This story may sound familiar.
A small team writes and publishes content for a corporate blog. The company doesn’t know what, if any, impact the content has on visitors. The team just keeps creating and publishing content, and no one knows if, let alone how, it ultimately drives action.
At Ally Financial, that was the beginning of an innovative story that ultimately led to a win for Best Content-Driven Website and Best Use of Interactive Content at the 2024 Content Marketing Awards. It also led to Jim Bentubo being named the 2024 B2B Content Marketer of the Year.
The story got its first new chapter in 2021. Jim, who was the director of social content at Ally, saw that the blog was disconnected from the brand literally (it was on a separate platform from the main website) and figuratively (it published an article on the best bumper stickers).
“I want to take this on. It’s a great challenge,” the former journalist says.
So, he and the team at Ally did. Jim became the senior director of content production, and that “blog” turned into Conversationally, a data-driven content hub.
First-party data reveals opportunities
“We’re in such a unique situation where (our customers are) literally telling us what they’re saving for, what they’re striving for with their life goals,” Jim explains.
That happens through a feature of Ally’s savings and spending accounts. Customers can create buckets such as a vacation, home, higher education, etc., and set a total goal. Then, they can automatically or manually save a portion of their income for that bucket.
Jim wanted to use that and other data to craft a personalized “blog” strategy that connected all the threads under the Ally.com umbrella.
He and another Ally employee dug into the first-party data to understand what people were spending money on, what they saved for, etc. They overlaid search trends, social conversations, and third-party research to create a lens from which to think about content.
“We were given tons of freedom from our leadership who said, ‘We agree with your direction. You guys are the experts, build this,’” he says, noting that the initial planning was done over 18 months.
Audiences think uses, not products
A lot of financial sites explain what a mortgage is, but the Conversationally team sees its role differently. “People don’t go, ‘Oh man, I can’t wait to get a mortgage,’” Jim says. “They’re like, ‘I’m saving for a home.”
So, Ally sees customers’ goals as savings buckets for homes, weddings, travel, etc. They also work as broad themes for Conversationally. “There is a lot of power in personalization and being able to put content closer to our products,” Jim says.
The personalization he refers to isn’t just, for example, content about home ownership targeted to people looking for mortgages. Instead, Ally tailors the content to the journey.
For example, a person who starts a wedding savings bucket will see content based on their progress. So, once they’re close to the goal, Ally knows they’re likely close to the wedding, so it delivers content about tipping vendors.
Someone with a home savings bucket would want to know how to pick the right real estate agent as they begin the journey but won’t care about what goes into closing costs until they are near the end of the journey.
While that progression works well for personalizing wedding and home ownership content, the Ally team learned that audiences with trip-savings buckets operate differently. Most people take a vacation before they save 100% of their goal. Since the journey isn’t linear, Ally delivers a mix of content that might resonate at any point in their trip-savings journey.
Ally calls this the “nurture nature of content” — Conversationally nurtures its readers to become customers. Someone who reads a piece on the data-driven content hub and visits an Ally product page is two times more likely to convert into a customer than someone who just goes to a product page.
In its first year, Conversationally attracted nearly 4 million page views.
Publishing partners help Ally find audiences
But to get there, the team needed to come up with a strategy for reaching audiences. Potential visitors aren’t just eagerly waiting for a corporate blog update, so the Conversationally team needed a strong distribution plan to get in front of people when they might be thinking about money and major life milestones.
Ally went to the places where those audiences were already consuming relevant content by partnering with media brands. The team worked with Condé Nast’s Traveler to reach the travel-savings audience and Architectural Digest for the home-savings audience. It turned to Dotdash Meredith to reach its Brides audience for wedding savers and the Parents property to connect with growing families.
In these co-branded distribution partnerships, Ally relied on the expertise and credibility of the publisher to craft the relevant content, which Ally published on the Conversationally site. The publisher promoted the content on its social media channels and directed the audience to the Conversationally site. After the visitors read that article, Ally could serve up content about how its saving products could help them achieve the relevant goal.
Jim says this co-branding idea isn’t common. Many times, publishers slammed the door on his idea. They wanted their social media followers to land on their sites, not Ally’s.
But Jim knew the best outcome for Ally required the publishers’ social media audiences to visit the Conversationally site and get into the Ally content ecosystem.
Ally grows a Conversationally team across the brand
Conversationally launched as a team of two with an assist from an agency partner who designed the site’s wireframes and conceptual elements. An in-house tech team did the site development work, which ensured that Conversationally was connected to the Ally site.
The content hub had a soft launch in 2022, and the fully integrated website debuted in 2023. The team now totals seven — primarily content strategists and editors who have areas of specialty such as deposits and investments, home and brand, and distribution channels, including Meta, Pinterest, and Reddit. They brief and work with an outside agency that creates the content.
The Conversationally team views the content through the lens of end-to-end consumer journeys. “We’re more thoughtful about how the content is going to show up. Are people going to see it? If they do see it, is it going to lead to something that is mutually beneficial for the consumer and for Ally? The team focuses on every piece having a path logically to a product we have.”
Though an outside agency produces most of the content, an in-house team member is dedicated to brand writing, telling the money stories related to their corporate partnerships such as the Charlotte Major League Soccer team and NASCAR driver Alex Bowman.
While the Conversationally team is small, many people across Ally play a role in the content and promotion.
Every quarter, the Conversationally editorial board gathers. Division presidents, tech executives, and marketing leadership learn about the data-informed editorial plans and chime in with their perspective. That ongoing buy-in for the content means the Conversationally team doesn’t get requests for individual content pieces from the various divisions.
In addition, a content planning meeting is scheduled over two days. The research team presents the trends they’re seeing regarding the consumer’s mindset, spending habits, and other topical buckets. The search team goes over what’s spiking and what people are talking about. Social listening also is brought into the conversation.
With all this data, the team is better informed to plan the content.
For example, they once learned in these planning meetings that one of the top reasons people used their credit card was cruise-related. Though Ally published a lot about travel, it hadn’t delved into the cruise space. The next quarter, it did.
The Conversationally team also analyzes the big picture, looking for the overlaps of what’s happening and where people are today, along with expected events like the U.S. elections, to put together a content plan that will resonate with the audience.
Conversationally chases a better North Star
Conversationally uses a data-informed, executive-backed editorial plan that shows how corporate blogs can evolve into a dynamic and engaging site.
“Too often brands are chasing SEO terms that might not align ultimately to what they want, what is beneficial to a consumer, or what they provide as a service,” Jim says. “Our North Star is always to provide personalization whenever we can so it’s relevant to the audience. But, ultimately, it puts somebody on the path to the right product or solution, so it’s mutually beneficial to us, too.”
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute