Content Marketing for Financial Services: A Complete Guide

Challenges of content marketing for financial services

• Strict regulatory oversight (FINRA/SEC) across the finance industry makes it hard to publish quickly, which means every piece of content through compliance reviews. That limits creativity and slows down your ability to respond to timely topics.
• Highly technical and sensitive subject matter requires absolute accuracy, risk awareness, and careful wording to avoid implying investment advice, which raises the bar for research, expertise, and editorial precision.
• Low public trust and high consumer skepticism mean financial brands must work much harder to demonstrate credibility, relying heavily on educational, transparent, and evidence-based content rather than promotional messaging.

Examples of finance content marketing strategies

Here are some examples of how the most successful financial service companies do content marketing.

1. Betterment (Robo-advisor)’s content marketing strategy

Betterment wins by making investing feel simple, safe, and inevitable for people who don’t want to deal with financial jargon. They lean heavily into SEO by building massive libraries of articles about retirement, ETFs, passive investing, and financial planning.

They also build calculators for important finance queries like “How much should I save?” or “Will I have enough for retirement?”, which consistently capture intent-driven leads. A huge piece of their growth engine is trust, so every page reinforces reliability and transparency around fees.

On the paid side, they advertise where financially anxious millennials and young professionals hang out: podcasts, YouTube finance channels, and targeted social ads. Once someone signs up, Betterment nurtures them with personalized nudges which increases engagement and keeps churn extremely low. The entire marketing motion is built around making people feel like they’re finally “doing money right.”

2. Plaid (fintech API / data connectivity)

Plaid’s marketing is almost entirely developer-first. Their homepage is basically a sales pitch disguised as documentation. Clean API docs, easy quickstarts, sample apps, and sandboxes make devs fall in love instantly. Their growth also comes from a brilliant second-order effect: every time a consumer sees “Powered by Plaid” inside Cash App, Venmo, or Robinhood, it reinforces Plaid’s brand as the invisible plumbing of modern finance.

They show up aggressively at industry conferences like Money20/20, publish compliance explainers that CTOs love, and run deep whitepapers about data security. Beyond that, they do quiet but highly effective enterprise ABM by direct outreach to product and engineering leaders at fintech companies. Plaid is enterprise-driven, so its content marketing strategy must reflect technical excellence and industry relationships.

3. Nav (SMB lending + credit tools)

Nav dominates SEO around business credit. They rank for thousands of intent-rich keywords: “how to get a business loan,” “does EIN affect credit,” “best lenders for LLC.” Nearly every SMB that Googles a credit-related question eventually lands on a Nav article. Their free credit reports act as an incredible lead magnet and naturally funnel users into lender-matching workflows.

They also partner deeply with accountants, bookkeepers, and SMB SaaS platforms (Square, Gusto, etc.). Unlike many fintechs, Nav doesn’t rely on flash. Their marketing is utility-first: “Here is your credit score. Here are lenders who will actually approve you.” SMB owners trust them because the value is immediate and the guidance is grounded in real approval odds.

Most effective content marketing types for financial services

Content marketing for financial services works best when it’s built on a strong story: a real belief, a real point of view, or a real problem you’re trying to solve.

When that foundation is solid, every content format becomes effective, because they’re all expressing the same core idea in different ways.

With that said, here is my opinion on the types of content that you can use:

Remember: all content types have potential, but you must be careful to not spread yourself too thin!

If your budget is in the nine figures, it’s a lot easier to run 2 podcasts, a video channel, a blog, and a magazine. But when you’re just starting out, focus on ONE channel that you believe to be able to deliver the best result, and double down when it starts gaining traction.

How to plan for content marketing in financial services?

Most financial institutions assume content marketing just means publishing a few articles on their blog. However, usually those articles are usually built on generic research instead of real insights, and they’re often written by someone who isn’t truly knowledgeable about the topic.

So before you launch your content marketing campaign for financial services, here’s what I recomend:

• Laser-focus into one content marketing channel and do it very well. Trying to spread your efforts across too many channels drains time and resources, and usually leads to average results. You’ll get far better outcomes by choosing one or two channels and executing them exceptionally well.
• Start your content marketing strategy by targeting potential customers who are close to buying. Do not write content for keywords like “What is [XYZ]?”. You want to invite veterans and experts to your website, not beginners who don’t even know the meaning of a basic concept in your industry. Don’t chase the masses; instead try to find out what people at the purchase stage are searching for to solve their problems, then create content to show up and help them.
• Have a distribution strategy for every piece of content. Many financial institutions create helpful content and then simply hope people will stumble across it. For content to actually work, you need a clear plan for how it will reach the right audience, whether that’s through social media, an email newsletter, Google, or any other channel where your customers already spend their time.

1. Do audience research

Before you write content, make sure to conduct a good audience research. Audience research is simply the process of gathering and analyzing information about the people you want to reach with your marketing. It’s understanding your target audience’s motivations, pain points, and behaviors.

There are a lot of ways that you can do audience research to inform your content marketing activities:

• Talk to your Sales team — Yes, Sales people are literally in the trenches, so they know A LOT about your customers and what audience you attract. If you don’t talk to Sales to extract insights, you’re probably missing out.
• Social media discovery — Go to the social media channels and check out the posts and creators your audience follows to understand what they care about.
• Competitor analysis — Analyze competitors’ content, SEO, reviews, and digital presence to learn what resonates with your shared audience.
• Communities & forums — Lurk in Subreddits and online groups to hear unfiltered discussions and real pain points that people in your niche has. Reddit is especially useful because it has every communities imaginable on the planet, so you’ll probably find some subreddits talking about your field.
• Surveys & polls — Run short surveys or social polls to gather direct feedback at scale.
• Customer & prospect interviews — Talk directly with customers and ICPs to understand motivations and how they describe their problems.
• Search intent analysis — Study keywords, SERPs, and “People Also Ask” results to map what people are actually trying to solve.
• Website & content analytics — Use analytics and heatmaps to see how users behave on your site and what content truly performs.

2. Do keyword research

Once you have insights, it’s time to start keyword research. This should inform your content creation activities later.

A lot of content marketers in financial services start their content strategies by starting off at the “top” of the marketing funnel. In other words, they target people who are only looking for definition of a concept, not people actively looking for a solution. This often means creating broad, brand-awareness pieces on basics like “what is a bank account” or “what are transaction fees.”

Anyone could be doing research on those generic terms. A grandma, a 10-year-old kid, a random college guy. it doesn’t necessarily guarantee they could become your customer.

Instead, you need to create content at the Bottom-of-the-funnel. That’s where the money lies. People searching for those terms usually know they are having a problem and are actively looking for a solution.

I categorize BOFU keywords into 3 major groups:

• Listicle Keywords – These are roundup-style searches like “Top 10 companies for [niche].” These attract users actively comparing options and help introduce your product/services as one of the contenders.
• Pain Point Keywords – These keywords are the real problems your audience is trying to solve, like “how to fix X” or “why Y happens.” Write a stellar article showing how to solve it, positioning you subtly as the ultimate choice to solve those problems. You can mine those keywords in forums and niche industry communities.
• Lead Magnet Keywords – Target people looking for resources with phrases like “free template for X” or “downloadable guide to Y.” These are great for capturing leads in exchange for helpful content. Build assets that directly match these needs.

Let’s say I am doing content marketing for a financial services company called WriteMeContent, who provides retirement planning, here are the keywords I’m targeting for them:

• Listicle Keywords: best retirement planning services, top financial planning firms, best advisors for retirement
• Pain Point Keywords: how to plan retirement income, why retirement savings fall short, how to reduce retirement taxes
• Lead Magnet Keywords: retirement planning checklist PDF, retirement income worksheet, tax-efficient retirement guide

Once you’ve tapped out the pain-point and bottom-of-funnel keywords, you can move upward in the funnel and begin producing MOFU and TOFU content.

How to write SEO content for financial services?

SEO content is amazing because it brings in consistent, evergreen traffic (and conversion) as long as you write content that genuinely resonates. Although it’s a relatively long-term game, the compound rewards are totally worth it!

My advice when choosing SEO as one of the content marketing channels for financial services is that you should strive to create the single best piece of content online for your topic, backed by insights only your team can offer.

When people search on Google, they want answers from someone who’s actually “been there, done that.” In most cases, that means content created by real humans with real experience.

But it can also be an AI-assisted article as long as it’s rooted in truth and reviewed by a human for accuracy. Google has made it clear it doesn’t really mind AI content (for now). And if you genuinely have lived experience, that naturally shows up in your writing, and experts pick up on it immediately.

And when you actually write good content:

• Readers stay on your page for longer (which boosts SEO)
• Readers share your content to their coworkers and make discussions (which affects final buying decision)
• Readers remember your brand, and will return to consume more content from you (more traffic!)
• Readers are interested enough to check your products and services (which also affects their buying decision)

Here are the steps I would do to write the best piece of content:

1. Open an incognito window and Google the keyword to figure out the search intent. In other words, what types of pages are showing up in the top three results? Deep-dive into that page. I usually check the depth of those top articles (and where I can beat them).
2. Next, build an outline with clear H1, H2, H3, and H4 headings. The H1 is your main title, the H2s are your primary sections, and everything below that becomes supporting subheadings.
3. Use keyword research tools like Ahrefs to research additional keywords to work into your article and guide your on-page SEO.
4. Then write your content. If your outline is solid, all you need to do is fill in each section. And make sure your intro pulls people in.

Here are some best practices I apply for writing SEO content:

• Keep your H1 title tag under 60 characters, ideally in the 56–58 range to avoid truncation and keep the headline tight.
• Write a meta description under 155 characters and include your exact target keyword somewhere in the copy for clarity and relevance.
• Set your URL slug to the exact keyword. Most CMSs auto-generate the slug from your full title, which is rarely ideal. Always edit it so the slug is clean, short, and keyword-only. I still can’t believe how often this has to be repeated to content teams.
• Use JPGs for images that don’t need transparency, and keep them under ~100 KB. Compress them or convert PNGs to JPGs using online tools. If they’re still too large, resize them. On Mac you go to Preview → Tools → Adjust Size → set width to ~1280 or ~1080 and let the height scale automatically.
• Add ALT tags to every image. This is essential for accessibility and helps screen readers describe visual elements to users with impaired vision.
• Save your thumbnail image as a JPG and name the file using your exact target keyword. This boosts your chances of appearing in Google Image Search. The same applies to every image you upload: use descriptive filenames, not random strings. File naming plays a bigger role in image search than most people realize.

For financial services in particular, here are some of my recommendations:

• When you publish content that actually explains financial concepts without burying people in jargon, readers stay longer because clarity is so rare in this space.
• You’ll notice that data-backed pages get referenced by analysts more often — authoritative citations quietly boost your rankings without you asking.

How to write thought leadership content for financial services

Thought leadership is built through what you say and how you say it: via writing, speaking, presenting, or teaching. When done right, it sets you apart from the competition and makes people feel confident that the insight you’re sharing is worth listening to, and worth acting on.

But remember: thought leadership content doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. You don’t have to take a contrarian and controversial stance to be a thought leader. Sometimes just digging deep into a very specific topic to uncover “hidden gems” is more than enough to be a thought leader.

For example, here’s a thought leadership post from Noah Greenberg, CEO at Stacker. He’s just expressing his ideas in a very simple, even casual fashion, and yes, I would say that it is a piece of LinkedIn thought leadership content:

The problem is that in most companies the founders and senior leaders are sitting on a goldmine of sharp opinions, but almost none of it ever gets written down. These ideas stay locked in their head. Without a system to extract that knowledge and turn it into clear, compelling content, the company never actually produces real thought leadership.

Your in-house marketing team, unfortunately, are just executors, not subject matter experts. They can package the ideas, polish the writing, and publish the content. But they’re not the ones shaping the industry. They didn’t found the company. They aren’t defining the strategy. They didn’t build the product.

When creating thought leadership content for financial services, you have several options:

1. Ideas rooted in your company’s origin story and the problem you set out to solve
2. Ideas shaped by your strategic positioning and worldview
3. Insights drawn from the actual nuance of what you build or deliver
4. Strong opinions informed by years in the industry
5. Proprietary data and patterns no one else sees
6. Case studies that reveal details only insiders would know

So here’s how I’ll do thought leadership content marketing for financial services:

1. Find your story: Almost every company in financial services was created to fix a friction founders lived through themselves—broken workflows, outdated systems, or legacy processes that slowed everything down. They set out to build something better, something that actually streamlined money movement, compliance, or client experience. That’s their disruption story. Interview the founders and tell that story. Lay out the pain points that led them to start their company, and explain the unique solution they developed to solve those problems.
2. Find smart people with unique insights: Sometimes it’s just the reality is that most companies don’t have that “groundbreaking” story. However, they usually have smart people in the company. In financial services, analysts and product leaders often have extremely specific insights about risk models, underwriting logic, or compliance workflows that work differently from other firms — the kind of nuances that never show up in generic content. Engage with them, and interview them to write an insightful piece of content. You’ll be surprised at how much content can be produced simply by talking to experts in the team.
3. Produce proprietary data: In financial services, teams are constantly searching for credible data to reference — risk trends, market activity, client behaviors. Most firms don’t have the analytics depth to surface these insights themselves, so they link heavily to whoever publishes clear, defensible numbers. Producing your own data-driven analysis is one of the fastest ways to build real thought leadership.

How to distribute your financial services content?

After you produce content, you can’t expect people to find it by themselves. SEO naturally brings in traffic, of course, but you must be proactive about content distribution too.

Here are some of my favorite content distribution channels for financial services:

• Your company blog: Always start here. Link your articles together to take visitors from one page to another. For example, in a generic How-to article, try linking it to your thought leadership content. That helps siphoning some traffic from an high-discoverability page (thanks to SEO) to a low-discoverability page (thought leadership).
• Newsletters: A newsletter is the BEST way to distribute content. In the beginning, building an email list can take a lot of time and effort, but over time, it becomes a powerful owned channel for promotional content. Some of the good newsletter platforms I recommend are beehiiv, MailerLite, Kit, and Substack.
• Social media: LinkedIn is usually the best platforms for financial services content distribution. Simply break your articles into smaller snippets and share it on social media. However, you need to share it on personal accounts rather than company pages (people don’t really read information from a Company page).

My approach to doing content marketing for financial services

I use a very simple approach to content marketing for financial services (and for virtually any other industry that my clients are in). It is called the Knowledge – Narrative approach.

Put simply, it’s about creating two types of content:

• Knowledge content, which answers questions and solves problems that your potential clients have. This type of content is usually optimized for SEO.
• Narrative content, which is basically just thought leadership content that showcases the philosophy and unique insights/POV that your brand believes in thanks to your experience in the industry. This type of content is meant to establish your brand as the expert.

A combination of both approach gives you the best of both worlds.

• Knowledge content brings in new audiences through SEO. Publication content keeps that audience engaged by showing thought leadership and perspective.
• Knowledge content is algorithm-friendly because it satisfies Google’s need for structure, clarity, and depth. Publication content is audience-friendly because it satisfies the reader’s need for voice and authenticity.

For example, if I do content marketing for financial services, my Knowledge-style content can be topics like how credit scores work and how to compare different types of bank accounts, while my Publication content can be expert commentary on financial trends and simple thought-leadership pieces that explain how the economy affects everyday customers.Challenges of doing content marketing for financial services.

Choosing the content marketing agency for financial services

Okay, since I’m writing this article, this is going to be quite a self-promo. But Perceptric is born out of my deep understanding of what’s lacking in the way content marketing is done in many financial services. I saw how:

• Pain point 1: Content team is too disconnected from the Sales team to effectively collaborate and create content that really drives Sales.
• Pain point 2: Content team doesn’t focus enough on Bottom-of-the-funnel queries and topics that drive revenue. They chase entry-level keywords that may bring in tons of traffic (but none of them have the pain point that your products/services are solving).
• Pain point 3: Content writers tend to have not enough subject matter knowledge to write content for such a highly technical field.

That’s why I create Perceptric to solve those pain points for content teams in financial services. We’re committed to crafting exceptional content that rises above the noise.

Here’s how I do content marketing differently:

1. I use the Knowledge – Narrative approach to balance between SEO and thought leadership content
2. I focus on creating content for the bottom-of-the-funnel that answers very specific pain points that your customers are having.
3. I also help you build thought-leader/opinion content pieces (sourced from experts in your field) that reflects what your brand believes in. Content marketing, at the highest level, becomes brand building itself.
4. Finally, I help you distribute those content pieces by repurposing them into formats suitable for social media

If you’re looking for a content marketing partner who genuinely gets what it means to do marketing for financial services, I’d love to help!

Financial service marketing Frequently Asked Question

1. Why is content marketing important for financial services?

Content marketing helps financial services firms reach clients who research everything online. Clear, trustworthy insights build credibility and drive actions like opening accounts, applying for credit, or engaging advisory teams. Digital trust now drives growth.

2. What’s the biggest mistake financial services make with content?

Many financial services firms spread themselves thin—launching every content format without a clear revenue strategy. The smarter play is to start with high-intent topics prospects already search for, then scale.

3. How should financial services measure content marketing?

Beyond traffic and engagement, {Industry keywords} should track sales-related outcomes rather than vanity metrics like traffic. This includes:

• Number of leads generated
• Deals/conversions attributed to content
• Deals/conversions influenced by articles

4. What type of content works best for financial services?

For financial services, BOFU content works best upfront—pages that answer high-intent searches like “small business line of credit requirements.” Once that foundation is solid, expand into educational mid- and top-funnel content to build long-term trust.