Is Your Marketing Budget Right? Analysing the Costs of Content Strategies in Financial Services.
If you’re a B2B marketer in the fintech and investment space, these are very likely your problems:
You don’t have enough time to do all the important marketing things you want to do (69%)
You can’t produce enough content (55%),
And you struggle to produce the kind of content that engages (47%)
All of this is compounded by shrinking marketing budgets and the responsibility falling to you to allocate these resources in the best possible way for maximum ROI.
It’s all a lot.
You want to know how much you should be spending on your fintech or investment services marketing. You have found lots of annoying content online which claims it’s going to give you an answer to this, and then doesn’t.
This is in part because how much you should spend on your marketing will depend on your budget and what you are trying to achieve, which people on the internet (like me) can’t know in advance. Sorry.
What I can do is give you a free marketing strategy call where you tell me what it is you’re trying to achieve and I tell you what I would do if I were you.
It’s a genuinely free offer and there is no pressure to work with us afterwards.
If you don’t want a free marketing strategy call, I have outlined some scenarios below and what my recommendations are for each of them. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Or just say that your marketing budget should be 11% of your total revenue and go crack on.
Table from Statista showing percentage of budget spent on marketing broken down by industry
If you are looking for quick guidelines then Statista data shows fintech and banking spent about 11% of their budget on marketing.
Is My Marketing Budget Right?
I am an academic by training and hold a PhD in sociology, so what people are doing and the data around this is always my starting point.
The financial services industry in the United States alone spent $21 billion on digital advertising in 2020. By 2023, total FSI marketing budgets had risen to $30.75 billion.
Moreover, financial services account for over 14% of overall online marketing spend, making it one of the highest-spending industries in digital marketing.
Financial Services Marketing Spend in the US 2021-2025 (projected)
Billions of dollars spent and percentage change in marketing spend for financial services in the US. Emarketer.
The financial services industry's digital marketing spending in 2023 was significant enough to make it only the third industry to surpass $30 billion in annual digital marketing spend.
In the UK, the financial services, banking sector and insurance boasted the fourth largest proportional spend in the economy.
Share of marketing in for-profit company budgets in the United Kingdom by industry. Figures as of February 2023.
Share of marketing in for-profit company budgets in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2023, by industry. Statista.
Part of the reason FSI marketing spend is so high is because financial services keywords remain among the most expensive in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, with some costing $50 or more per click. Yikes.
Pay per click has its place in fintech and investment management marketing strategies, but it’s an expensive play. On top of this, search is both:
1) highly competitive and,
2) behaving differently now because of the migration to AI-search rather than Google-search.
The cost and competitiveness of ads and PPC highlights the value of content marketing as a cost-effective alternative because it gives you long-term brand building and bottom-of-funnel lead generation without the high costs associated with pay-per-click bidding.
The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google Ads
The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google Ads - I also had to google Cord Blood and it’s exactly what you think. WordStream.
All of this is to say, if you feel like you’re spending a lot on your digital marketing, you probably are, and that this is pretty normal for the financial services and banking industry.
All things considered, the sweet spot for marketing budgets in the FSI space seems to be between 5% and 15% of total revenue.
How can I keep up with competitors who might have larger budgets or more established content strategies?
If you feel like you are being asked to do too much stuff with not enough money, then that’s also probably true: According to a recent Gartner survey, only 24% of CMOs feel they have the budget they need to execute their strategies effectively in 2024.
Gartner’s annual CMO spend survey for 2024 showed average budgets have fallen by 15%.
The report details how average marketing budgets have fallen to 7.7% of overall company revenue, down from 9.1% in 2023, according to a survey of 395 CMOs and marketing leaders.
Keep in mind that this is across all industries, so the specifics on fintech & banking above will likely be more relevant to you.
I want to help here.
My research tells me that you can get some really strong results just from using different strategies rather than from just increasing your overall spend.
Let's take a look at a practical example.
How Klarna Got More Out of their Marketing Budget
Klarna, a fintech I’m sure you’ve heard of, has seen major success from strategically allocating its marketing budget.
Their “House of Y2K” campaign, which combined digital and physical marketing tools, led to a 63% increase in app downloads.
The campaign was a really cool pop-up shop in LA.
It focussed on three core themes of the early 2000’s: technology, fashion and beauty. And it was all delivered in partnership with the queen of 2000’s fashion - Paris Hilton.
The opening of the pop up shop coincided with the launch of a Paris Hilton x Klarna limited-edition velour tracksuit (can we get any more 2000’s than that?!), available exclusively through the Klarna app.
Queen of the 2000’s, Paris Hilton, in the House of Y2K pop up - a campaign that led to a 63% increase in Klarna app downloads and over a billion social media impressions. The Drum.
Klarna achieved this impressive result without dramatically increasing their overall marketing spend, but by doing some really brilliant research on their Gen-Z target audience and creating something hiiiighly specific to them.
Research is Super Important
To set up for this launch, Klarna commissioned a full Gen-Z trends report.
I salute this level of actually caring and putting the leg work in to find out what matters to their target audience.
And, because Klarna put money and effort into the trend report, they found out that almost half of respondents (45%) said that fashion was much better back in the Y2K era than it is now, with over half (52%) saying they believe the matching sweats trend should return to the mainstream in 2023.
Then they launch a matching sweats product, exclusively through the Klarna app.
The survey also revealed an overall increase in purchases of Y2K products across fashion (low-rise jeans, baby tees, and tie-dye) and beauty (lip liner, butterfly clips, and hair crimping).
Then they launch a pop up shop that showcases low-rise jeans, baby tees, and tie-dye, as well as make-over stalls where visitors can get lip liner, butterfly clips, and hair crimping.
It’s smart, it’s data backed, it’s super strategic.
Paris poses with her Paris Hilton x Klarna 'That’s Smoooth' tracksuit. Jon Kopaloff & Stefanie Keenan, Getty
This is content marketing and experiential x immersive marketing at its finest.
It calls to mind this quote which I think of often:
“Gen-Z’s aren’t allergic to long form content, they’re allergic to shitty content” - Jen Haggard, Head of Global Brand Strategy at Spotify.
I think Jen’s right, and I think what she’s said applies to everyone who encounters marketing on the internet now.
How Do I Avoid Loss of Market Position?
The consequences of a poor content strategy are pretty rough and also pretty easy to accidentally fall into. We want to avoid this.
If your content strategy is lacking, it can have serious repercussions on your market position. One of the most critical impacts is obviously losing ground to competitors who are better at engaging their audience and ranking in search results.
The data on this is clear.
According to Ahrefs, only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication.
The average page in the top 10 search results is over 2 years old.
96.55% of all pages get zero search traffic from Google.
This means that without a strong content strategy, your chances of achieving top rankings are very slim.
It also means that building strong search results and general Google clout is a long term strategy, not a quick fix - please see: The average page in the top 10 search results is over 2 years old.
Missed Lead Generation Opportunities
A poor content strategy can also lead to major missed opportunities for lead generation. This is a serious but overlooked problem.
Content marketing, when done well, is significantly more cost-effective and generates higher returns than traditional marketing and advertising methods.
Data from DemandMetric shows that:
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and,
Generates three times as many leads per dollar spent.
Data shows that content marketing costs on average 62% less than traditional marketing and generates approximately three times as many leads per dollar spent. DemandMetric.
The ROI on content is super relevant if you are trying to decide how to allocate your marketing budget because the data suggests that content marketing can be a more efficient use of marketing budgets, especially for businesses looking to maximise their return on investment in terms of lead generation.
Missed Boosts to Your Reputation
As a quick aside; thinking about your own personal brand and building resilience into your career, I think it’s also worth noting that data from Upland shows that year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%).
What I take this to mean is that whether you are creating thought leadership content yourself or you are outsourcing it / getting it ghost written on your behalf, the pay off on this investment can be significant in terms of personal brand building and reputation.
It also highlights the potential losses you can incur when a content strategy is either not prioritised or inadequately funded, or both.
How Monobank Got More Out of their Marketing Budget
Monobank is Ukraine's first mobile bank.
They launched a super successful gamification campaign aimed at transforming the traditional banking experience into a really fun experience that made users want to
1) bank with Monobank, and
2) open and use the app.
Monobank created a playful little cat mascot called QR Cat. This lil guy appears throughout the app to inject a sense of friendliness and fun into the user interface. Also, the internet loves cats, so.
Monobank’s gamified content marketing approach to launching their app features mascot QR Cat and 100’s of achievements to unlock.
As well as QR Cat, what you can also see in the image above are lots of greyed out circles. The circles close or complete much like fitbit circles - when you’ve completed enough of a certain activity.
What a motivating way to make it fun for Monobank’s customers to use their account to pay for fuel, or groceries, or add money to a savings pot!
Have a look below for what the circles turn into once you’ve completed them.
Screenview of Monobank app when you complete the Gas Station achievement and the Runner achievement. I can feel the dopamine already.
Now this is cool because each achievement unlocks a unique illustration of QR Cat getting up to an adventure. It’s not just a tick or whatever, this is a much higher effort reward for the user - cute cats doing fun things!
I also want to know what kind of thing I would have to pay for to move my ‘Hipster’ circle.
I can well imagine how I’d be keen to try paying for different kinds of things to see what sort of money-behaviour unlocks different circles. It engages my curiosity as well as my desire to close the loops.
The campaign was a huge success. Monobank was able to reach 3.5 million users, massively boosting both overall engagement and customer acquisition.
To Sum it all Up
Here’s what I want you to take away from this article: your firm can achieve significant growth and solidify its market position, even if your budget is getting squeezed.
You, specifically, as the CMO or marketing leader can make this growth happen.
Content marketing particularly has the potential to bring in massive rewards because it costs 62% less than traditional marketing while also generating three times as many leads per dollar spent on average.
Consumers overwhelmingly report enjoying quality content marketing from brands. The focus has to be on the quality though in order to earn this goodwill from your leads.
Done well, content marketing can be some of the smartest money you can spend. LyfeMarketing.
Content marketing is also shown to be a lot more effective at long term relationship building. This is a must have if you want to be known for building a brand that survives the (many) ups and downs and lasts long into the future.
There are few things as powerful as customer loyalty in keeping your company afloat during downturns.
Loyalty is hard earned and easily lost; quality content marketing is a powerful tool for you here in nurturing these relationships and showing your people you care about them.
Your customers want to see content marketing from you more than they want to see ads. LyfeMarketing.
Again, if you’re looking for a quick sound bite on industry averages for marketing spend in the financial services industry, it’s about 11%.
If you’re looking for something more helpful, take me up on the offer of a free marketing strategy call - this is my personal Calendly link.
