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As financial services communication specialists, we’re excited about helping our clients reach their audiences in a whole ‘new’ way: through content marketing. But here’s the thing: while it might be the latest buzzword, break it down and it’s all about using the tried and tested power of a great story in a whole new way.
I recently saw an interview with Bryce Courtenay in which he talked about the campaigns he had been responsible for during his 30 years as an advertising executive. He spoke specifically about ‘Louie the Fly’, and ‘Stop, Revive, Survive’, both of which will be pretty familiar to most of us. Stop, Revive, Survive is still going, and, according to Courtenay, ‘Louie the Fly’ was the longest running TV advertisement in Australian history.
Hands up if you could sing Louie the Fly word for word even now. I know I could. But I’m really, really not going to because, once in your head, it's never out of it.
And really, really, that’s the point. That’s what everyone is trying to achieve. Whether you’re promoting your latest institutional fund or trying to sell fly spray – the aim is to tell a story that resonates with your audience, gets stuck in their heads, gets them talking … and wins the trust and interest of a few clients (or sells a whole lot of Mortein) at the same time.
As my colleague Kaitlin Walsh wrote recently, we’d all love our brand to get the Louie the Fly treatment, or, if we’re talking new world order, the reach of Gangnam Style.
So does the brave new world of social media change the way we go about trying to achieve that? And if so, how exactly is the new world order different from the old world order?
The answer, of course, is that social media doesn’t change the power or effectiveness of great stories well told. What it does do is give you the opportunity of amplifying and extending the reach of your message. It allows you to engage in a two way conversation with your target consumers, get real time feedback and act on it, in a way that traditional marketing campaigns were unable to do.
And this means that marketers can be far more responsive to the success (or failure) of their campaigns and react in real time.
‘Traditional’ advertising, marketing or – more relevant to financial services – thought leadership campaigns offer relatively limited opportunities for feedback and continuous improvement. Even though most (particularly those with significant spends) are road tested through market research, or given a trial run in a so-called ‘test market’, once the decision to push the button is made, the juggernaut begins moving. Turning it around mid-stride becomes a major problem. If the campaign is not working as well as hoped, the only recourse for many is to stand at the sidelines, watch the carnage unfold … then pick over the wreckage.
And that’s where the opportunities now being offered to business by the sheer variety of communication channels now available come into play. This doesn’t mean you can distribute boring stories badly told and expect engagement from customers. But it does mean that you can monitor exactly which customers are engaging with you (or not), and respond to them in real time. You can even modify your campaign mid-stream if necessary. Just look at Woolworths’ recent decision to change a billboard due to negative feedback via social media.
So here are a few (very big picture) suggestions as to how you might start spreading the word about your business across various different channels. It’s an approach that’s often termed ‘content marketing’ – which simply means communicating with your customers and prospects without overt selling so you can position your brand where you want it to be: as a trusted authority that’s tuned in with its audience and is a first port of call when they want to buy.
1. Decide where to start
Assess which channels will best leverage your marketing efforts. That means understanding your costs and return from more traditional activities. For example, if you can measure how many sales you generate from a certain number of ‘likes’ or ‘followers’, you can compare this with the number that you acquire through traditional means.
2. Amplify your content
Expand your brand’s reach by using social media to distribute the information and material you’re already producing – your ‘content’ – to the connections of those who already like it. This is in effect a whole new audience that is automatically predisposed to ‘like’ what you’re doing as well.
3. Track your performance
There are a number of tools (such as Buffer and SocialBro) which track the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Use this data to inform your planning and resourcing decisions.
4. Coordinate
Make sure what you’re doing in non-traditional channels is congruent with your overall marketing and communications strategy. This means that even if you are still using paid television advertising for example, you can use the more targeted, personalised and low cost reach offered by your content marketing toolkit to support and give longevity to a particular campaign.
So what is the bottom line here? Content marketing can achieve a lot for your brand. It can expand your reach and it can enable two-way conversations with customers in a way that traditional marketing can’t.
Ultimately, it’s just a new way to more widely distribute your stories. So you’d best make sure your stories are worth telling.
BlueChip Communication will be at the upcoming Content Marketing World Sydney conference, run by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) in Sydney on 4, 5 and 6 March, and will be blogging and tweeting from the event.
We’ll also be hosting a couple of our own content-related events especially for the financial services industry featuring guest speakers from the conference.
At our 7 March breakfast for financial services marketing heads, Todd Wheatland is our special guest. Author and sought-after speaker, Todd is the Vice-President of Marketing at Kelly Services, a global leader in HR and recruitment. Kelly Services has led the way in content marketing for the professional services sector, showing how to tell engaging stories through multiple channels.
Speaking at our 8 March CEO breakfast will be Joe Pulizzi, a content marketing evangelist and co-author of ‘Get Content, Get Customers’. Through his think tank, the Content Marketing Institute, he has taught marketers and brands how to develop and deliver compelling content to increase customer loyalty and engagement. Tweeting as @juntajoe he is definitely one to watch when it comes to content trends.
