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Market like a Fintech is a podcast by Mint Studios and the Fintech Marketing Hub, on a mission to find out what marketing strategies and tactics the top fintech companies in the industry use to acquire real customers, build a brand and grow revenue.
Speaker: You know, what's a
match made in heaven, regulatory
technology and content marketing.
Why?
For three main reasons.
First of all, if you work for a
reg tech, regulatory technology,
your target audience is compliance
professionals whose roles heavily
rely on staying up to date with the
news, the latest regulations and laws.
And by that nature, that makes
them avid consumers of content.
Second of all, compliance professionals
get a lot of said content from Google when
doing their research, which means there's
a clear channel for you to reach them.
Third of all, a lot of content
in this industry as subpar,
as with many other industries.
It's surface level, generic, and doesn't
really go to the level of depth that
compliance professionals really need.
And it means that there's a clear way
to stand out as a company by creating
precise, accurate, high quality content.
And to be honest, I'll add a
fourth reason, which is that
compliance isn't optional.
You're selling software that isn't
a nice to have, it's a necessity
for all companies and that puts you
in a much better position to sell.
All this means is that content
marketing and SEO, as we'll see in
this episode, can work really well
if you work for a regtech company.
In this episode, I'm talking to marketing
director at Comply Advantage, Comply
Advantage is an AI driven fraud and
AML risk detection software company.
And Will has led their content
marketing efforts for the past three
years to absolutely incredible levels.
In this episode, we dive deep into
exactly what he's done and the kind
of results that they've managed to
get we talk about, for example, how in
2024, they actually did fewer webinars
and pieces of content, but actually
managed to get over double the number
of qualified opportunities or how SEO
is their number one lead generating
channel and how they use dream data and.
Storytelling to explain the value
of content to the whole team.
If you're a content nerd,
this episode is for you.
I had a lot of fun diving into the
specifics with Will, and I really
appreciate how open he was and
willing to share what he's found
works and doesn't work for him.
Speaker 2: You're listening to
the market like a FinTech podcast.
My name is Araminta MD admin studios and
partner at the FinTech marketing hub.
And with this podcast, my aim is to
explore the strategies and tactics
that top marketers around the world
use to grow FinTech companies.
We have discussions about how to
navigate compliance, the intricacies
of marketing technical products and
targeting hard to reach ideal customers.
All of that while living the startup life.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Araminta: Let's just
start at the beginning.
So you could introduce yourself
for the recording and also tell us a
little bit, what is your day to day
look like as a director of content
communications at Comply Advantage?
Will: Yes.
I'm Will Thompson.
I'm the director of content and
communications at Comply Advantage.
So my day to day is very varied.
scale up, you tend to cover quite a broad
remit, which I actually really enjoy.
so I do a lot around kind of managing
and reviewing our content programs.
So reviewing content that's going out,
working with, internal subject matter
experts and some external ones as well.
I also look after our PR programs.
So some of what I'm doing is also
thinking about our kind of PR activities.
opportunities that we have coming
up and arranging interviews.
and I look after our design
and social media teams as well.
So there's also a little bit of
project management around the design
side and working with my social
media manager on all the kind of
exciting work we have going on there.
So yeah, very broad, obviously also
working with our CMO on making sure that
all the areas of the marketing team that
I cover reflect the priorities of the
company So very broad, very exciting.
Araminta: Keeps you busy.
Will: Yeah.
Araminta: yeah.
So, what is the role of content and
complies like marketing approach?
And maybe you can give a bit of
context by explaining kind of the other
marketing activities that you focus on
and what the role of content plays in.
Will: Yeah, content's always been
very central to compliance marketing.
I can't even claim full credit for that.
Even prior to me joining, I've
been here nearly four years.
And so even before that, it's been
a large part of what we do, I think
initially, because there are a lot of
vendors in a space, there are some kind
of more established or legacy providers.
there's a lot of companies
that do similar but different.
one of the challenges we have is
how do we establish credibility?
How do we establish that?
We have knowledge in the space
beyond the products that we offer.
the kind of early teams that complied
vantage understood that the content
marketing is a really strong way
of establishing that credibility.
one of the things we always try
and do with customers is show that
we're a partner, not just a vendor,
you know, customer success and our
support teams are a big part of what
we offer from a product perspective.
being able to demonstrate that with
really credible content is part of
what we've always done as a company
and something I've tried to kind
of expand while I've been here.
so in terms of the sort of wider marketing
strategy, we do build a lot of our
campaigns around a sort of central content
piece, whether that's a white paper,
whether that's the kind of series of
webinars, what we've really been trying to
do more recently is kind of expand that.
Think more from a campaign
than a content perspective.
I think one of the challenges I've had as
director of content is actually sometimes
I've been saying, cool, that's great, but
we actually think more about the campaign,
, what are the sort of run up activities?
How are we following up
afterwards with sales?
Do we have the right paid budget for this?
I always think we've had challenges,
which is a good challenge for me to have
where people are so invested in content
that sometimes we default, Oh, let's
create a piece of content for X or Y.
And I'm the one kind of saying,
Ooh, let's roll it back.
Like, what's the objective of this?
You know, what role does it play?
And I've got some data points I'm
sure we'll get into on actually
how we've done less in some
cases and achieve better results.
So some of it's actually been rowing
back the amount that we do and
thinking more about what's the strategy
around it, all of that kind of thing.
So in terms of channels, we rely very
heavily on things like LinkedIn and
Google ads from a paid perspective.
LinkedIn in particular is
a really great resource.
We do a few events, particularly
kind of the big ones in our space.
So things like a cams and some of the
kind of banking and payments events.
but yeah, a lot of it is very, very kind
of content, very digital driven for sure.
Araminta: Yeah.
I like what you said about making
sure that it's part of a campaign.
Could you expand a bit on that?
So do you try and do like, X number
of campaigns per year and they're
all going to have, I mean, they're
probably all going to be a bit
different, but do you try and aim
for X amount of content per campaign?
Or is it more like whenever there's a
new piece of content, you're like, let's
first make sure it's part of a campaign.
So what is your thinking
there , around campaigns.
Will: Yes, yeah, and I think this kind of
gets into the concept strategy of we try
and have three to four core global pieces
a year because we do operate across Asia
Pacific, EMEA and the US, so we do kind
of have a global focus once a quarter.
often that Will relate
to commercial objectives.
in q1 We always do our annual state of
the year report based on a proprietary
survey we run every year our state
of financial crime report which is
always our top asset for the year and
then kind of for q2 three four onwards
We will still be running versions of
that but also thinking about Payments,
banking, insurance, big sectors for us.
those core global things are
always mapped to the commercial
priorities for the organization?
where are we selling?
Where do we have the
best product market fit?
there may be more tactical pieces at a
regional level that are more specific.
So one thing we find works really well
for us is talking about regulations.
Regulations are always
changing in our space.
What we try and do is get
ahead of new regulations.
So the European union just published
a huge amount of new AML, anti money
laundering, kind of financial crime
regulation, a massive playbook.
we had a kind of experts review
that before it was finalized
and actually say, look, this is
what the draft is looking like.
This is how it's taking shape.
These are things you can do and get ahead
of these things actually going live.
So those are things we think
work well at a regional level.
But yeah, we do try and have a
kind of quarterly global focus.
And then there's some of
those more regional pieces.
The reason for that, I think, is It's all
very well putting a piece of content out
there, getting, you know, a few thousand
email addresses, but then so what, right?
So one of the things I've been
working with the digital team on
is we now have a consistent global
email nurture that everyone goes
into when they download that content.
Some of that is general and it's more
of a sort of general thought leadership.
There are different flows for
different products that we try
and measure in that email flow.
And obviously based on other activities,
people are doing, what are the, Products
that we think they're most interested in,
and then we'll send them to case studies
and things like that, that are most
relevant to what they're interested in.
obviously we then do things like
looking at webinars, for example,
that may be a way of accelerating
or further measuring intent.
So a lot of what we're
trying to do is great.
We've got your contact information.
It's then really thinking about
whether it's email webinars.
Whether it's retargeted ads,
what can we do to understand
better what that person wants?
And then, you know, is it great?
They just go to our weekly newsletter.
Is it, you know, great.
We get them to sales.
Is it sending them a product content?
Um, and obviously the more, if
you have too much content, it's
very difficult to do that, right?
Because you're just building up
these massive lists of people.
So that's really been our focus is
that alignment with sales on, how
do we build our lead scoring model?
And our digital team have
done a lot of work on.
Improving the model, making sure we're
passing leads over at the right point.
content is a part of it, but
it's that bigger picture, which
is where we've really matured
in the last couple of years.
Araminta: Nice.
Yeah, I want to get into that
whole thing you said about sales
cause that's really interesting.
you've worked at Ingenico and you're
very familiar with FinTech space.
How do you feel like content for reg
tech or the regulatory environment
is a little bit different to
FinTech or payments in general?
Will: Yeah.
I the difference that we have, I
guess, is that, you know, what we do
is all, a lot of the companies we speak
to, it's a regulatory requirement.
So you're starting out
from a different baseline.
We're often not having to convince them.
We don't need to convince them why they
should be doing anti money laundering.
It's a legal requirement.
They'll be fine and go to
prison if they don't do it.
So we don't have to convince them of that.
We have to, you know, and I think, so
it is about being a bit more detailed.
There are lots of vendors talking
at a very high level and anyone
can, create a chat, GBT blog on the
top five things you need to know
about X regulation or Y regulation.
But I think the big challenge we have is
there's a real need for quite in depth
subject matter expertise to write good
content because otherwise, and you see
this with writers that are a bit more
experienced in the space, they write
to almost inform themselves and they'll
say, Screening for political persons is a
really key part of the compliance program.
Anyone in compliance would know that
we kind of need to jump one step ahead.
So I think, yeah, it's about
really understanding the detail and
understanding that we have a very
informed audience that doesn't need
the kind of classic convincing that
this is something they need to do.
It's actually great.
Well, what's the value of what you do?
What are you telling me?
That's the value of that?
Araminta: Yeah,
Will: which is a fun challenge, I think,
Araminta: that's really interesting.
And I totally agree.
Like, to be honest, even in FinTech
in general, there's a lot of like
writers learning on the go and very
beginner topics and payments as well.
Like you don't need to try and
convince them , or, or just say,
okay, what is a direct debit?
You don't need to, you
can just skip that part.
So no, I totally agree.
And I was asking this because
we've just started working with
a compliance company as well.
And what I found so.
cool or interesting was what you said.
I think, first of all, it's a need.
So there's no even, like, question behind
whether they need some support or not.
And then also it's really complex
and it's actually getting more
complex every year, regulation.
And so SEO works really well because,
and there's so many keywords.
Like we started working with this
company and There are like, maybe not
thousands, but like so much more than
maybe your, uh, payment orchestration
company, where it's super niche in
reg tech, it was like, there's so
many and they're also really good,
like really good keywords to rank for.
I don't know if you've seen that as
well, but it's like, wow, there's
so much opportunity basically what
I'm saying in SEO and content.
Will: For sure, yeah, and I think that
that creates another layer to the content
challenge, right, is there are all
these keywords and obviously you've got
to thread that needle of getting those
keywords into the articles to ensure that
you rank, but in a way that doesn't dilute
the detail and the value and the richness
of the content, which is the classic SEO
writer challenge, right, and doing that.
That dance with your SEO execs around
getting the keywords right and the
right number of backlinks and making
sure that they're useful links and
that yeah, it adds another dimension
to the challenge and also that you're
obviously competing with you know, we've
seen some of the algorithm updates.
You know, to Google kind of put us,
understandably, below regulators or
below official sources and that's
completely reasonable, but it creates
a challenge when you're trying to
be as high up on Google as possible.
Araminta: So, let's go
back to content strategy.
you said that, a big,
big part is campaigns.
what does content strategy
look like at Comply?
Is campaigns just a part of that
or is it mainly just campaigns?
what does that look like?
Will: Yeah, we, we kind of separate it
really into the kind of always on, which
is our SEO program, a newsletter, all
those kinds of different elements, you
know, content to support events, content
we create for partners like UK finance,
or all of that is the sort of always on
machine that is kind of always running.
And then the campaigns and the campaigns
have quite a high bar because we
get a lot of our inbound, when we
think about inbound demo requests
on our website, we think about,
conversions on content, a lot of them.
Our sort of baseline monthly metrics
are hit by the always on content.
So then we're always thinking, okay, what
value beyond that does a campaign add?
And what is the benefit of doing that
relative to investing that, you know,
very limited time that we have in more
SEO content, because we're going to
write a white paper that there's no
paid advertising spend for, , isn't
in a segment that sales can support.
We're better to spend that writer time
refreshing or building out five new pieces
of search content, because we know we
can build inbound Demo traffic from that.
So we set quite a high bar in terms of
making sure that yeah It's a segment that
aligns with the company's priorities.
It's a segment where we have sales
buy in we have a good product story.
so yeah, that's really how we think about
it It's sort of the baseline is all the
always on and then the campaigns are this
kind of additive piece where we do say You
know, we work with our regional marketing
teams and say great What are the revenue
goals you want to hit for this segment?
Why are we doing this segment?
What are we selling?
What's the value?
And they always have that information,
but it's about us all going through
that exercise and the writer's
understanding, actually, the end goals
in terms of, is this a segment where,
you know, this content is trying to
accelerate pipeline we already have?
Is this something where we're
completely new and we're
trying to build a contact base?
You know, all of that for me
is kind of critical context.
If you're going to write, even writing
for leadership, What level of knowledge
does the audience have about us and
what are we trying to get out of them?
Araminta: And it sounds like
your campaigns are really
closely tied to revenue goals.
Then is that the case or is it like over
on an annual basis or really per campaign?
yes.
Will: Yeah.
So we use a platform called dream
data, which kind of aggregates all
of our information from things like
Google, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Salesforce,
it pulls all of that information
together, in a really useful way.
So we can look at, and HubSpot
also has some great kind of
data on this around things like
influence revenue and customers.
So, yeah, we do look at influence
revenue as one of our goals,
even for thought leadership.
Obviously it's a little bit
difficult because our sales cycles
are, you know, 18, 24 months for
some companies at the larger end.
So it's always got a, quite a long tail.
Cool.
but it is something that we do
measure, particularly relative
to, what did a similar campaign
achieve in the year before, right?
That's a great way of looking at,
okay, 12 months, you can compare six
months to six months, or 12 months to
12 months, and look Influence pipeline.
And, obviously we break our deals down
into kind of different stages and we
have internal language for that, but
obviously broadly, your stage one is
your business development meeting your
stage two is you've had that initial
meeting and there's probably some kind of
dollar value attached to an opportunity.
Those are really the stages we would
measure a lot of the thought leadership
content on is, you know, How many of
those people that have downloaded that
content have got to that second stage
where we've had a conversation and we've
got a sense of, what the deal opportunity
is, and I think that's probably the right
level to go to in terms of, making sure
the advertising targeting is correct.
that is absolutely something we
look at and also qualitatively.
You know, we have a
sales one Slack channel.
So everyone can see when new deals
are coming through and you can
see in there the lead sources.
And so sometimes we can then actually
go into dream day to look at a specific
customer's journey and say, you know,
we've had some deals around organic
search, for example, and you can see
customers bouncing around between
maybe the homepage and a product page.
And then maybe they downloaded a white
paper and then maybe they disappeared
for six months because they were just
doing some exploratory work and then
they got budget approved and then they
came back and went straight to a demo.
So we can actually see.
Those journeys and how
they're not that linear.
it's not just, you know, white paper,
BD call, sales call, deal sign.
, the qualitative is also really interesting
looking at how customers actually
engage with the content and how it's not
linear, because we as marketers always
talk about that all the time, but it's
really powerful for us as a marketing
team kind of having that information.
Araminta: I'm going to
check out dream data.
This sounds really cool because I think
the big benefit of what you're saying
is that channel available to everyone?
Because then everyone can see the
role of content and organic, right?
Will: Yeah.
It literally will say, you know,
organic search or whatever the
lead sources is there for everyone.
Araminta: Yeah, did you find that people
were surprised at how many deals were
from organic, more than they expected?
Will: We've always had a really great
partnership with sales, actually.
And we've always had a lot of
credit and kudos from our sales team
around the value of the content.
So it is very collaborative.
And obviously, we know that, Inbound
outbound is a bit of an oversimplification
of how these things work, right?
We know that, outbound deals are going
to be influenced by content and inbound
deals, obviously going to be influenced
by the quality of the sales interaction.
So it's, it's always a partnership.
and I think, you know, as a company,
we're, we're very good at recognizing
that, We both need each other and
it's a kind of additive relationship.
Araminta: no, that's really cool.
I love how you can see in so much detail.
Like I was just talking to the head
of brand communications at Plio and
they just recently moved all their
content onto HubSpot and they, for the
first time, they're getting insights
that they'd never had before and
they were like completely blown away.
And so, yeah, this is why I'm always
pushing, like, get your tracking
in place because the level of
insights is just fascinating and
I'm sure you've had insights where.
Maybe if a person reads X number
of pages or X number of pieces of
content, they're, I don't know,
60 percent more likely to convert.
And that's just like fascinating, but
also really interesting because then
you know what topics seem to convert
better and all that kind of stuff.
So it's fascinating.
Yeah.
No, I love it.
Will: we ran a webinar series last year
as an example where, you know, some,
one of them, we had some very broad
ones, and then we had one that was
very kind of technical on ISO 20022,
this payment standard, super technical,
had the lowest number of signups.
And so if we just looked at signups, you
would have said, didn't do that well.
But in terms of the influence value
of the people that came through, it
was the best performing one, even
though it had maybe half the number
of signups of some of the others.
Super high quality, right?
in terms of people that are a good
product market fit for us and what
we do, if you just looked at the
signup numbers, you'd have said,
Oh, well, that was a waste of time.
So it can completely change
how you look at these things.
And obviously for our executives who
understandably want to see the value of
what they're investing in, that's a much
better metric to talk about as well.
Araminta: know, I love that example.
That's really good.
And yeah, I totally agree.
So just before we go into how you work
with your sales teams, I'd love to
hear how, you get the inputs for your
content strategy and for your campaign?
So how do you make sure that you
and your team is in touch with
pain points, problems, how people
are feeling in the industry?
How do you have that workflow set up?
Will: Yeah, so we have an in
house regulatory affairs team.
So we have an expert in London and we
have an expert in New York and they're
people that have been practitioners
in the industry for decades.
They sit in the company between
product, engineering, they do a lot
of our PR work and content work.
So they're our speakers at events.
They talk to customers.
So they're a really unique resource
for us in that they understand
where our products are going.
They talk to our customers
that connected to the industry.
So they're a really useful resource, as
well as directly from our sales leaders as
well, in terms of what are we focusing on?
So, our regional marketing teams are
very much kind of two sides of the same
coin with our regional sales teams,
and that gives us a real closeness
to what those teams are doing without
being kind of too driven by it.
I think there's always a
temptation of, Oh, wow.
You know, this regulation came out,
let's do a whole thing around it.
And then you kind of get
off track with something.
so yeah, it's very much
collaborative kind of input.
Araminta: Having that internal
expert and what do you talk to them
like once a week or how do you kind
of keep that communication, open?
Will: Yeah.
we try and do kind of quarterly sort of
horizon setting sessions, particularly
around PR and the media, but a lot of
that will then inform what we're doing.
content as well, for sure.
Araminta: let's talk about the
role of content in the sales cycle,
but you've said that you're super
collaborative with the sales team.
So what does that kind
of look like in practice?
And also how have you.
Cause this is the challenge that I hear
very often is that, yeah, the content team
or the marketing team creates content for
the sales team, then they never use it.
How have you tried to avoid that?
And how does that relationship look like?
So the sales team is actually using your
content and finds it really helpful.
Will: Yeah, so I think part of it as we
talked about is making sure that the leads
were passing over the right quality and
having that lead scoring model a couple
of years ago when I joined it was very
much more manual and sales were getting
literally a spreadsheet of people and
I didn't know this two years later when
you look back and you see oh my god there
were loads of great people on this list
but for whatever reason no one called and
that's obviously a terrible process if
you're just downloading content and Giving
a spreadsheet of names, to sales people,
that's obviously not a good process.
So some of it is that lead scoring model,
which obviously initially does reduce the
amount of leads that sales are getting.
And so you may get some pushback to sales.
People just kind of want the list.
But I think over time we see that
they see that quality is better.
They see a better response rate.
They see, you know, ultimately more
deals, more commission that that helps.
I think other things are, yeah,
making, really making sure.
that they're bought into whatever the
content is that we're doing, getting them
involved in content can be really helpful,
So we use a webinar platform called
Emmy, which is really fantastic.
they have a kind of, you can do
webinars, but also they have these
kind of follow up tables afterwards.
So, you know, we always do a webinar
and we'll say, great, we've got a table
where our speakers are going to be, and
you can join this kind of virtual table.
And then we often have a demo table
for the most relevant product where
somebody in the sales team can walk them
through, How does the product work that
relates to what we're talking about?
And that way, you know, people have that
option to do that, but we're not forcing
it on everyone that's on the webinar.
We actually find those
perform really, really well.
and then you have a salesperson
involved in the session and actually
seeing feedback in real time.
some of it is, making sure we brief
our business development partners.
So, we've created emails and content
that they can use to follow up with
Leads that attended, leads that didn't
attend and they've got different
templates for those different things
that they can send out and start a
conversation and say, Hey, I love this
point in the webinar, what did you think?
and then really, yeah, working with
them, looking at the data after a
campaign and saying, Great, this is
where we've done well, this is where
the challenges are, what can we do
together to reinforce that or to get
more of those leads kind of through.
Araminta: Yeah.
No, I love what you're
saying about the webinar.
people turn up, but then how do you turn
them into, Potential customers basically.
So that's really interesting
the way you've approached that.
and I imagine Airmeet just
manages that and like makes
that super easy to set up then.
Will: Yes.
Yeah.
And we, you know, we manage them
internally in terms of hosting
and things like that, but yeah,
you can run polls on there.
There's a chat feature,
which is really good.
We find we get a lot of
engagement in the chat.
so yeah, it's been very successful.
Araminta: And I imagine like also they're
probably webinar, well, webinar, you
said yourself, like as you can repurpose
that into other pieces of content, but
I imagine that's also actually a good
way to get an input in the sense that.
People from your team go to the webinar
to learn more about current topics.
And then also that feeds into
the content strategy, I imagine.
Will: Yes.
They're great for our sales teams.
And then that's the other
point on sales engagement.
So we have a, our sales enablement
kind of team have a platform
called FlopJ, which is where we
sort of host a lot of resources.
So a lot of the content that
we create also goes in there.
So if there's a salesperson looking
for a quick primer on a topic.
you know, they can search for it and
find a white paper or find our content
in there and use it to help them to
kind of stay on top of trends as well.
Araminta: Yeah.
So many cool tools.
And I think often the challenge of
maybe why salespeople don't use the
content is because they don't have
an easy way to access it or find
it with just a couple of clicks.
And so by making it super easy.
I don't know how FlogJ works, but I
imagine you just need to type in like
a specific word and then all your
white papers and stuff will come up and
then they can really easily use that.
Yeah.
And you can, and
Will: ourselves and Edmonton
can also set tasks in there.
So if there are specific things
we want them to read, it comes
up as a task that week that they
have to kind of log as completed.
So there are ways of tracking.
Araminta: Yeah.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Nice.
I'm going to check out.
now I want to talk a bit
about like SEO because it is
a topic that I love very much.
and what you said before, which is
SEO is kind of like that always on,
marketing activity that allows you
to get a steady flow every month.
So I'd love to hear a bit more about that.
How have you approached SEO?
And then tell us a bit about how
the bottom of the funnel and what
you've been experimenting with that
and how, how it's working for you.
Will: Yeah.
So again, SEO is something that, has
always been a large part of us content
to actually even kind of predating my
time here, which, you know, when I joined
in 2021 really helped because we had a
good domain authority on the website.
We had a lot of the kind of basics
covered a lot of what I call the,
the, what is content, you know,
the, what is anti money laundering?
What is financial crime?
What is this regulation?
We, we've done a lot of that.
So part of what I did when I
joined was really make sure
that we Build that content out,
make it as detailed as possible.
obviously having some very high level
content is good, but you're really only
appealing to smaller fintechs rather than
some of the bigger enterprise customers.
So building that out, making
sure we're logging, when was
the last time we reviewed this?
When was the last time it was updated?
to make sure we keep it refreshed.
I've been building out our design team,
so now we can create more graphics
and visuals that go in those pieces.
And then, and then obviously we, we've
also been looking at the journey through
the site, right, so where do we then lead
people to from those blogs, because the
bounce rates on those blogs were very
high, which, you know, on one level is
natural if somebody's answering a specific
question, it's obviously not necessarily
a problem if they leave, but, you know,
does it make sense to link to a demo?
straight from a what is anti
money laundering article?
Probably not.
We're better to get them to put their
contact information into a white paper.
We've actually been adding kind of little
sort of non invasive pop ups around
like, sign up for our weekly newsletter
and that stuff works really well.
but yeah, as you alluded to, we've
been doing more with kind of bottom of
funnel SEO and what that looks like.
And that's been an interesting I think
challenge for our whole team in terms
of it's not as easy to find the right
keywords and it's not as easy to then
map those keywords to what we do.
So like one example is, you know,
we do risk scoring in our products.
All the keywords are on risk scoring and
kind of AML risk scorings, anti money
laundering risk scoring, which is fine.
And that's how the
industry talks about it.
But we kind of talk about it in
a more general sense of what we
do it for financial crime risk.
That's more than AML.
And so our product team say, well,
that's not quite accurate, but
we're saying, well, those are the
keywords that have the volume.
And that's what people searching for.
So we always have to kind of do
this dance around how do we get
that balance between making sure
we properly represent what we do.
And also that we're capturing that
search intent, but yeah, one of the
things that we've found very well, which
was an inspiration that came from a
session that you, I know you presented
on was these kind of competitive
comparison articles and talking a
bit about, vendors in, you know, for
sanction screening or top vendors for,
politically exposed person screening.
So we have a kind of
article series on that.
We really do focus on us in those
articles , obviously competitors talk
about themselves in very different
ways and we could end up in a bit of a.
Confusing people, but you know,
we talk a bit about our value.
we summarize some of our competitors
and some of the other companies
people might want to look into.
we have our G2, we're a kind of G2
leader in anti money laundering.
So we have our G2 quadrants featured
on there and those have been really
impactful in terms of a bottom
of funnel, SEO and all of that.
So it's, it's an ongoing project.
We're still doing more around our
product capabilities and testing kind
of different, different pieces there.
But yeah, one of my goals has really been.
Bringing that SEO piece down the
funnel , and yeah, seeing the impact of
that again, particularly because we can
measure that influence revenue, right?
I said, an SEO exec is going
to say, well, there's not much
search volume around that.
It's much more search volume
around the, what is AML?
And that's their job, but we can create
this content and say, well, sure.
But you know, the people coming
to those pages are much higher
value for retargeting, or
they're going straight to demos.
Then great.
You know, we can prove the value
beyond just traffic to the site.
Araminta: yeah, exactly.
Well, it's really exciting to see that
working and exactly what you say, like,
if you've got the HubSpot report set
up properly, you can prove with actual
numbers, like this content only gets
20 searches a month, but it's brought
in 100k in business opportunity,
whereas the what is, which is kind
of getting replaced by AI now, we
can talk about that in a second, is
getting traffic, but it's just traffic
really not really business opportunity.
So it's really great to
hear that that's working.
And what you said earlier about a keyword
that doesn't describe exactly what you do.
That happens so much.
I call it damning demand
where someone's looking for X.
And so you have to interrupt their
search and actually say, Yeah, I know
you're looking for AML risk scoring,
but actually we do so much more.
And this is the beauty of content is
that you can make a case for that and
explain why what you do is better.
Whereas with Google ads, you could
argue you've only got a land.
I mean, you could do it with a
landing page, I guess, but I think
that with long form content, it's
a little easier to say, actually,
this is what you're missing out on.
And this is where like damning
demand is really, really important.
where a lot of opportunity lies in SEO,
targeting those incorrect keywords,
which people are often scared to
target because it's like, not exactly
what we do, but if you're able to
convince leadership, then that's great.
This is where often the opportunity is.
So yeah, that's really exciting
to see how it's evolved.
No, I love that.
Will: Yeah.
I love that example.
Araminta: yeah, just briefly touching on
AI because it is a very current topic.
And I mean, I've got
a couple of questions.
One is like how you're implementing
it in content creation, but also
just on that about what is, articles.
I'm sure you started seeing those
AI overviews and things, that now
basically, you know, Google, for anyone
who doesn't know, Google is using AI to
summarize a what is AML, for example.
And that comes, that's
like the first, position.
So it's kind of pushing
everyone down a little bit.
So have you found that that
has affected your traffic?
Will: Yeah, we haven't seen a ton, I don't
think, of immediate impact from that.
And again, it's always difficult
with Google algorithms being
such a black box to know exactly
what is making what impact.
I think it's definitely
something we're monitoring.
Part of me is kind of optimistic in a
way about that because we get a lot of
random traffic to those what is pages
or what are the three stages of money
laundering and my gut is that those
are the first people that will drop off
right if you're just a genuine maybe
you're watching Ozark and you're googling
the three stages of money laundering.
you'll probably just read
the AI summary and leave.
Whereas somebody that I don't know is a
compliance officer or the person tasked
with compliance at a small FinTech and
maybe hasn't, it's been tasked with
finding a vendor, but that's not their
full time job and they need to know a
bit more and is actually looking for what
vendors talk about would be the people
that would scroll past that and want to
actually read something more in depth.
So definitely one we should, Keep an
eye on as that AI process evolves.
I'm a little bit optimistic
that maybe it will filter out
some of the less valid traffic.
Araminta: Yeah.
No, that's a really good way to see it.
I actually hadn't thought of that.
And I think you're totally right.
And also we shouldn't forget that
when you do expand on that, you
do get the sources and stuff.
So people can still click through that.
So that's really interesting to hear.
And I, I think I agree.
I'm not pessimistic about it.
It is just a new evolve,
like evolution and Google.
And we just need to keep an
eye on it and see what happens.
But I agree with what
you're saying for sure.
and then in terms of like, content
creation or just marketing in general.
have you tried to add
AI into your process?
What have you found works or doesn't work?
Anything that you can share there.
Will: we have a kind of traffic light
process internally for AI because
these tools are, evolving all the time.
We can't just dismiss them once and
say, well, that's no good for us.
We still have a red, amber,
green approach in the green.
Kind of column is Grammarly,
which, is an incredible time save.
we have the enterprise license for anyone
that's a frontline writer, whether that's
some of our sales colleagues, customer
success and the marketing writers.
I think people don't always think
about Grammarly as AI, but it
is obviously it's an AI based
tool and it's incredibly useful.
our social media scheduling tool not to
throw another tool into the conversation
is OctoPost which is a fantastic b2b
Scheduling tool and our social media
manager manages kind of we have all of
our sales team about 50 odd people are
in there As a sales advocates So there's
content that we put in there that they
can create on their own channels that
has a really good Gen AI content tool
for creating different versions of posts.
So our social media manager will
put our post in there and it will
create another version of it.
So it says the same thing,
but in a different way.
And that is actually a really useful
tool because it may be, once you've been
staring at a copy for a long time and
you've written it your way, it can be
hard to see how to do it another way,
but you're giving them all the facts.
So there's much less risk
of factual inaccuracies.
On the red side, we are very cautious
we would never use AI for full
content creation, particularly in a
space that's regulated, it can create
things that are factually inaccurate.
Even if it doesn't, if everyone's
using the same tools, everyone's
going to write the same article and
what's the thing that's distinctive.
I think where we're in that middle
ground still experimenting is some
of the platforms that can help us.
We've looked at things like.
ScaleNut and Writer and Jasper, you know,
we've had demos of a couple of those
kind of tools that are somewhere in the
middle that I think we could do more in
terms of using Gen AI to help us create
content outlines, you know, make that
side of the process a little bit more
efficient, we also, had a tool, a demo
tool called AnyWord, which I was quite
impressed with, which looks at, it pulls
things like LinkedIn data and performance
data from our CRM and then optimizes
based on what copy performs best.
So it helps improve your conversions
by using your performance
data to improve your copy.
And I could see again, if we
could get an enterprise license,
something like that for sales
teams, when they're writing emails.
That could be a real,
real added value add.
So definitely more we're still looking at.
It's one of the things on my list for
2025 budget planning is getting one of
those tools that takes us to that next
level in terms of, outlines, optimization.
And particularly plugging in our data,
because one of the challenges that we've
talked about being in a very, niche space
is a lot of these tools aren't going to
say anything that's at the level of detail
and that is accurate enough yet that
is useful, but something that is based
on our own data would be very powerful.
Araminta: So are you saying like,
your data is at the CRM, you're
saying, or is it more like your tool?
Okay.
So like knowing what people are interested
in, like plugging into HubSpot, seeing
what people are interested in or data.
And even really, even
Will: really small things like which
keyword, you know, just calling
something a white paper or an ebook.
those things can make big differences,
one example we've seen kind of anecdotally
is we see one of the lines we use in our
ads a lot is this kind of AML roadmap.
So build an AML roadmap that is one
of the consistently one of our top
performing ads is when we talk about
roadmaps and so a lot of our webinars,
we use that roadmap language now.
So we've been able to do a
bit of that qualitatively.
But if we had that AI plugin that
was able to do that much more, you
know, maybe explore does better than
discover, or, sometimes it's really
small linguistic changes, but if we had
that just automatically optimizing in a
dynamic way, as things then change in our
ads, that would be really interesting.
Araminta: No, that's really cool.
If anyone who's building an AI tool
is listening, there's an idea for
another one for another SaaS product.
so another thing I want to ask is that
you do a really great job in your,
LinkedIn newsletter, the briefing
and webinars and your events to
really stay on top of current topics.
And I know you said you
meet with your expert.
every quarter.
Is that where you get all the inputs
or how else do you make sure that
you're staying on top of everything
and also producing at such a high rate?
How does that work?
Will: Yeah.
The briefings are really
interesting examples.
So yeah, with that, we have a kind
of a Slack channel for our team.
we use that there are some great news
aggregators out there in our space.
Like the laundry is a really good one.
that collates a lot of news around
fin crimes, and we use those.
We go direct to regulator websites.
I think part of it is we have quite
a focused brief in terms of what are
we writing about in these stories?
And a lot of it is, what are
the regulators saying directly?
going on their press and news pages
and then those news aggregators.
And then we have a kind of in the new
Slack channel that the company as a whole,
people are always kind of sharing content.
So it's a bit of a mix of those things.
but one of the things the briefing
is a good example of the kind of less
is more approach so we used to write,
we try and do sort of three stories a
week, roughly split one between each of
our regions if there is enough news in
each region we used to do a full blog
on each of those stories every week and
what it meant, and then the newsletter
would link to those three blogs.
Obviously, that's
massively time consuming.
That's basically a day, a
week of a writer's time.
not an ideal journey for the user
because they're, especially if
they're viewing a newsletter on a
mobile, they've got to click out
to read each story and click back.
what we see with a lot more with,
newspaper editorial newsletters
is it's long form and it's
all within the newsletter.
You don't need to click out.
And that's the goal of the newsletter is
not really for people to click out, right?
We've already got their
contact information.
So we rebuilt the briefing as
a kind of, Everything you can
read is within the newsletter.
So we do a short summary, a paragraph each
of each story in the newsletter itself.
We then syndicated that to LinkedIn.
So it's something that goes out
to our email database every week,
but with the previous version, it
was difficult to do on LinkedIn.
So then a social media manager
was like, Oh, LinkedIn has this
newsletter function, let's try that.
So now we have 17, 500
subscribers on LinkedIn.
We saw the open rates from the
newsletter go from 20 percent to 35%.
We've seen the click through rates.
Go from 1.
5 to 2.
5 percent.
So we see massive improvements
and it probably takes about, you
know, half a day versus a day.
So we've halved the time we spent on it.
We did some design work.
Our designers did a great job building
a new template, but it's very simple.
so we halved the time we spent on it.
We've doubled the output by
actually doing a bit less.
You know, we're not a news organization.
We're not here to write in depth
reviews on all these stories.
And we're much more disciplined about
these are the kind of stories we focus on
and what we're trying to achieve with it.
Yeah, that discipline is, is
kind of important, I think.
Araminta: So did, are you saying that you
kind of, are you now doing, the newsletter
via LinkedIn and an email provider?
Or, yeah, okay, so both at the same time.
Will: Yeah, it goes out through HubSpot
and then also, and it's our, again,
it's our kind of always on touch
point with anyone in our database.
Every week, even if they're not in an
email nurture it keeps them in touch.
And obviously we have links at the
bottom to latest long form content
or events and things like that,
Araminta: Nice.
And so this brings me onto my next topic,
which was kind of any results that you can
share or any metrics that you can share.
what have you found has been like
the success with this newsletter?
I mean, you said already open rate has
increased and all that, but from a more,
more like a sales Have you found that
helps with, for example, as you said,
People are, you're on top of mind.
So people are maybe more likely,
you'll have more inbound, maybe one
year later or something like that.
so that, and then just general
metrics that you can share.
Will: Yeah.
I mean, with the newsletter, again,
we do also look at pipeline and, you
know, without going into specific
numbers, the numbers are pretty good.
Close one deals, you know, it's
well in excess of a million in terms
of, you know, deals where people
have read the newsletter and the
number of influence opportunities
is significantly higher than that.
So, they're meaningful numbers of people
that, are engaged in the sales process and
are kind of, engaging with the newsletter.
And yeah, I mean, in terms of other
numbers on other things, what,
, continuing the less is more being minute,
you know, I always feel like a bit of
a contrarian as a content person going
make less content, , but actually,
sometimes that is valuable, we do a kind
of summer series of webinars each year.
So sort of deliberately in that
kind of downtime through the summer,
where people actually maybe do
have a bit more time, and some
marketers are kind of pulling back.
Last year, we did sort of seven
different topic based sessions.
This year, we did four, we put a
lot more time into the promotion.
We've cleaned up a lot of our database,
you know, so we did four instead of seven,
we increased registrations by 60%, the
average number by webinar increased 190%.
The total viewing time for the webinars
went from 23, 000 hours to 64, 000
And, you know, it's very early for
this summer for the pipeline, but
the pipeline is really looking very
strong in terms of inference pipeline.
we even saw the attendee rates increase.
I think it was about 34 percent
watched them live last time.
And it was 50 over 50 percent this time,
which, you know, it's pretty great for
people turning up on the scheduled time.
and some of that is the content,
optimizing the topics, optimizing
the messaging, but it's also,
yeah, making sure we're building
out a high quality database.
The advertising, the sales promotion,
we use some influencers as well.
So it's, it's all of those different
things, but again, less is more, right?
It's actually how does content sit in
that mix and what are all the different
things that we're doing versus last year?
I would say we were as mature as we
are now on the content side, but we
weren't as mature on the digital side.
And that's the difference is we've
been able to almost half the number of
webinars we did, but you know, 60 to 200
percent increase in some of the different
metrics that we've actually achieved.
Araminta: Can you share anything
on like the topics specifically?
How did you change the topics this year?
Did you make them more like specific to
regulations or how did you make them like
higher quality you think or more relevant?
Will: the first one we did that had
the highest number of registrations
was around the roadmap piece.
we'd seen that work very well in our ads.
So if we had a guide, for example, on anti
money laundering in the EU, the ad that
performed best was your roadmap to anti
money laundering in the European Union.
And so we did a webinar on
looking at the roadmap piece.
It's kind of forward
looking on the year ahead.
Previously, we've done a bit of
a review of the year so far, and
I was thinking, well, actually
that's the stuff that's happened.
Why don't we try something that's
looking ahead to the year ahead
and key things in the year ahead.
And so that roadmap piece
performed very well.
We focused on topics like sanctions,
which are kind of very topical,
but also an area that we have a
good value in terms of our product.
And we looked at kind of corruption
and bribery as well, which is very
topical with things like politically
exposed persons with all the
elections that are going on this year.
but again, is also an area where we
have proprietary pet data that is
reviewed very well in the industry.
So we really tried to find that sweet
spot with topics that are, you know,
not where we can be controversial, but
where we have a point of view, but also
where we do have that kind of strong.
Product value.
And then good speakers
is also really important.
And that's where we leverage our,
we always have someone from our
regulatory affairs team there,
but we leverage their networks.
We leverage our influences.
that really helps as well, obviously.
And customers as well.
Araminta: Yeah.
There's something about the word
roadmap that is like so optimistic.
I love that word.
Like, I think it's just so like,
ah, this is a plan for the future.
I like it.
So it's interesting to hear
that it's worked well, like
from a copy side of things.
And avoiding
Will: B2B buzzwords, which anyone in my
team will tell you is one of my pet hates.
I almost wrote a list of them,
but I mean, we all know what they
Araminta: are.
Will: I'd love to see your list.
Cause yeah, anything about growing
data volumes, anything about leveraging
insights, you know, we've all been on
companies websites or seen webinars where
you go, I have no idea what this is about.
I think it was Anne Handley,
the chief content officer, who,
her newsletter is really great.
I think I get that every two
weeks where she said, bad writing
comes from bad thinking or unclear
writing comes from unclear thinking.
And it's absolutely what that is.
If you don't really know what you're
trying to say, you say something waffly.
And so, yeah, being really tight for
webinars and for any content, right.
Being really tight on what are
we actually trying to say in this
webinar is the best way to make
sure that, yeah, they perform well.
Araminta: To me, it's
operational efficiency.
Okay.
I just, yeah, that one comes up
a lot and I'm just like, yeah.
so I know we're at time.
So just one question I wanted to ask you
is what are the pieces, piece or pieces of
content that you're proudest of at Comply?
Will: I think definitely.
And you know, the obvious one for me
to say is the state of financial crime,
which is our kind of annual state
of the industry report that we do.
it's year on year, it's
got stronger and stronger.
And that's a really compelling
piece that I love working on.
you know, we hit our
download target this year.
We're over 8, 500 downloads this
year for this year's report.
we actually have double the kind of
stage two, so sort of that initial
sales conversation, you know, put a
dollar value on an opportunity, the
influence value that we've achieved this
year is double what it was last year.
And register signups are
higher, but they're not double.
So we've actually seen that
real quality improvement.
And that's what I've loved with that is
we've done more interactive web pages.
We've done better webinars.
The report itself has got better,
but not, it's not twice as
good as it was two years ago.
The promotional piece is twice as good.
The SEO impact is twice as good.
The influence is all the stuff around it.
And we have a ton of really exciting,
fun stuff planned for next year.
So.
Stay tuned.
That'll be really fun.
Araminta: Nice.
Will: I absolutely love that.
And yeah, I think some of the webinars
as well, has been a really nice piece.
I don't even really like the word webinar.
I'd almost put that in the B2B buzzword.
I agree.
I actually think there are lots of
different types and something we'll
look to expand next year is thinking
more about different kinds, whether
it's a bootcamp that's some more
hands on on a product side, or is it
a fireside chat where it's just two
speakers and it's a bit more informal.
Conversation.
I think webinar is an
overused term, right?
That actually it's an event of
some kind and we should use event
language to talk about webinars.
It's just that it's online
rather than in person.
You wouldn't just call
an event an event, right?
You would say, Oh, it's a fireside.
It's a Q and a it's a, it's a
training, you know, it's a workshop.
You'd have a more specific term.
So I think that for me is the
area where we have the biggest
growth potential as a team.
and I'm, excited to see
what more we can do that.
Araminta: Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I think the word webinar is just,
you just hear that and you're like,
oh, I don't want to attend that.
But then actually you're right
because it's the word really.
And now there's so many different and new
ways, like since COVID to do a virtual
event that is so much more interesting.
So I'm really excited to see what you come
up with and how you try and reinvent this.
there's a lot of opportunity.
I think people want to do it, but just.
sitting one hour
on your desk watching something maybe
isn't, we need something more interactive.
And so, yeah, I'm really looking
forward to seeing what you, what
you put together, because that's, I
think there's a lot of innovation,
potential innovation in that space.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening.
You can find show notes and information
about guests at fintechmarketinghub.
com forward slash podcast.
And finally, huge thanks to Orama.
tv for producing this podcast.
We look forward to having
you on our next episode.