Some difficulties are endogenous, and their improvement and control are contingent on the business’s decision. We’ve compiled a list of the top ten difficulties that we believe are most relevant to the reality of financial services organizations, particularly medium and big ones.
Content Isn’t The Same As A Product:
Content is a product that requires planning and resources to produce.
In innumerable content marketing-related papers, the phrase “content is king” has become a regular cliché. If one wants to emphasize its significance, it could be. And quality content is a cornerstone of trust that can help a company create or sustain connections with its stakeholders.
In actuality, for content to be truly effective, it must be viewed as one of many products offered by the financial services industry.
The Content Efforts’ Long-Term Viability:
We noted before that “getting content marketing right takes time” for a company. True, there are procedures that aid the process, but modifications must always be made.
A trial-and-error approach is practically unavoidable when it comes to shaping client’s person as craft, construct, and design are all appropriate verbs as well.
Unrealistic Expectations And Impatience:
This task is linked to the previous two. It requires a “lab mindset,” or the ability to conceive, test, execute, and measure the efficacy of various content projects in order to choose the ones that clients and consumers prefer.
The need for outcomes that are “as immediate and obvious as possible” reveals a lack of awareness of the importance of content marketing in the attention economy.
There Is No Consensus On What Constitutes Good Content:
That’s the million-dollar question with no one-size-fits-all answer. The second problem to address is determining what constitutes good material. It’s critical to define “excellent” statistically from the start, and that definition must be agreed upon by all parties whose business goals, whatever they are, are tied to content.
Because “good” is a subjective descriptor that relates to each business’s reality and perspective, it requires grading criteria. We believe that assessing the ROI of content begins with specifying the goal to be achieved with it as precisely as possible.
Because if ROI could be easily measured and good results could be produced to demonstrate its efficacy, the road to being a “product” in and of itself would be a lot smoother. “Allow you to make the difficult simple and the controversial palatable,” as this piece puts it. Consider how your content differentiates from that of your competitors.
Content Management:
In a study done by the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 B2B content marketers said that one of the most difficulties they face is “changing priorities and ambiguous briefs.”
This has an impact on their “emotional impact of content, customer priority alignment, copywriter quality, and business success.” Drive-by projects” or “last-minute changes” proposed by managers who were late to the sign-off process are examples. This is just one example of how crucial it is to have clear governance guidelines in place for any content strategy.
Especially in the financial services industry, where regulation and compliance controls are frequently a barrier. Working in silos is a bad idea. “Themes can be even more intricate in the B2B field than they are in the B2C realm,” we previously stated.
For the content developed to be truly valuable, content marketers require the assistance of industry experts and client-facing specialists. One that is accurate, useful, and, most importantly, digestible, that uses the correct verbatim. To that statement, add the variable “financial services.” The difficulty level could then be increased by a factor of two.
Collaboration between content creators and subject-matter specialists isn’t as simple as the latter sending the former a few presentations or articles. It has to be a truly collaborative effort. This appears to be an obvious concern, but the reality is often quite different.
Resources Are Limited:
Indeed, according to the CMI’s report, 87 percent of content marketers cite “budget constraints” as one of their biggest concerns. When it comes to marketing and communications, this is an ever-present difficulty. That is a resounding majority.
At this point that having a content strategy that’s been converted into concrete content plans comes in helpful. Define a few specific activities and follow through on them so you can demonstrate their efficacy to executives and other stakeholders.
It is, in general, a lack of technical (software, for example), personal, or monetary resources (including paid promotion). However, a tight budget isn’t the only stumbling block.
The Content Is Excellent, But The Format Is Inadequate, And Distribution Is Difficult:
Occasionally, the content project’s idea or concept is exceptional. Especially when it comes to video and podcasts, the script is as it is. However, the experts that interact with the audience may not be the best people for the position.
Because it is typically tied to business culture, this scenario is arguably one of the hardest to resolve. Audiences, on the other hand, are more concerned with high-quality information, regardless of its format or qualities.
This could be due to a lack of good speakers or being graciously compelled to invite some of them based on their position rather than their abilities. We must now add the distribution challenge to the format challenge.
As a result, sponsored distribution has become an important part of any content marketing plan. In fact, in the age of content shock, targeted information distribution is getting more difficult. According to a recent survey, 84 percent of B2B marketers employ paid distribution channels for content marketing.
Personas Aren’t Included In The Strategy:
Personas have received a lot of attention. Buyer personas, content personas, social media personas, and more are all possible. If it’s more convenient for you, we prefer the phrase “client persona” or customer persona.
Persona definition is essential to assess the needs of that “persona” as precisely as possible so that content meets those needs. The amount of information available about personalities is virtually limitless.
Consistent Content Creation:
Hubspot stated in 2015 that delivering compelling content was a top difficulty for 54 percent of B2B marketers. Over the last five years, this number has stayed constant or even increased. When resources are limited, the constant demand to generate material is not just overwhelming, but often impossible.
The author claims that people do things because they have to or because they are capable of doing them.