay – or even switch banks – in return for more tailored, flexible and valuable financial services. Companies known for being industry disruptors, like Apple and Amazon, are slowly creeping into the finance space with innovative payment methods … early signs that the finance space is ripe for shifting to today’s Subscription Economy®.

One finance company that understands the opportunity the Subscription Economy® presents is eMoney. This leading provider of wealth management solutions for advisors, firms and enterprises has grown rapidly over the past few years, to serve 57,000 users. In 2016, it came to a crossroads, with the realisation that the offline environment that had led to its success was not capable of scaling with its growth trajectory. So, eMoney extended its self-service platform and monetised it as a subscription model, thereby upping the customer experience, improving processes, boosting sales and fuelling growth.

What advice would you give to financial service companies thinking of moving to a subscription model?

• Success requires a whole new way of thinking: the focus must shift from the transaction to the customer. Companies should orient everything around the subscriber, with all departments enabled to support a new customer experience that takes a long-term view of creating lifetime customer value, mapped to customer preferences. From partnering with businesses making this shift, we’ve learned that the following pieces of advice can be crucial for success:
• Overcome organisational inertia: the biggest obstacle is mindset. From business school to corporate management training, we’re taught to think about hit products and unit margins. But, ironically, all companies are service companies – even if some of them don’t realise it yet! Companies must prioritise usage and consumption over strict unit sales. They need to think in terms of miles driven, not cars sold.
• Know your customer: if you’re not wrapping your entire business model around your customers’ wants and needs, chances are, you may not have a business left in ten years. By allowing subscribers the freedom to pause, skip and change their subscriptions, you’re putting the power in their hands. They’ll feel much more comfortable signing up for the long-term if they know they have control.
• Iterate with your customer: succeeding means having the flexibility to try new things and to iterate quickly, as subscriber needs or market conditions change. Businesses that don’t constantly improve in step with customer demands risk losing subscribers. Operationally, this includes things like launching new services, creating new pricing models and offering new payment methods.
• Price appropriately: this is a delicate balance. While a tiered pricing model (think “Gold”, “Silver” or “Bronze”) can help with financial forecasting, usage-based pricing is essential for growth. If customers are left wanting more or needing less, you risk turnover. Flexibility – as in the ability to upgrade, downgrade, pause, renew or cancel – is what makes subscriptions so convenient. Our research found that, on average, companies grow faster with a combination of usage and tiered pricing.

Related articles

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The post Are subscription models the future for finance brands? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Unless you’re giving away the keys to the kingdom, not all content is worthy of gating. Even when producing weighty white papers or thought leadership pieces, if a brand and its customers aren’t aligned on their definition of value, then it’s going to be a tough sell. The fact of the matter is, consumers aren’t always picking up what you’re putting down. They don’t always care for what you do, and how many bells and whistles you can throw in. They want to know how you’re going to solve their problem and how you can genuinely help them.

Giving customers what they want

A single customer journey today is dynamic, accessible, continuous, and ideally, occurring across multiple channels. In other words, it’s non-stop. The race to win the hearts and minds of customers and grow share of wallet is a daily preoccupation in metric-based marketing. And the finance brands that are winning this race are the ones moving away from the traditional strategy of promoting their products’ features and benefits, to instead engage customers with relevant and valuable content, delivered during the customer’s own moments of truth. So, how does a gated or open content strategy fit into this mix? And how do you decide what’s right for your audience?

The finance brands that are winning this race are the ones moving away from the traditional strategy of promoting their products’ features and benefits.

The benefits of an open content strategy

Before we delve into the potential benefits of a gated content strategy, let’s first touch on the benefits of delivering freely available content to your customers.
– Increase audience and reach of your content
– Increase your perceived goodwill
– Align with your search strategy and optimisation
– Increase your pool of re-marketing prospects

When to gate your content

With these benefits on the line, when should finance brands consider gating their content?
– When you have something extremely valuable to share that aligns with your audience’s needs and concerns. Something so valuable, people would be willing to buy it
– When you want rich, qualified customer lead data
– When you have a specific and thorough CRM solution to convert each lead

A way to get the best of both worlds

One tried and tested approach is to gate an extremely high-value piece of core content, and then atomise elements of it across a mix of owned, earned and paid channels. LinkedIn refer to it as the ‘Big Rock’ strategy. LinkedIn also shares what content works best on their channel for finance brands. 

From the hero piece, dissect and repurpose smaller components that still demonstrate value to the customer, but can be freely shared across your entire channel mix. And of course, don’t forget to amplify and optimise them ongoing. Here are some amplification and distribution tips specifically for finance brands. By taking this approach you will be able to effectively align your content with your existing search and keyword strategy, increase your audience reach and remarketing pool, all while potentially improving lead generation. The other benefit is that each of these content pieces ultimately link back to the piece of gated hero content, where your call to action is an exchange of data for your prized content.

Want to see this approach in action? Check out some of the US brands winning at a fair value exchange – Betterment with their free investment review, Prudential and Society of Grownups and their suite of online courses.

The post Should finance brands gate content? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

What are the top 3 mistakes financial content marketers make with inbound marketing and how can we avoid them?

1. A quantity over quality approach to inbound marketing

The misstep here is thinking: ‘we need lots of content’ instead of: ‘we need the right content’. When content planning, ensure you are mixing science with creativity – analyse key metrics to gauge the quality of your existing content and use these learnings to inform future content. Before producing any piece of content, ask yourself:
– Does it solve a problem or answer a key question for your audience?
– Are you writing for your audience or search engines?
– Is there a good mix of content types? Is there enough evergreen content within the mix? – Avoid focusing only on breaking news, consider content that can be repurposed and updated regularly. This will give each piece of content a much longer shelf life.

Ultimately, the relevancy of your content is what will help you rank highest in Google’s eyes.

2. Lack of content strategy or end goal

Understanding what content you are creating and why is an often overlooked step in a content marketing strategy. It’s easy to get caught up in the daily production of content and lose sight of why you are actually creating it. Stop and review. Ask yourself:

– Are you looking at the right metrics to determine whether your content actually appeals to your audience? Some key examples could include:

Pageviews
Time on page
Leads and MQLs (e.g. downloads, consultation requests etc.)
Clicks or conversion goals
Social shares

– While customer acquisition may be your main motivation to create content, have you considered using content to achieve alternative or dual goals? – You could focus your attention on increasing visibility of your brand by targeting customers higher up the funnel. Consider changing your metrics accordingly. e.g your goal could change from a conversion metric to an increase in the percentage of repeat visitors, seeing this as the start of a long-term customer relationship. The great thing is that content marketing can help you target customers at any stage of the funnel – provided you have a clear plan for what you’re trying to achieve.
– Is the content you’re producing worth the investment? – Use the above metrics to keep track of whether or not you’re meeting your goals and achieving ROI. You can also find some helpful tips on how to do this in our article on ROI and the case for content marketing.

3. Finance brands’ fear of trying something new

Financial content may be bound by strict regulations and focus predominantly on technical subjects, but that doesn’t discount the need for creativity. Don’t be afraid to test and learn, failure is as valuable as success. Ask yourself:
– Are you writing the same old type of content because ‘this content has always worked so why would we change it’?
– Can you trial something new without burning through too much time and resource to test your hypothesis?
– Can you build an ‘MVP’ (Minimum Viable Product) into your content marketing strategy?

Examples of how the Hubspot software can be implemented within a company are shown in their financial services case studies.

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The post 3 mistakes financial brands make with inbound marketing appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Publishing was once the privilege of media companies but, as the internet has made it possible for anyone to be a publisher, and we’ve observed a decline in traditional media resources, brands have stepped in to fill the void – with a great deal of success. Branded newsrooms have been embraced by some of the world’s biggest companies, American Express, GE, Credit Suisse, Marriott, Microsoft and Walmart, to name a few, have successfully created publishing arms dedicated to content designed to talk about product without talking about product. In the finance realm, ANZ’s BlueNotes stands out as Australia’s first branded newsroom.

Write what you know

Most brands stick to, knowingly or not, horror author Stephen King’s golden rule of ‘write what you know’, and become specialists in their niche, sharing their knowledge with an audience already interested in their topic. Launched in 2014, in part to fill a gap left by dwindling finance publications, ANZ BlueNotes reached over 800,000 unique visitors in 2016. “Ultimately we started because traditional media was shrinking,” says BlueNotes’ managing editor, Andrew Cornell. The award-winning journalist worked for two decades at the Australian Financial Review and had firsthand experience watching the financial publishing space shrink. “There’s an audience for the kind of content we produce, and traditional media just doesn’t have the resources to do all of these stories. We’re filling the gap.” Cornell says. “Ten years ago you couldn’t have done this because it would have been too expensive to start a newspaper or a radio station, but you can start an online site.”

(Full disclosure – ANZ is a client of The Dubs)

BlueNotes does use data in their day-to-day editorial decisions, Cornell warns against relying only on numbers to make editorial decisions

Producing quality content

For brands to succeed as publishers, particularly if one of their goals is to create content shareable beyond their channels, investing in quality is essential. By producing stories of journalistic standard, the content is regarded as genuine and becomes a trusted source. “We encourage traditional media to use our stories, which is why we write them to that standard,” Cornell explains. “There’s no marketing in it. It’s all about good stories.” In-house journalists, including Cornell, are involved in content production, creation and editing. They also have contributors throughout Australia, Asia and New Zealand. According to Cornell, the majority of contributors fall into two camps: experienced former traditional media journalists, or thought leaders from companies including PWC and major law firms. “We work with them so that the content is in a format the BlueNotes’ audience responses to. You cannot publish an eight-page PDF, because people don’t read it, but we can work with them to make it engaging.”

Using data? Yes – and no

Many brands are taking advantage of consumer data to create content, using metrics related to engagement rates to provide insights and drive content that may appeal to audiences. While BlueNotes does use data in their day-to-day editorial decisions, Cornell warns against relying only on numbers to make editorial decisions, particularly in the case of smaller publishers where data is limited. “Data is important, but it’s easy to overstate. For us, it’s still important to talk to our readers as much as we can and listen to their comments,” he says, adding that anecdotal feedback is also important for a site such as BlueNotes, where “data isn’t huge enough to be that meaningful.”

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Digital publishing has brought newfound flexibility that gives brands the ability to play with content. Cornell believes that, while it is important to tailor some content based on metrics, experimenting can bring unexpected and positive results. “This is where data doesn’t help. We don’t always know what our audience might like, what they might be engaged in. We try to publish things that are unexpected and see how it goes,” he says, adding the lack of experimentation in traditional media could partly explain why digital disruption has had such an impact.

Harvest in-house expertise

Many branded newsrooms have access to a gold mine of in-house experts and can encourage staff to share insights in articles they write themselves or which may be ghost written by the editorial team. Cornell stays on top of what is happening across ANZ and believes it’s often what’s below the water that makes for better content. “We aren’t so much interested in the bank producing a new credit card, but we are interested in why they would do it. What’s happening with consumer trends? How is technology changing? Those sort of stories behind the stories are good for us,” he explains. “In these large institutions, there is an incredible amount of insight and expertise and great research. We try and tap into that. Some of it is commercial and sensitive, and we don’t publish that. But there is a huge amount that isn’t, that’s interesting and that our audience would like to consume.”

The process of launching a branded newsroom is far more involved than creating a blog and requires dedication, resources and planning to have the desired impact and maintain an engaged audience. Andrew’s view is that a branded newsroom can be an excellent way to build brand awareness. While success rarely happens overnight, the longer-term results can be substantial.

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The post What does it take for a finance brand to launch a branded newsroom? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Is this really a tangible possibility or mere science fiction?

Introducing Quill by Narrative Science

The answer may lie in the rapid development of computer algorithms that can analyse data and language nuances to create “human-like” copy. Advanced NLG is the official terminology used for a bot that uses artificial intelligence to craft written content. Up until recently AI could produce documents of data and statistics, but couldn’t actually write content. Well, that has all changed with the advent of Quill. The Narrative Science website states that “it creates perfectly written, meaningful narratives for any intended audience”.

Narrative Science’s main focus with Quill right now is the finance industry and tailoring their algorithm to improve employee productivity

What Quill is able to do is analyse and understand data, then convey that information in an easy to comprehend narrative that reads in a conversational tone. It’s very hard to pick the difference between content written by humans and by Quill. The New York Times is using Quill to relieve the burden of writing from humans, as the publication cannot expect their journalistic workforce to slave over laptops 24/7. Another well known publication that makes regular use of Quill’s talents is Forbes magazine. These are some of the articles Quill has written for the finance publication. Can you spot the difference? Probably not.

Quill is not alone

At least two more companies have created algorithmic software capable of compiling data and emulating the human mind when it comes to the written word. Automated Insights have produced Wordsmith, which Associated Press uses to generate more than 3000 financial reports each quarter, and the Los Angeles Times makes use of another AI writer called Quakebot, the algorithm that is employed to “analyse geological data”. Even online retailing giant, Amazon, is looking into creating its own robot writer to produce works of fiction and nonfiction to sell on the Kindle platform. If Amazon can effectively eradicate the human author (and publisher), the company gets to retain 100% of the profits generated by book sales.

What this means for business

Algorithmic platforms such as Quill are tailor-made for compiling and analysing information such as financial data and regurgitating that information into highly-readable content. In fact, Narrative Science’s main focus with Quill right now is the finance industry and tailoring their algorithm to improve employee productivity in the workplace. Compiling and analysing financial data and generating readable written reports is a time consuming task. Quill has predominantly been designed to alleviate that menial labour, freeing up staff to work on other projects. And rather than presenting clients with clunky financial data regarding the performance of their portfolios, Quill presents the information in a much more reader-friendly format that is easily understood.

The future

Kris Hammond, chief scientist at Narrative Science, predicts 90% of journalistic reporting will be written by AI bots such as Quill by the year 2030. What this means for this author and his ilk remains to be seen.

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Credited with great contributions to economies and infrastructure across the globe but derided for paving the way for tax evasion, dealings involving the ‘unclaimed property’ of Holocaust victims, and their roles leading up to the global financial crisis, these Goliaths may not be bulletproof, but certainly appear impossible to derail.

During several generations of flux, their rivalry is the one constant factor, and while UBS wears the crown, Credit Suisse has mounted the throne occasionally to remind its old foe that the war will never end. Given the lifespan of these companies, the roots of their influence run deep and it’s fairly safe to assume that they’ll charge through more obstacles to survive another 150 years, at least.

But in an age of expanded communication channels, brand perception is the new battleground. Beyond independent auditing, greater transparency and obligatory philanthropy, these strange anti-heroes are now leveraging content marketing to prove they care about us and our future.

For businesses of this scale, it would be ludicrous to miss the opportunities content can create. Constrained by the drier the subject matter of finance, these brands have more to gain from colouring outside the lines and showing additional dimensions to company culture.

Our main event on the fight card for this evening is UBS’ Unlimited versus Credit Suisse’s The Financialist…

Unlimited comes out swinging with a content hub that aggregates selected articles contributed by respected sources like Vice, Monocle, The Future Laboratory and Freuds, along with UBS’ own unique offerings. The factor that swings the pendulum from lame to game is the angle: a monthly theme presented as profound questions for us to ponder. The topic at time of writing is ‘Does wealth make us rich anymore?’

UBS is tapping into the philosophies powering our fears and cynicism regarding finance and its role in our lives. What I love about this approach is that it’s like having fruit pelted at you by demonstrators and suddenly deciding to join the horde and wield a placard. ‘Actually, you’re right,’ says UBS, ‘Why do we even care about money?’

We all know UBS cares deeply about wealth. We also know that as much as we moan about financial institutions, we desire profit, even while we question the ‘system’. So for UBS, there’s little risk in joining or fuelling the conversation. They can yell ‘viva la revolution’ while counting our money.

After a solid right hook by UBS, Credit Suisse’s The Financialist looks a little light-headed. It has the same game plan—an ‘informed but inventive, offbeat take on things’—and it has its own content writers (a gold star for originality), but the subject matter isn’t quite as fun. This site offers a laser eye on industries, economies, political influence and international trends. It doesn’t wander far from the core brand’s interests so fails to enjoy the wider appeal of Unlimited.

This doesn’t mean it’ll hit the deck and be wondering how many fingers the referee is holding up. It may win the bout by capturing the only eyeballs that matter—the ones owned by the rich, or potential customers aspiring to join those ranks. The point is that it claims to be disruptive and edgy, but in reality its content production methods make it difficult to break the shackles of tradition and comfortably march within the ranks of the revolutionaries.

Besides the bland design of The Financialist, its original content lacks the freewheeling gall of Unlimited’s contributors. Opinion requires audacity, bravery and a very thick skin—all things that are easier to develop when you’re not too closely associated with a mother brand. But it’s early days, so The Financialist may expand to become an entity that rebels just enough to be a worthy read.

Far too many businesses are creating content without knowing how to use it as a weapon against their competitors

Unlimited also wins the presentation category; not because of great design but because of its categorisation via themes and confrontational questions about life. Its headlines, imagery and candour deliver according to the brief. It’s disruptive and fun. Add to that a more extensive use of multimedia, and I know which one I’d be reading if I happened to be in the market for thinly veiled branding exercise.

But before we strap the content marketing heavy-weight belt around UBS’ ample gut, it’s worth looking at these sites in isolation rather than judging merit by comparison. I mean, I’m better looking than Donald Trump, but that doesn’t mean I’m handsome.

While I’m less than impressed with the volume and frequency of published articles on both sites considering they’re backed by giant banks, Unlimited is having some success leveraging content on social media, with consistent retweets and shares. Either the result of organic viral behaviour or paid boosting, its big picture topics such as Can you buy time?’ and ‘What will happen to our economy when robots take our jobs?’ are creating conversations. In contrast, The Financialist’s efforts on those platforms seem token.

Unless you’re only fishing for referrals via search engines (fast becoming a dated strategy), you can’t just let your efforts end after you hit the publish button. I continually tell companies to treat every item of content as a product with a sales strategy including a target audience and a budget for promotion. Far too many businesses are creating content without knowing how to use it as a weapon against their competitors.

I’m not going to say that UBS have mastered content marketing, but with Unlimited they’ve taken a large step in the right direction. The tone and topics are on point, and with a little more exploitation of their own content, they could have a successful standalone site.

But before UBS pops champagne corks and covers head office with streamers, they should probably do a Google search for UBS Unlimited followed by a search for Credit Suisse The Financialist. You see, in the world of content marketing, you have to get everything right.

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