Three Takeaways for Marketers From LinkedIn's FinanceConnect:14 Sydney
On Thursday May 1st 2014, 70 top marketers working in Finance Services attended LinkedIn's FinanceConnect:14 Sydney.
The event was a gathering of some of Australia’s most sophisticated marketers in a highly complex and competitive category. It centered on a theme that is common to all marketers today, namely, "the rise of the consumer."
Why "the rise of the consumer"?
Today, more than ever before, consumers are empowered. They have a huge amount of information at their disposal and use this information in purchase decisions, whether it’s for a new credit card or options around self-managed super funds. They are researching, seeking opinions, choosing and discarding brands without us even knowing. Given this empowerment, brands must build long term, meaningful relationships with existing or potential customers.
FinanceConnect:14 Sydney centered on this theme and how sophisticated marketers are using content marketing and platforms like LinkedIn to build these meaningful relationships with potential, and existing customers.
Below are the top three takeaways from the event.
Key Takeaways for Marketers
1. Trust is integral in building relationships between brands and consumers.
LinkedIn’s global head of finance, Jennifer Grazel, presented the key takeaways from FinanceConnect:14 New York. Trust was highlighted by every speaker as critical for brands when building relationships with consumers.
Paul Butcher, Head of Digital Communications for Citi, said: “Trust comes not just from a single interaction, but from the entire relationship with the customer. Trust is what you build between a past and future interaction, it’s a matter of time and it’s a matter of integrity”.
The importance of relationships was summed up by Jennifer Grazel as follows:
“Authenticity, relevancy and dialogue are essential components in building a sustainable relationship with consumers. These relationships often have to be made before brands are given the right to talk about product and price.”
View Jennifer's full presentation here.
2. Test and learn, and apply real life stories to boost content engagement.
Julie Hamilton, Senior Manager, Digital Sales & Marketing at BT Financial Group, explained the importance of testing and measuring as well as leveraging stories when it comes to content marketing.
“Testing and learning is significant because we could be pumping out content and if it’s not what our customer’s want -- it’s a waste of time. We are creating content with different demographics or different tones of voice, different style; all depending on what channel it’s going out to. We have a strategy where we are looking at all our data and we are measuring it constantly."
An interesting tip Julie shared:
"One of the things we’ve learned is that if you put the words ‘real life’ in front of any article then we get 40% more engagement”.
3. LinkedIn's new tools can help you measure the success of content marketing.
How to measure your content marketing effectiveness was another topic that came up at FinanceConnect:14 Sydney. LinkedIn’s Head of Measurement Valter Sciarrillo, and LinkedIn’s Insights Analyst Ben Russell, presented two new tools from LinkedIn, the Content Marketing Score and Trending Content.
These tools assist marketers to understand their audience, what they’re engaging with and how their content efforts compare against their competitors. Both tools help marketers at a more strategic level to improve their content marketing effectiveness.
View Valter & Ben's full presentation here.
See more from LinkedIn FinanceConnect:14 Sydney in our highlights video below:
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