What FinServ Marketers Need To Know Today
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that marketing in the financial services industry is hard work. In a world where FinServ has been the most distrusted sector for the last five years, it’s difficult to appeal to your audience on the level they’ve become accustomed to. They want the human touch in every communication. They want to make an emotional connection with the businesses they deal with.
Establishing the connections that spur sales isn’t an easy task for any business. But there are proven strategies and tried and true techniques to get you started. Thought leadership has a much more powerful impact on sales than marketers think – and its influence is growing. In fact, 59% of decision-makers use thought leadership as an important way to vet the capabilities of organizations they’re considering working with. But to make it work, you have to be truly thought-leading. Publishing content that doesn’t provide valuable insight can actually put leads off. FinServ firms need to create thought leadership that starts the conversation, creates an impact and establishes credibility and authority.
A content strategy that includes thought leadership is just the beginning. FinServ organizations also need to think about the context and timing of their communications. Customers are always on and as likely to be researching companies on their commute as in the office. Companies need to be always on as well, they need to make sure that their communications – whether blog posts, newsroom articles or social media profiles – are relevant and up to date.
Where information is found is also hugely important. Content is king, but context is the kingdom. LinkedIn is where the personal and professional comes together. It’s in the fabric of what LinkedIn is – a social network for business people. Here, you can deliver commercial communications with a human touch. LinkedIn is the most impactful social media channel for lead generation among B2B marketers - 80% of B2B marketing leads sourced through social media come from LinkedIn. It’s a channel that has millions of members who are engaged and ready to hear your message and it’s one that has once again been crowned the most trusted social media platform.
Not only will you reach a ready audience and be seen as more intelligent, professional and respectable, you will also have the tools you need to measure ROI. Marketers often struggle to prove how their work is driving sales. Under pressure to report results, they measure KPIs in the short term, but fail to measure again at the end of their sales cycle. Short-term results are important in finetuning a campaign and adjusting your brand building strategy, but you need long-term results to win buy-in and budget from management.
Creating empathetic, authentic content on a trusted platform is your key to overcoming the trust barrier in the FinServ sector. Find out how you can do it, and measure the results the right way, with our new ebook, “Standing out from the crowd: The 2020 Financial Services Playbook.”
