The creation of a content marketing plan for a new start-up in the financial sector

The thesis was made in collaboration with a Dutch start-up company operating in the financial sector. The company House of Pips has been operating since August 2016. The purpose and objectives of the thesis was to create a content marketing plan to help the company gain brand awareness online and do better customer acquisition to the right target group. The content marketing plan will also help the company to plan their future actions and position the brand in the minds of the customers better. The content marketing plan was created after doing consistent net scouting, reading discussion forums, doing customer and competitor analysis and research online on several topics such as Forex trading as a business field, signal providers and Forex trading forums. The intention of the net scouting was to find out what kind of people are doing trading and what are their needs and worries towards signal providers, who are the competitors and what kind of trends are already and will be emerging online in the future related to Forex trading. Also online research was done on customer behavior and content marketing trends. Next to the research done online, a wide range of theoretical literature and online sources were used to ensure that the content marketing plan would give the best possible value to the company. The theoretical part of the thesis consists of segmentation, customer insight, membership acquisition, content marketing, digital marketing channels and online customer experience, social media channels, brand recognition and last, SOSTAC model, which was the method used to create the basic structure for the content marketing plan. The main result of the study was the content marketing plan and all the valuable information in it. During the study, it appeared that many Forex traders had slightly negative beliefs towards signal providers. The company should focus on giving relief to those worries and build trust between the company and the customers. Based on the research, two suggestions were created; a Forex trading forum and a mentoring package. These suggestions are something to consider, since they are potential pain relievers for the customers. It was clear that many customers were missing the learning part in their previous experiences with signal providers, so the mentoring package would give personal and customized opportunity to learn about Forex trading. Also the Forex forum would be a way to follow up with trends, get customer insights and with the help of those; improve the service. A forum is also a good way to build traffic to the website and gain brand awareness. Customers will create the content themselves as they are the main characters of such social communities