Words at work

– 4 min read

Working as a Content Strategist in Financial Services

Ashley Coolman

Ashley Coolman

Content roles can vary widely from industry to industry:

  • In title (content strategist vs. content designer vs. UX writer vs. content operations vs. content owner)
  • In responsibilities (strategy, creation, collaboration)
  • In team structure (who they report into)
  • In amount of buy-in from leadership

This summer, 444 content strategies told us about their work environment, goals, challenges, and favorite content strategy resources in the 2019 State of Content Strategy 2019 Report. Respondents also told us what industry they work in.

Below, you’ll learn about content strategy roles in the financial services industry, from the 10% of respondents who said they work there.

If you’re in the financial space and would like to learn more about the terminology, check out this guide on basic financial terms.

Content strategy in financial services

Teams

In financial services, content strategists are slightly more likely to work with UX design teams. Looking across all industries, content strategists are most likely to work in marketing teams.

27% of financial services content strategists sit in UX/design teams, 22% sit in marketing, and 17% sit in a cross-functional hub.

27% of content strategists in finserv sit in UX/design teams, 22% sit in marketing, and 17% sit in a cross-functional hub.Click To Tweet

Graph showing what teams content strategists in financial services sit on in their organizations.

Content types

The average content strategist works with 3 different types of content. This holds true cross-industry and within finserv.

In financial services, 68% say they manage email content, 51% manage marketing content, 41% manage user support or documentation, and 39% manage software UX copy. The least common type of content to work on is external training and implementation.

In financial services, 68% of content strategists manage email content, 51% manage marketing content, 41% manage user support or documentation.Click To Tweet

Graph showing what types of content do content strategists in financial services manage.

Measuring success

The most common metric for content success in financial services is, “Shorter and fewer phone calls to the service center.”

Other ways content strategists in financial services are measuring their success include:

  • Heightening brand awareness: “Awareness of various products and services increases. Associates have easy-to-find, intuitive, and comprehensive content available.”
  • Shifting the marketing focus: “Move away from focusing on special offers to providing needed digital content that best helps our audience, while retaining traffic and increasing lead generation.”
  • Crushing internal silos: “Right now it’s all about getting people to communicate across silos in our organization. It’s a daily battle but we’re starting to make some inroads. No one wants to do the “extra work” to collaborate.”
  • Improving content quality: “Improvement of content usability/clarity. Improvement of content accessibility (e.g. WCAG compliance). Improvement in governance processes.”

Workload priorities

What are content strategists in financial services trying to get done in the next 18 months? Generating new content is the #1 goal for 25% of folks.

Other high priorities include:

  • Improving processes for content management, governance, updates, and control
  • Understanding the emotion, voice, or tone of content
  • Refreshing existing content

What’s not coming? 59% of content strategists in financial services said localizing and/or translating content is not a priority at all.

59% of content strategists in financial services said localizing and/or translating content is not a priority.Click To Tweet

Challenges

Across industries, content strategy is still fighting for its seat at the table. In financial services specifically, 59% said the content role is too siloed and 56% said they’re often involved too late in the process. That’s pretty consistent with the cross-industry standards.

But at least content strategists in finserv feel better about their budgets. Across industries, 42% of content strategists said they’re definitely lacking the budget they need to reach their goals, but in financial services that number drops to 26%.

Content strategists in finserv feel better about their budgets than most. Only 26% said they lack budget compared to the 42% average.Click To Tweet

Graph showing the top challenges for content strategists in financial services.

If you’re interested in seeing how content strategists use Writer to help their colleagues write in a consistent voice, start your free trial.