6 ways Financial Marketers can improve ROI – part 2

In part 2 of our series exploring how FS brands can improve their content marketing, we’ve identified 6 ways to improve the success of campaigns:
1. Put your content in context. If your target audience sees your message where they’re already consuming financial content, they’ll be much more engaged and more likely to take action. Rupert Hodson, our CEO and co-founder, explains: “ Delivering campaigns targeted to specific financial audiences, while they are actively engaging in financial content has been an age old recipe for success in marketing.” (please see here for the full interview). Our campaigns typically demonstrate increased dwell time, actions and higher life-time value because we deliver them in context.
2.It seems obvious, but get the content right. How you word your ad text and what imagery you choose will determine who engages with it. If it’s too niche, readers will skip it. If it’s too generic, you may engage the wrong readers and cause your bounce rates and CPAs to increase. And don’t underestimate the importance of testing. Without A/B testing creatives, both in terms of imagery and text, optimisation becomes a guessing game rather than a strategic decision-making tool.
3.Know the demographics and behaviour of your target sectors. What devices are they most likely to consume content on? What platforms do they read? This should determine which publisher you choose to drive traffic through. Also consider where they are based, and what time of day they are most likely to engage. The more you know about your audience, the more successful your campaign will be.
4.Always lead with your readers in mind and keep the user journey as simple as possible. If you are promoting a video, say so in the ad text or add a play button to the image. If the content needs to be downloaded, make sure that readers are aware of that by adding a CTA of ‘download white paper now or ‘download our report’. Your audience will be much more likely to engage with your content if they know how it will be presented.
5.Consider all the elements you want to track, and make sure every goal essential to your campaign’s success can be measured. Do you you want to track which of your landing page CTAs is the most successful? Is one of your goals increasing the number of users who downloaded a white paper, or do you want to discover if a campaign has increased your users’ dwell time? Document each one and make sure each has a specific goal set up. Tracking which clicks convert on the site and interpreting the data will allow meaningful analysis. Incomplete data will limit your results and won’t give you a true representation as to how effective your campaign has been.
6.Run campaigns across a variety of channels and constantly monitor the results across them all. Don’t assume just because ad text has worked on one channel, it will automatically work well on another. It might just need some small adjustments to make it start to engage, but unless you’re tracking your results closely, you won’t be able to make that change. This allows insight into what is working well in terms of publishers, devices, ad creatives or time of day – which in turn allows you to be more savvy in your campaign evolution, and for future campaigns.