How To Use Content Marketing To Get Your Prospects To Trust Your Product

A common challenge technical product creators face is communicating value to their prospective customers. Many FinTech products come across as black boxes if their websites and marketing material are anything to go by. Needless to say, this isn't the result their creators are after.

Source: TrustRadius

TrustRadius' 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report shows that 51% of B2B buyers rely on product websites to make a purchasing decision. Buyers are also demanding more self-service options such as tailored content and product trials. 

In such an environment, the quality of your content is critical since it's the only means of communication you have with your prospects.

Content that delivers a black-box-like message to your prospects hurts you because it doesn't build trust with your audience. 

Building trust is all about aligning 3 common content channels and structuring them to build authority. Authority convinces prospects that you know their problems and you have the expertise to solve them. 

Here's how you do this.

The First Channel - Your Website's Copy

More likely than not, the first person to read your website's copy is going to be a senior-level or C-suite executive. This person might be technically minded or from a pure business background. 

Either way, they don't have the time to unwrap heavily technical copy. What you need to do is speak their language.

Your copy must extoll business benefits since this kind of language convinces a high-level reader that you know what their issues are. "Reduce processing time by X%", "Power your digital transformation", "Eliminate barriers to achieve Y" are a few examples of business-like copy that clearly define bottom-line benefits. 

Compare this to copy like "PSD2 Enablement via SaaS Implementation" and you can see the difference. The reader has to work to understand what the bottom-line ramifications of the product are. 

Make your copy as easily understood as possible, but don't oversimplify it. 

Consider how tech company NS1 conveys value despite delivering a highly technical product. Notice how the buttons speak about the value prospects gain.

Source: NS1

Some FinTech product websites try to speak to everyone at once and throw everything product-related into the mix. The result is confusion since the prospect doesn't know whether the product is right for them or not.

To get your website's tone right, you need to step back and evaluate how well you know your prospects. What is your buyer persona creation process like, and how robust are your data collection methods?

Use highly-customizable data collection tools such as Survey Anyplace to create hyper-relevant questionnaires and checklists. Once you've created robust personas, tailor your web copy to communicate bottom-line related benefits. 

The Second Channel - Blog Content

What is the function of a B2B blog? Your website's copy draws in top-of-the-funnel prospects. Your blog keeps the conversation going. Your aim should be to deliver as customized an experience as possible. 

Highly-tailored content experiences build immense levels of trust. Imagine walking into a shop and having a salesperson ask you the right questions and deliver exactly what you need. 

Creating content that addresses pain points and measuring relevance every step of the way is the key to delivering a customized experience.

Many companies struggle to create relevant content because search keyword tools aren't all that relevant to B2B users. Monitoring secondary social conversations on websites such as Quora, Trustpilot, or Reddit is far more beneficial.

Conversations that occur during industry-relevant events are also a goldmine for discovering prospect issues and potential content topics. Pay attention to secondary conversations during webinars and online events you participate in or host.

One method of delivering a customized experience in your blog is to ask your visitors which topics they wish to learn more about. You can do this through a form or by listing categories and giving visitors the option to choose topics, as fraud protection firm Fraugster does in their resource center.

Source: Fraugster

Your blog is a transition point where you'll move from business users to more technically-minded prospects. Despite this, resist the temptation to conduct technical deep dives in your blog posts. The majority of your blog's visitors, business or technical, are still evaluating you for fit. 

Telling them everything about your product at this stage is a bit like someone asking you for a one-sentence explanation of your product and you delivering a lecture instead. It pushes prospects away, and they'll believe you aren't listening to their needs.

Break your content into stages by gating more technical deep-dives behind validation forms. For example, you can attach related whitepapers to blog posts and gate them behind forms that help validate your assumptions. These data help you measure content relevance.

Other metrics that indicate relevance are scroll depth, time spent on a page (measured via Google Analytics), and click heatmaps (CrazyEgg). Gather all of these metrics and check whether your prospects find your content engaging. 

Resist the temptation to sell your product. Deliver value at all times, and you'll find more prospects moving deeper into your funnel.

The Third Channel - Thought Leadership

Executing a coherent thought leadership strategy is an all-important part of a successful B2B content strategy. Thought leadership can be carried out either through influencer product mentions or case studies published in relevant publications.

Great thought leadership delivers value above all else. Your aim with thought leadership content should be to establish credibility. Knowing the issues your prospects face, the challenges facing the industry, and demonstrating the ability to reason your way forward through them are far more important than pushing your product.

A common mistake many B2B FinTech companies make is to get themselves published in every single outlet they can think of. A publication's relevance is what precedes everything else. 

Tailor your thought leadership content releases to your event calendar. Aim to build your presence gradually leading up to the event. For example, if you're planning on sponsoring, hosting, or delivering a keynote at an event in June, aim to have the majority of your content published by May.

Publishing everything by March isn't going to be of much use. Create an event-relevant content calendar. Brainstorm topics and tie them to the calendar for maximum exposure.

Deliver Value...Coherently

Have you ever encountered someone who clearly knows what they're talking about but can't seem to deliver their message coherently? Unless you have a lot of time to figure out their message, you'll probably walk away from them. 

Execute the right content strategy to deliver the value your prospects want. Use your website, your blog, and your thought leadership content wisely and you'll establish authority in your niche and build trust with your prospects.

By Vivek Shankar