The top two-thirds of BMO Capital Markets’ homepage is entirely devoted to the firm’s insights. The hero image is a scrolling banner of five different featured pieces of thought leadership. And immediately below that is a list of their most recent content under the giant header “Our Insights,” followed by another section titled “More news & insights.” Only after you get past that section do you find the typical sections describing the firm’s capabilities, industry focus, career opportunities, etc.

Clearly, BMO believes that its bankers’ expertise and perspectives are their greatest selling points, which is why they put all of this content “above the fold.” (This term comes from the newspaper industry, and it refers to putting your most important stories before the point where the newspaper folds in half.)

2. Having fun with daily charts.

Many firms in the financial services industry publish a “chart of the day.” We think that charts are a great way to stay in front of clients with hyper-timely, easily digestible information. But given how crowded people’s inboxes are, it is important to provide more than just interesting data with these charts.

BMO does this by injecting some humorous, fun writing into their daily AM Charts. In the August 13, 2020, edition of AM Charts, one of the charts, which focused on the surprise jump in U.S. core CPI prices, had the headline “U.S. Core Not Such a Bore.” The next chart, which was about how the pandemic is affecting GDP growth in various countries, included the line, “It looks like Spain’s economy took the biggest body slam from the coronavirus.”

Rhyming headlines and wrestling references don’t qualify as cutting-edge humor. But it doesn’t need to. By inserting a little dose of fun into content that could easily be dour, BMO increases the chances that readers will look forward to getting these charts every day.

3. Building a “Road to Recovery” ecosystem.

Like many firms, much of BMO’s investment banking thought leadership has focused on the impact of the coronavirus. BMO has made it easy for users to find and navigate this content by housing it in a “Road to Recovery” microsite. 

In addition to aggregating coronavirus-related articles written by the firm’s bankers, the site also includes a link to the BMO COVID-19 Insights podcast. We think that housing all of this content in one place reinforces the breadth of BMO’s expertise and showcases the many lenses through which they are analyzing the pandemic.

One Piece of Unsolicited Advice:

Go beyond simply posting podcast transcripts.

In addition to BMO’s COVID-19 Insights, BMO produces several other podcasts across the broader BMO Financial Group, including Sustainability Leaders. Smartly, BMO includes this in the Capital Markets insights page even though it isn’t strictly about investment banking.

Each episode page includes a short synopsis, along with a handful of bullets points with key takeaways from the episode; the audio from the podcast; and the full transcript of the conversation. While having the transcript is better than nothing, anyone who has read a transcript of a live conversation knows that they can be difficult to follow, given the nature of how people talk.

We recommend that firms turn full transcripts of podcasts, webinars, or other events into edited Q&As for the website. This allows the writer to exert some discretion and direct the reader to the most interesting parts of the conversation. This is a much better user experience than forcing the reader to read through the verbatim conversation to find these nuggets. We think that Q&As are a highly effective form of content, for all of the reasons that we describe here: Using Q&As to Streamline Your Financial Thought Leadership.