Content Marketing: the smart way to grab attention: rather than strictly promoting products and services on your website, you should also be educating customers about how to better manage their finances. delivering this type of information is an effective way to expand customer loyalty and business.

• Author: Goldstein, Jerry

IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE FINANCIAL SERVICES LANDSCAPE, banks greatly benefit from using progressive content marketing (sometimes referred to as inbound marketing) tactics.

Content marketing is creating and distributing relevant and valuable content across digital channels to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience. This approach is important because it presents banks with unique opportunities to educate customers and potential customers, monitor reputational risks and engage potential customers interactively.

Consumers and businesses alike turn to the Internet and social media resources to research products and services. According to Google's ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth), consumers take 30-45 days to make a purchase decision for a new account or loan product. During this time, they check 10.8 different online resources, making it imperative that banks have a solid online presence.

Content marketing's purpose is to attract visitors to your website and convert them to customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of educating the customer without selling. Rather than promoting products or services, banks should deliver information that makes customers more intelligent about managing their finances. The essence of the content strategy is the belief that if an organization delivers consistent, ongoing, valuable information to customers, it ultimately is rewarded with customer business and loyalty. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into the overall marketing strategy.

While content marketing is being rapidly adopted across all types of businesses and industries, the financial services industry is lagging behind. According to a study released by the European Financial Marketing Association--in partnership with global technology, consulting and outsourcing company Wipro--only one in eight banks currently possesses the digital marketing strategy needed to succeed in the current and future online environment.

Banks need a clear strategy

Digital media usage, including the use of blogs and social media, has skyrocketed and banks have been slow to adapt to using them, and when they do, it is often without a clear strategy. The amount being spent on digital media is surprisingly small in today's banking environment, and to date, the primary use of Facebook (the most prominent form of social media) by banks is for monitoring and responding to...