Capital One Content Pod
It’s hard to imagine a company as large as Capital One existing without a content strategy. But back in 2016 it was a real problem. So they turned to our agency looking for advice on how to launch their first ever content pod. Lucky for me, I had just joined the Capital One team and at the time—it was filled with copywriters, but not a single content strategist. So I was asked to lead the charge and lend my content expertise. Here are the materials I produced.
User Research
This journey started by going through market research. We worked with the UX research team to develop personas for the type of people we hoped our content would reach.
From here, we got inspirations for the types of keywords we might use and started to think about categories that would be worth covering.
Content Funnel
Next, I developed a content funnel that helped us consider our users widest range of interests and how those interest might be filtered into what our brand did best. “Say hello” articles would use keywords our users were mostly likely to look up. They were designed to be casual, easy-to-read, and related to things like travel or ways people use credit cards.
Keyword Strategy
“Build a relationship” pieces got a little more specific. They were designed to help customers learn how to get travel benefits from credit cards, avoid foreign transaction fees, build credit, or apply for a home loan. Links to these articles would live in “Say hello” pieces, but they might also exist as resources on the website or be found organically.
It’s important to remember that our goal here was to support the customer with the type of information they needed. There was no need for a sales pitch. Instead, we wanted to build a relationship with customers and become a trusted resource that people could come to for financial education.
The final piece of this content flow was “Inspire action.” These pieces would talk specifically about Capital One products, like our travel credit cards. Without aggressive “Apply now” CTAs, these pieces made it possible to mention and link to relevant Capital One products—and express how those products might be useful. They could also provide a place to link to the products themselves, which at this point, felt more like a convenience add for the user than clickbait.
Final Thoughts
The content department at Capital One lives on today. In a similar vein to its original inception, it’s now called Learn & Grow.