Content marketing case study for a fintech serving SMEs

Increasing resonance and affinity for a pivoting business

Key results

Boosted client visibility for digital financing products (supporting their goal to move away from their traditional lender image) and increased non-branded site traffic for these product terms by 13.86% in under six months.
Enabled client to market to vertical-specific customer segments.
Client launched and distributed a survey-based, multi-country report on SME financing.
Client diversified their content marketing assets beyond SEO articles.
Boosted site organic traffic by 24.93% in less than six months (40% branded traffic, 60% non-branded traffic).
Increased top 10 organic keywords by 59.09%.

The client wanted to capture a larger portion of the SME financing market in Southeast Asia. They also wanted their brand to be associated with digital financing solutions — a pivot away from the traditional lending services they used to be known for.

The market problem:

Due to their business origins, the client was seen by SMEs as a lender, but wanted to be known for its variety of financing services (need: awareness). However, the client is competing in a crowded space.

The content problem:

The client wanted to attract leads based on specific customer segments, such as F&B and wholesale trade, as well as Singapore-based SMEs that want to expand across SEA. Their existing content focused on generic SEO guides and failed to attract leads.

SMEs wanted to sustain and grow their businesses but needed cash to do so. They had limited access to traditional financing services (eg bank services). They needed options for quicker loans with lower barrier to entry. However, they didn’t necessarily favor speed and ease over lower interest rates.

Competing brands had much larger, more established websites, but many of their pages that attracted organic traffic were generic SEO guides. We designed a content strategy that addressed the challenges of industry-specific customer segments and offered them tools and tactical advice. By narrowing the focus of each content campaign, we aimed to increase resonance* with the target audience.

*In marketing performance measurement, resonance is linked to recall, affinity, and intent to purchase

Strategic approach

Increase non-branded traffic to product pages to associate the brand with various financing solutions (addressing the client’s goal of becoming known for such services and moving away from its traditional lender image).

Our content audit showed that the client’s existing content was mostly ToFu and did not connect to MoFu and BoFu assets.
- - To address this, we focused on driving traffic to product pages from ToFu and MoFu content. We also chose content topics with high business potential (where the client’s solution is either irreplaceable or very helpful in solving the problem discussed in the content piece).

Our content audit showed the client’s existing content was horizontal and optimised for reach rather than resonance.
- - We worked with the client’s sales team to define audience segment priorities, and created a strategy to reach those segments.

Deliverables

Content strategy focused on enhancing lead generation.
Audit of existing content assets.
Creation of a downloadable report based on a multi-country survey, along distribution advice, landing page copy, supporting articles, and LinkedIn marketing assets.
Creation of vertical-specific and timely blog content.

”Great service — the bizdev manager was patient with trying to understand our need for an agency and gave honest advice for what content services we need and don’t need. The account manager has been a joy to work with! She listens carefully to what we need, makes sure to then follow up via email, takes the initiative to suggest solutions for the content and budget problems that we faced.
— Glennice YongAssistant Manager, Brand & Content Marketing