A recent survey of 3,000 financial institutions by IT company Wipro found that less than 15 per cent have a mature digital marketing strategy. Scores of businesses fail to recognise the importance of content to a successful digital content marketing strategy - quality copy, videos and blog posts can all attract the right kind of visitors to a website.

Consistency

According to marketing and sales software company HubSpot, blog owners who post weekly or more gain customers - more than 70 per cent of blog owners who post every week generate customers.

Monitoring

You need to optimise your content marketing to succeed, so make set up key metrics that dovetail with your goals and key performance indicators. You should try to A/B test to find out exactly which keywords and headlines work best and how they convert clicks to customers.

Meaningful content and social media

Your content can be used to help customers along the buying cycle. Break down the conversion funnel for content, using the results to translate the customer journey. All content should be supported by social media marketing, so build up your following on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, then engage and leverage them to extend the reach of your brand’s messaging. Sharing content in the right place at the right time is key to effective social media marketing.

Mix it up

Written articles are not the only way to go when it comes to content; variety is crucial to a successful marketing strategy, so spice your content marketing up with cartoons, case studies, how-tos, images, infographics, interviews, lists, memes, news, podcasts, predictions, Q&As, predications, product reviews, research, round-ups, templates, video and white papers.

Regarding the revelation that the majority of financial institutions do not have mature digital marketing strategy Ally Bank Email Channels Head Donna Lyon said: “Digital marketing has evolved from just using print and TV ads to a much more sophisticated model of using all digital channels to engage and target your customers and prospects at all different times and lifecycle stages.”

She concluded that digital marketing will continue to evolve as new technology becomes available and marketing departments see ROI from email and social campaigns.