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Four secrets to winning at financial services marketing

By Gerry McCusker, Owner

Dog

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Opinion article

August 18, 2015 | 7 min read

It’s a very interesting time for financial marketer at the moment. After a number of shaky years, overall optimism is gathering at pace. Investment in marketing and IT is on the rise, with new customer acquisition a primary objective according to the latest CBI/ PwC Financial Services Survey.

Dog's chief excutive officer Gerry McCusker.

Financial services marketers, however, are faced with a complex set of challenges. Customers increasingly demand transparency, improved communication and greater access to the people and brand behind the product or service. Marketers also need to get to grips with ever-evolving new technologies and channels at lightning speed, while meeting board-level demands to prove the commercial value of new marketing initiatives.

Here are my four key recommendations for financial services marketers:

Be people centric

Be the customer hero. Marketers must be aware of and understand each and every interaction a customer has with the business across all channels, on and offline. Strive to make each stage of the decision making process easier, more intuitive, interactive, and even enjoyable for new customers, and focus on developing meaningful connections with customers at each relevant touch point.

Everything is marketing, from printed materials, website content, mobile app, micro UX, film, advert, email, phone call or tweet. Marketers must review each interaction, analysing experience through the eyes of the customer, and the impact to the business.

Consistently link marketing initiatives to the customer and market behaviour, demonstrating the need for innovation and activity in key areas; relentlessly communicate objectives in terms of outcomes, business impact, customer acquisition and retention; and illustrate the role marketing activation plays in the customer lifecycle and market differentiation. By putting customers at the centre of the marketing strategy and demonstrating a granular understanding of their experience and behaviour, marketers will be in a stronger position to gain Board-level buy-in for proposed initiatives.

Develop rock solid strategies

By ‘rock solid,’ we do not mean a concrete, unwavering set of activations with set-in-stone outputs. Of course, the strategy should be agile in terms of being adaptable to customer behaviour, responsive to market changes and flexible enough to explore appropriate technical innovation or media. However it needs to be ‘rock solid’ in terms of focus.

Far from being a paper exercise, or languishing exclusively with the marketing department, the strategy is a necessary plan, aligned to business strategy and integrated with sales, that holds a clear vision and roadmap of activity that will deliver a number of defined outcomes.

As marketers, define what you’re trying to achieve, and be outcome driven. Focus on the customer or user, and harness data and intelligence gathered from your own and other areas of the business to devise the strategy. A rock solid strategy makes room for greater creativity. We’ve long been advocates of the notion that creative marketing occurs in its most brilliant form when defined outcomes and restrictions or regulations are at work.

Armed with a clear vision, purpose and roadmap, you can then break down silos and communicate the strategy across the business with clarity and purpose, fostering a culture of trust and collaboration.

Drive a strong brand with purpose

With new entrants launching and competing with established financial services organisations at breakneck speed, the importance of brand as a differentiator has never been more acute.

Building brand equity is essential in today’s market. By shifting communications away from product messaging and answering the ‘why’ questions, customers are given the opportunity to understand and get behind a particular brand. Customers increasingly want to form connections with the people looking after their financial interests, and search for organisations with core values that fit with their own, in addition to the quality of services of products.

Importantly, brand and performance are intrinsically linked. If an organisation’s people buy into the brand, the impact is huge. Each and every interaction with the customer – on and offline – will be authentic; the overall brand experience will be consistent; service provision will adhere to quality standards; and the value proposition will be communicated externally and understood internally.

A strong brand enables organisations to stand out from the myriad of competitors for the right reasons. And what’s more, if performance dips, a strong brand will garner more loyalty among customers than a weak one.

Embrace digital, fully

The digital transformation is well under way in the majority of organisations, but fully connecting the digitisation to marketing is, for some, a long way off. The relationship between financial services and digital transformation is highly complex, however, a good starting point is to look at connections and measurement.

Before any rich media content, tweet, advert or email campaigns, must come data analysis. The intelligent use of data from digital channels helps to inform robust strategies around driving new and enhanced connections. First of all, marketers need to identify each touchpoint in the lifecycle and analyse every interaction and customer journey, on every device. Extract every bit of relevant data available to gain a granular understanding of the customer experience and then cross reference this insight with intelligence gained from talking to the client facing teams in your business. They have expert knowledge that will support and help to contextualise the vast amounts of data.

The data produced during each interaction has transformed marketing management, effectiveness and performance measurement. By analysing, testing and optimising all the time, marketers are able to make their customers’ journeys and experiences seamless, purposeful and even enjoyable. Effective data management and smart application of data is key to finding that marketing sweetspot: communicating with those we want to connect with, across the channels most relevant to them, with messages that resonate.

Financial services marketing is a complex beast, but by focusing on the people, the brand and developing an integrated strategy underpinned by digital, marketers will be well placed to grasp the opportunities afforded by increased optimism and any investment they manage to secure for their efforts.

Check out our whitepaper on the subject here.

Gerry McCusker is chief executive officer of Dog.

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