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In 2019, content marketing for banks took a tentative step forward. This wasn’t the work of any giant financial institution or global bank, it came from small banks and FinTechs.

In the US, community banks saw significant success by changing up their content strategies. Bank of the West, a local bank in California, took an experiential approach. First, they plastered a station of the San Francisco subway with ads. Then, employees flooded in to survey passengers on basic financial literacy and sustainable banking.

This offered an immersive experience to travelers. In addition, it allowed Bank of the West to gather personal data. This data showed them what areas of finance the everyday person is interested in. As a result, they could create content hyper-relevant to their local audience.

In the UK, the challenger bank, Monzo, gradually began to level up their blog content. They started to talk less about how great their product is. Instead, blog posts were geared more towards answering the day-to-day problems of their audience. Blog articles like “Everything they didn’t teach you in school about how to save money” demystify financial literacy and frame content in a very accessible way.

As you’ll see in our 2020 guide, gathering actionable data, offering engaging experiences, and increasing human personalization are key themes for the year ahead.

Content marketing for banks in 2020

To keep pace with the evolving content strategies of FinTechs and small banks, the entire industry is going to need to make changes. We’ve scoured the recent research, so you don’t have to, and identified four key factors that will influence content strategies in 2020:

1. Emphasis on experience: Top tips to create an optimal user experience
2. More actionable data: Which metrics should you be looking for?
3. A customer-centric focus: Creating content with empathy
4. Moving in-house: Why dropping agencies will be a hot trend this year

Content marketing for banks is certainly not an easy task. But, emerging demographics like Generation Z are about to flood the credit market and they are a generation more interested in achieving financial literacy than previous generations. They also conduct more research than previous generations before committing to a bank so creating effective content is essential in 2020.

Access the full guide below to make sure your content is on point this year: