Gone are the days when pushy marketing messages and banner ads were all you needed to entice customers. These days, consumers are way pickier and rightly so, seeing as online competition has increased dramatically – so what’s the solution?
Well, immersive storytelling has become an increasingly important part of branding and marketing. The right approach allows you to take your target audience on a journey they’ll remember which should hopefully lead to brand appreciation, loyalty and an increased ROI.
The Importance of Storytelling in the Finance Sector
Like a character in a book, a finance company continuously evolves. Regular narratives to potential customers keep them tuned to its story. The idea is to engage the audience in the tale of a company’s business development including future objectives and goals. The consumer must feel important, needed and part of business progress.
Today, a financial services firm cannot just survive on technical and analytical know-how alone and instead needs people who are well-versed in the art of compelling storytelling. The ability to tell complete and character-driven stories is essential. If a brand gets this right, it gains a huge advantage over competitors.
What Kind of Stories Should Be Told?
Research has proven that simple yet informative stories can be the most persuasive – particularly in the finance world where products and guidelines associated with them can be complex. Storytelling simplifies the brand and helps consumers relate and connect to key messages. The tricky part is, content saturation. With so much material accessible online, it’s difficult for finance brands to stand out from the crowd – but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Know your audience
When it comes to marketing for the finance sector, it’s important to know your audience – after all, you wouldn’t read a horror story to a five-year-old child. Knowing which platforms they use the most will also help you to tailor an omni-channel strategy that works.
Provide relevant content
With so much information out there, you must provide interesting and relevant content based on consumer research, demographics and such like. Don’t be afraid to take a segmented marketing approach so you can hit the nail on the head with each and every consumer. As attention spans decrease, cut straight to the point and answer the questions your audience might ask.
Offer guidance
Customers seek guidance when buying financial products, and, often, these decisions are tied to important events in their lives, such as marriage, retiring or having children. Financial services companies have to ensure that they do not miss out on these opportunities to become a part of their customer’s journey. Marketing strategies should revolve around helping a consumer enjoy these moments, rather than burdening them with unhelpful information.
A Multi-Channel and a Multi-Device Approach
These days, consumers have access to multiple channels of information and prefer those that they can access at any time and from anywhere. So, it isn’t a straight path anymore. Today, the consumer will not opt for a financial service just because they saw an ad. They will research online, check out their website and seek social media advice.
Over 3.196 billion people use social media channels, as of 2018. However, it is also true that the financial services industry is behind other industries in acquiring customers through these channels. This can be attributed to the fact that while marketers know the importance of storytelling, few are able to get it just right. Most messaging lacks consistency across different platforms and many lack a credible voice and subject-matter. Digital storytelling is an art, where products have to be positioned through meaningful and inspirational stories.
Publishing daily articles and blogs is a great way to add value to client relationships. By providing tangible insights to readers, which they might not get anywhere else, brands can help keep themselves relevant and ensure customer loyalty. Consumer-generated content is another way by which businesses can increase the authenticity of their brand and encourage engagement.
Over the past few years, businesses have resorted to videos and web tutorials for communication and marketing. This is good news since hard-to-understand topics can be broken down into easily-digestible bites. Julius Baer, UBS, Credit Suisse and other top brands like Hiscox and AXA have now started using videos as a method of advertising, informing people about changes in guidelines and emotionally connecting with investors.
A YouTube video by Credit Suisse, featuring Roger Federer, speaks about the importance of physical fitness in this highly competitive world. This is a brilliant way to highlight the brand’s partnership with the tennis star. The video, published on November 14, 2018, had almost 2.9K views in about 10 days.
It is vital to build a strong and consistent approach to storytelling across various platforms. Moreover, these have to be organised and resonate with the overall brand vision. Additionally, feedback loops have to be embedded into the strategy to evaluate the results of a campaign.
To build a unified brand storytelling approach, contact myself and the Contentworks team today. As a leading content marketing agency, Contentworks understands the importance of content choreography and brings all elements of a strategy together at the right time to wow financial services consumers.