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How to Link Your CTAs to the Buyer Journey

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

I’m an impulse buyer. Any and every toy for my kids? Yes, please. The air fryer that’s all over Instagram is definitely in my kitchen. And let’s talk about the checkout lane. I can always use more candles, a new phone case, and coffee mugs.

But when it comes to big-ticket items, my buying journey is very different. My path to purchase is a process and I rarely raise my hand until I’ve done some research. 

If you find yourself nodding your head, you’re not alone: 81% of consumers research online before making a purchase. And SaaS buyers complete 60%+ of the buying process before engaging a vendor. 

We know the buyer journey is full of twists and turns and it’s our job as marketers to deliver the right customer experience at each inflection point. Ultimately, our goal is to guide consumers through this journey so they make a purchase from us. 

The right CTAs encourage our audience to take action. Gartner calls this “buyer enablement” — providing information to customers in a way that enables them to complete critical buying decisions. 

The wrong CTA can turn potential customers away — something I see many of our clients struggling with. Many of us think using “Get a Demo” or “Let’s Talk” is the only way to go. But accelerating the buying journey is as if you’re serving the dessert before the appetizer. 

We need to guide prospects through the buyer’s journey, not steer them off course. The first step is to understand the buyer journey so we can reach our customers where they are in each stage. Then we need to develop a robust content marketing strategy that presents content for each stage of the buyer’s journey with CTAs that encourage the appropriate action and drive growth. 

Aligning Intent to Action 

It’s important to align our calls-to-action to the buyer journey to optimize performance of our campaigns. Sure, we might get lucky to land a handful of demos, but we’re missing out on prospects who are early in their buying journey. 

We can all relate to these frustrations when our executives ask why the numbers have dropped off. Why would the “Get Demo” CTA bring in leads last quarter but has been falling flat now? These conversations made me think of my recent buyer journey.  

Problem: My best friend from college bought an RV to prioritize creating experiences with her family. My husband and I thought this was a great idea and began our shopping journey. 

Awareness: Our research was focused on understanding the different types of RVs and price ranges, and we even started looking into family-friendly RV destinations. 

Knowledge: There’s a lot we don’t know about RVs so we dug in even more: floorplans, new or used, ways to tow an RV, etc.

Consideration: Then we started to think about our budget and discussed what other things we might need to put on hold to afford our investment.  

In this process, we’re searching for answers to: 

  • What is the challenge I have to solve?
  • What are my options for solving this problem?
  • How do I sort and filter those options to meet my very specific means?
  • How do I compare the options?
  • How do I figure out the ones that are best for my budget, lifestyle, business, etc.?
  • How do I fully understand the options?

For each type of question above, we (marketers) need to craft the correct CTA to match the intent of our audience: Whether they’re researching their problem, solution, options, or different brands. Presenting a “Buy Now” offer will fall flat because the customer hasn’t reached a decision yet. This is the time to serve up helpful content to educate and provide answers to their questions. 

The Right Content for the Right Stage

Marketing is impossible without great content. Buyers need to engage with 8-13 pieces of content before making a decision. That’s a mix of first- and third-party content in the forms of social posts, blogs, earned media, reports, etc.   

Consider the information below, which shows the different types of content you need to be thinking about for the different stages of the buyer journey and the different types of leads you have.

AWARENESS KNOWLEDGE CONSIDERATION
HOT Needs expertise Needs to know how a specific offering can solve a problem Needs to test-drive offering
WARM Needs frameworks Needs to understand problem Needs to evaluate options
COLD Needs answers to questions Needs problems resolved Needs solutions to solve problems

 

Awareness

  • Users focus primarily on learning more about their problem. They’re not interested in your product and certainly aren’t ready for a demo, but they want to find a solution to eliminate their pain points. 
  • Serve them content that educates, such as blog posts, social content, videos, and ebooks. Show them how your product can eliminate or reduce their pain points. 
  • CTAs can be “Subscribe To” “Follow Us” “Find Inspiration”

Consideration 

  • These prospects have already learned a lot about their problem, discovered some potential solutions, and are evaluating their options. 
  • Deliver content that will position your product as the best solution, such as case studies, webinars, and comparison guides. 
  • CTAs can be “Watch Now” “See How We Stack Up” “Read Case Study”

Purchase 

  • These buyers know what they want. They’re looking for the right features, support, integrations, and cost. 
  • This is where you can splash “Request a Demo” and “Free Trial”

The End Result: Great CX

The buying process is always happening, regardless of the good or service — candles, air fryers, RVs, software, etc. But, the time to move through the buying process is different. While we can’t force prospects to skip steps, great marketer’s find creative ways to accelerate the process.

Tying the CTA to the customer journey should make sense to those stages. Because great experiences delight customers, happy customers keep coming back for more, and they spread the word. 

I encourage you to study and understand the buying journey, develop your funnel around those inflection points, and create a content marketing strategy that maps content to each phase of their journey using the right CTAs. 

I should know. After researching the RVs, I finally raised my hand and reached out to an RV dealer. Our first trip is going to be to Nashville, TN, in a few weeks. 

Looking for a Social Media Manager? Steal This Job Description.

Posted on by Grow Intentionly

If you need someone to own social media at your firm, but you’re not sure how to bring in the right candidates, we’ve got you.

The thing is, everyone thinks they’re a master at social media, so it’s important to communicate exactly what success in this role looks like at your firm. We put together this job description to help you cut through the noise and uncover the candidates that will supercharge your brand’s social media presence while driving tangible business results. 

Job Description

This position will play a key role in helping us create and roll out go-to-market campaigns, build demand generation programs, and conduct branding and market research. This candidate must be able to facilitate authentic conversations and create timely promotions that move buyers through the funnel with greater velocity and precision.  

Essential Functions:

  • Develop organic social strategies and guidelines that align with our overarching marketing and business goals
  • Define each channel’s purpose and measurable goals 
  • Lead day-to-day posting and engagement across our organic social properties
  • Write and edit engaging, relevant copy that quickly hooks our target audiences, is insightful, and encourages action
  • Collaborate closely with content, design, product marketing, growth, and brand teams to amplify the reach of our content across all campaigns and programs
  • Develop goals, analyze performance, report on core metrics, and adjust strategy as needed
  • Be a steward of excellent messaging, grammar, and writing
  • Help educate and elevate the full team’s understanding of standard methodologies in social media
  • Stay on top of trends and tools in the social media space
  • Supervise user engagement to implement content optimizations
  • Connect with industry professionals and influencers via social media to build a strong network

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work:

This is a full-time position, Monday through Friday for 8 hours a day/40 hours a week.

Required Education and Experience:

  • Bachelor’s degree, preferably in Marketing, Communications, or other related disciplines
  • Strong communication skills that are adaptable to fit various platforms and audiences
  • Excellent copywriting skills that maintain our brand voice and inspire audience connections
  • A creative mindset to fuel content ideas that are exciting and buzzworthy
  • An attention to detail for formatting of content, images and links
  • An understanding of traditional marketing approaches, like lead generation, email, PR and more

Preferred Skills and Qualifications:

  • Experience with [social media technology platforms your firm uses, i.e. Hootsuite, Sprout Social, HubSpot, etc.]
  • Basic familiarity with [design tools your firm uses, i.e. Canva, Adobe, etc.]
  • Ability to communicate internally with [communication tools your firm uses, i.e. Slack, Zoom, Teams, etc.]

Competencies: 

  • Ability to use quantitative and qualitative data to draw inferences, develop new ideas and drive strategy  
  • Ability to manage highly interdependent, complex projects and keep multiple work streams on track
  • Comfortable with both strategic messaging and hands-on tactical content creation
  • Excited about a fast-moving, dynamic environment and the chance to operate between micro details and the 30,000-foot strategy level 
  • Ability to build relationships and collaborate with teams across departments

Day-to-Day Expectations:

  • Using social media outlets to establish and maintain the company brand 
  • Working together with the marketing team to organize social campaigns and content calendars that align with larger goals
  • Compiling social listening analyses to better understand target audiences and trends
  • Interacting with customers and stakeholders via posts, comments and replies
  • Researching trends and techniques that can be leveraged in social media marketing plans

 

SEO For Fintech: Top 5 Things To Do Today

Posted on by Dan Natale

Here is your fintech marketer’s guide to improving your organic search presence, whether you’re in retail banking, wealthtech, credit, or another fintech-related segment. Many of the tactics outlined will work for any B2B business, but for fintech, there are a few other things to consider:

First, always remember to EAT.  

As part of Google’s quality guidelines, specific industries are considered “your money or your life” industries because they impact a searcher’s day-to-day life. These include health, legal, news, and, you guessed it, finance. Given that many if not most fintech providers offer a consumer product or platform or have a client who has an end client that is a consumer, they often fall under YMYL scrutiny.

That’s where EAT comes into play. EAT stands for “expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.” Google places a more significant burden on the authority of your website and the trustworthiness of your content. 

Regardless of whether you have a well-established brand or are a startup, you should:

  • Make sure your website and landing pages have valid SSL certificates
  • Ensure you have an About and Contact Us section on your site. Make sure you list actual employees and don’t use stock photos of them.
  • Add an author’s name, picture, and even a bio if you have it.
  • Use writers with expertise within the financial services space. 
  • List the physical address where you do business.
  • Back up and substantiate all claims in your content by citing sources and studies.

Many marketers and agencies often mean well but are sometimes misguided in their approaches to improving EAT. They will cut corners and try to fast-track success here. Make sure you do not do any of the following:

  • Generate content automatically or use an AI-powered content generator
  • Create sales-y content that is entirely self-promotional without providing value to a user
  • Promote blog posts and content with vague or undefined authorship

Second, do your keyword research

Whether you are an in-house marketer or manage a partner agency, it is best to have a complete understanding of the primary keywords that drive search engine traffic to your site. If you have the budget, invest in an SEO platform like SEMrush or Ahrefs. Google Keyword Planner is a free alternative but will not provide you the granular and competitor data the paid platforms will. 

As you leverage these tools, keep a few things in mind:

Find informational keywords

Informational keywords are used to capture top-of-the-funnel prospects starting their research. They might search for things like “marketing template for financial advisors,” “Insurance rates for people over 40,” or “banking app that offers crypto.” You want to target searchers who are not searching for your specific product. Why? Because very few people at this stage know what they want.

Don’t forget about related keywords.

Don’t sleep on keywords that may seem unrelated to your product or service but position you as a thought leader with your audience. If you sell consumer loan software, you might optimize for personal finance-related keywords. If you sell software to asset managers, you might want to optimize for keywords related to portfolio management or specific sector-associated strategies.

Look for search volume

Search volume is going to vary wildly significantly within the fintech and financial services space. A consumer-focused product or platform will have a considerably higher volume than an institutional or B2B product, so you must deeply understand your area or sub-niche within financial services. A quick trick that can help is to check out the keyword’s estimated CPC (cost per click). Advertisers are bidding on the keyword because it converts if it is very high despite a low search volume.

Business appropriate

A big mistake both agencies and in-house marketers make is not targeting the correct B2B or B2C keywords. Retail investors and retail banking drive tons of search volume, and too often, keywords like “interest rates on a savings account” or “personal finance software” are targeted for a B2B firm. However, suppose you offer a platform for financial advisors or software for an institution that you do not want to target keywords like “wealth manager reviews,” “best interest rates on a savings account,” “personal finance software,” etc. In that case, this distinction between a consumer search and a business search is critical and will save everyone a lot of time and effort.

Third, write great pillar content.

Pillar content is your long-form content that answers questions that potential prospect may be searching. Pillar content should be high-value, long-form, and ultimately provide value and position your financial services brand as an authority.

You might provide readers with a guide to automating their finances or How to Drive More Leads as a Financial Advisor. You’ll want to write this in such a way that:

  • Prospects stay engaged for long periods on the page.
  • Other sites will link to this piece of content since it is authoritative.
  • Consistently drives traffic to your website over many months and years.

Remember, Google places a lot of value on fresh content. For financial services and fintech, in particular, you will have to be careful that your tech-related content does not become dated and that you aren’t writing about time-sensitive topics like interest rates and earnings season. If you can take a hands-on approach, you can continually update your pillar content with new information. Just remember, if you are referencing a year or a time-specific item, then you will need to update it accordingly. You might even see a boost each time you update it.

 Don’t forget to do some On Page 101 optimization when you are ready to post, and to include your target keywords in your content. A word of caution here: Google is pretty good at understanding when a website is stuffing keywords into a piece of content. You’ll want to make sure it is written for a user and not an algorithm. Still, it is essential to include your target keywords in:

  • Your page’s title tag
  • In an H1 and H2
  • 5-7x throughout the content
  • Once in your meta description
  • At least 1x in your post intro and conclusion

Fourth, Get Backlinks

Despite numerous algo updates and changes to ranking factors over the years, high-quality backlinks remain key to your fintech SEO success. A backlink, most simply, is a link from one website to another (in this case, yours).

When considering your backlinking strategy and tactics, it is worthwhile to consider investing in a reputable agency or dedicated headcount on your team. In today’s search landscape, the following tactics will require a more thoughtful approach:

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is an approach where you find a broken link using one of your SEO platforms, recreate the content, and then find those linking to it and ask them to link to your new content. This approach is an excellent tactic for fintech and financial services since every organization has a calculator or tool of some kind on its site. You’ll have to do a bit of manual outreach, but it can be worthwhile.

Build Your Linkable Resources

Instead of waiting for someone else’s to break, you could create your own calculator /tool/platform. These can go a lot of different ways. You can invest in the development of some whizz-bang tool or stick to something simple with an Excel-based backend.

Guest Posting

If you know, you know. Guest posting is a great way to drive links and build relationships with influences and sites within your fintech niche. However, it is a grind and will require a lot of content writing, editing, and outreach. 

Podcast Appearances

If you can swing it, send your senior leadership out on the podcast circuit. While some are better than others, this is a great way to drive backlinks and get your exec teams’ names out there. There is a bit of a time commitment, and sometimes these aren’t always free, but even if you must appear on Kevin’s ETFs and Things, it will be well worth it.

Conduct and publish original research

Bloggers, journalists, and industry trade publications love to write about, cite, link to and otherwise use data and research. Even if it is biased to your firm, survey your clients. Find out what 47% of them think about X. Then publish it as a blog post. This is great for driving backlinks, but also for understanding things like attitudes about investing, industry trends, and client and consumer behavior.

Fifth, don’t forget your friends in Compliance.

Every fintech marketer, either in-house or agency, knows the joys of having Compliance reviewing content. However, it is critical to keep Compliance involved in your approach to SEO and generating content. 

If your content is boring, no one will click on or link to it. Many firms are guilty of these. The abundance of caution often comes at the expense of traffic and readability. If your content makes claims that can’t be substantiated or run afoul of regulatory authorities, then you’ll be in trouble with both Google and the SEC. To avoid these headaches, you should be: 

  • Having Compliance review all pillar content, blog posts, and site copy.
  • Listing all of your disclosure copy and fine print where applicable. 
  • Linking to your privacy policy page in your website’s footer.
  • Keeping your terms and conditions updated if you offer software or a SaaS product. 

All About Execution 

Many marketing executives debate if building an in-house team or hiring an agency is the way to go. In-house works great if you source and hire an experienced team lead or resources with both in-house and agency experience. You will also have to remain committed to this investment and make SEO/organic search a key driver of your traffic.

 You may want to go the agency route if you do not have a large team or if your subset of fintech is exceptionally competitive. Ideally, you’ll want to find a firm that specializes in fintech and financial services.

And, Finally 

Building out your organic search presence takes time, effort, and resources, but ultimately will pay dividends for years to come. If you are just starting out or have a growing fintech brand or fintech marketing agency , your SEO strategy should be a cornerstone of your growth plan.

Starting a Blog Doesn’t Make You a Marketer

Posted on by Grow Intentionly

So you wrote a blog post, and now you think you’re a marketer.

 Did you…

  • Check what your competitors are saying about the same topic, product, or service?
  • Do keyword research to optimize your search engine rankings?
  • Analyze past blog performance to determine what’s resonating and what isn’t, then use that data to inform your writing?
  • Use internal and external links within your copy?
  • Make sure what you’re writing aligns with your larger brand story?

 

If you didn’t, you wrote a blog post. Full stop. You can’t quite call yourself a marketer yet.

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