Today's buyers have more information and options at their fingertips than ever before. But more isn't always better. In fact, it can make the decision-making process that much more complex. In the financial services industry, this is especially true. Consumers have a multitude of businesses pleading to handle their money. 

So how do people choose? Well, the answer would have been different a decade ago, but we are officially in a new era of purchasing. Gartner reported that 82% of the buyer journey is now done independently, making independent research the biggest influencer in a purchasing decision. And where do people find their information? Online. The thing is, research is not just content on the page. Information seekers are impacted by things like offerings, branding, messaging, UX, reviews—all of it, a true content experience. 

Finding modern and innovative ways to arm consumers with the right content and, more importantly, the right experience, facilitates better customer engagement and an overall more-informed buying journey—both of which are vitally important in a particularly crowded FinServ space. 

Let’s take a look at how two financial service firms realized what focusing on content and experience could do for them. 

MD Financial Management reorganized content to drive lasting customer engagements

As a financial company exclusively dedicated to serving Canada’s physicians, MD Financial Management depends on highly relevant content to differentiate them from the competition. Fortunately for MD Financial, they were aware of this too. That’s why they prioritized content experience before many competing firms even considered it. 

Before that, what their content team was delivering was relevant and informative, but it wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. Amazing content can only take you so far on its own; giving an audience a seamless user experience is the other half of the battle most companies don’t give thought to. 

This is where Uberflip enters the picture. Using Uberflip allowed MD Financial to set up two distinct content resource hubs, organizing streams of content by persona and topic.

Here’s what a practicing physician can see when they search by their own persona:

By producing and segmenting a ton of content on a wide range of topics, MD Financial lets its website visitors read up on areas that interest them and potentially discover new areas of interest. 

This initiative greatly boosted the findability of relevant content. 

The UX for internal employees looking to service customers with information and individuals doing their own independent research greatly improved.  

The results show that preparing for this half of the battle paid off in a big way. After rolling out the refreshed platform, MD Financial experienced a significant spike in page visits and number of reads compared to their typical averages.

Investors were found 27% more likely to return to the website, and it helped convert new leads too—financial service shoppers were found 30% more likely to visit the content hubs than any other part of the website. It’s clear that a shift in marketing strategy to focus on the customer (and content) experience yielded significant returns.

TAB Bank pushed a campaign further with a digital content experience 

To get your message in front of high-value partners and buyers, you need to do more to stand out.  When TAB Bank wanted to truly impress a targeted referral network, they came up with a marketing campaign centered around an original comic book theme. Leaving a truly memorable impression is no easy task, but when you’re that one FinServ company to pitch your own corporate version of Batman, it gets a little easier to be remembered. 

After the team at TAB Bank worked out the story line and developed the characters, imagery and color scheme to fit with their brand, they applied those same comic book characters to booth visuals for an upcoming event they were sponsoring, an email campaign, a direct mail campaign, and a social media campaign.

The series, which began with three books has expanded to six… and there are more in the works. 

Creating and designing a detailed comic book and campaign elements requires a hefty investment into a storyline that can deeply engage readers. After spending all that time and money to create something amazing (see above and below: I mean, how cool is that?), they wanted to put it on as many people's radars as possible. 

Leveraging a content experience platform enables premium content to be as successful as possible by making it both findable and bingeable. Dedicating a section on the TAB website to these digital comic books, as well as organically linking different flipbooks in relevant blog posts to direct traffic to this section, increases both the visibility and the reach of this investment. Without a content experience platform supporting this campaign, TAB’s return on marketing investment wouldn’t be nearly as high.

Final thoughts

There is a reason construction workers dig hundreds of feet into the ground before they begin to build anything upwards. Foundations are vital to building anything—and content marketing is no different. 

There are a lot of financial services organizations out there with good content, but many don’t enable their content to thrive by truly supporting it. A content experience platform like Uberflip allows you to deliver your content within a relevant and engaging customer experience. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how Uberflip can help you, reach out to an expert today.