It’s your customers’ money, so your finance brand needs to be trustworthy

How do you know when you can trust someone with something important?

Your prospective customers grapple with this kind of question whenever they’re thinking of doing anything with their hard-earned money. The sheer number of providers they can turn to for any financial task means they’re looking at any number of brands all claiming they’re the right one. Your brand joins a whole slew of brands that are all offering to solve your customer’s problems.

It’s a missed opportunity if you’re not on their radar when they’re looking up solutions online; aside from having a website with your services and contact information easy to find, they’re going to be vetting your capabilities by looking at whatever you’ve made publicly available.

A major piece of the puzzle is the content you post, which is an indicator of how actively you’re going to be responding to their concerns, and more broadly characterise what they’ll know about your brand. With such a vital role in shaping a potential customer’s perception and eventual relationship with your company, your content needs to reflect what you want them to know.

As your company expands, this content needs to be well-planned and of high quality, so your customers get the right information about your brand. There are different strategies that both finance and real estate brands can use to build brand awareness and visibility with content as they grow their business, which you can apply depending on your company’s overall direction.

While your audience base expands, finance brands must establish a credible reputation. This is when you need to step it up with your content and use it to demonstrate why potential clients should trust your brand to provide excellent financial services and products.

5 ways content can create a trustworthy finance brand

Content can be used to help your company establish brand credibility and trustworthiness. We’ve shortlisted ways you can integrate content into your marketing initiatives.

1. Create content that adds value (not sells products)

How many times have you scrolled past a flashy ad on your feed?

Chances are, you’ve done it so often that you don’t even keep track of what you see online anymore. You’re more likely to remember when you’ve stopped on a post because you found something interesting about it or you learned something new from it, which tends to cut through.

Because information is so easily accessible online, people are more discerning about the content they consume, especially when the content comes from brands (rather than publications).

Your content must provide value-adding information, rather than just pushing to promote your services and products to potential customers. A customer-centric marketing strategy can help you do this by building your plan up to put your target audience first, which is focused on meeting their unique needs and positioning you as a reliable authority in the space.

Implementing a customer-centric marketing strategy involves three specific elements:

Understanding your customer. Gathering feedback, comprehending insights and deeply getting to know your customer is crucial to starting a customer-centric strategy,
Personalised engagement. Customising your messages, offers and experiences to individual customers based on their unique preferences and characteristics, and
Continuous improvements. Measuring results and consistently improving your experience to drive long-term customer retention and success.

Creating content keeping in mind that you want to add value to your customers’ experience gives you a better chance of stopping them in their scrolling–because they gain something from interacting with content from your brand.

2. Be consistent and authentic in your messaging

Your messaging needs to be consistent so that your audience knows what to expect from your content. This also builds your brand identity and strengthens brand recognition and recall.

Consistency with your content also lends authenticity as you use core themes and values to anchor your key messages–establishing your brand with a specific perception for your customers to recall.

With all the potential of creative content for increasing your brand’s awareness, you might be pressured to create “trendy,” content to boost visibility, but you don’t need a viral hit to be successful with your content. Consistency is key to building gradual but continuous growth–you want to be remembered as a brand, not add to a saturated pool of contributions to a meme.

While it may appear easier to hop on the latest trend, slap together some graphics and post it as everyone else is talking about it, your content is unlikely to build up your audience consistently because they may only associate you with one of the many others who hopped on the trend. Making consistent content is certainly a bit more work, but it all boils down to a few major steps:

Create a content strategy. Setting up a plan for what to post, where to post and when to share it helps you and your team go about creating targeted, structured content,
Understand your target audience. Unless you know who you’re talking to, it will be difficult to come up with content to share with them, so it’s essential to figure out what approach would build their trust in you then persuade them to reach out to you, and
Stick to a content schedule. When you hit publish at set times about topics that follow a progression–at the points in your customers’ day they’re likely to be checking their feeds–you show them how organised you are, with the right consideration against spamming their phones or not posting frequently enough.

When you focus on echoing consistent messages and prioritising authenticity in your content, audiences get to know your company better as a brand and see what makes you unique.

3. Speak your audience’s language

While it’s important to showcase your expertise and knowledge in the finance industry, using overly complex terms and jargon can alienate your target audience instead of engaging them.

You’re better off using layman’s terms when educating your audience and spreading awareness; simply put, they’re unlikely to listen if they can’t understand what you’re saying.

With such technical products and services, the temptation can be to go heavy on the jargon, especially if you’re discussing a client’s plan–concepts like cash-value life insurance or kinds of digital currency tests don’t lend themselves to everyday conversation, so breaking these ideas down in simple terms is a regular test of a finance professional’s ability to educate a client.

There are a few ways that you can go about speaking your audience’s language in your content:

Start with one-sentence explanations. Simplifying your ideas is your best bet when you’re catering to a broad audience, especially when you’re just starting out creating content for your brand,
Pose thoughtful questions. Asking if your audience understands may not motivate them to engage with your content, but leaving questions about what intrigues them about your latest post can get them thinking about what you shared, give them the chance to clarify anything they’ve picked up, and
Use graphics and other visual tools. Some people learn best when they’re reading or listening to someone explain it, while others prefer to see how concepts might look as diagrams and other ways to visualise key concepts.

No matter what method you use to communicate with your audience in their language, you must pick the way that makes the most sense for their needs and your brand.

4. Showcase social proof on your website

Social proof refers to the reviews, recommendations and ways that other customers have used a particular product or service that a customer will seek before making a decision.

Social proof showcases why existing customers support your business, demonstrating how prospects might resonate with existing customers. This shows audiences that other customers have not only transacted with your brand before but also have been able to rely on you for your service–helping you build a trustworthy brand for your firm.

5. Use storytelling to connect with your audience

Adding an element of storytelling in your marketing strategy can personalise your content and encourage your audience to connect with your brand.

Using a story in your content delivers your brand’s message and evokes a genuine emotional connection with your target customer; when it’s masterfully told, it leaves a lasting impression on your audience and motivates them to act, because purchasing is an emotional action.

Incorporating storytelling in your content means arranging information that resonates with your audience and makes details more memorable. Some ways you can do this are:

Identify the message you want to share. Figure out ultimately what you want to say; if your audience can identify and understand it within your story, you’ve succeeded,
Get inspired by life experiences. When balanced with relevant insights for your audience, your personal stories strengthen your authenticity and authority as a leader in your industry, and
Keep it simple. Once you’ve sorted the message you want to convey, stay focused on this idea and leave out any unnecessary details or events that could detract from it.

Whether you’re just starting to see the value in content or feel that your current content could be working harder for your firm, it’s fundamental to go back to why you’re creating it in the first place–to share with your audience the value of your service and why they can trust you for it.

Share to: