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This year’s Content Marketing World was held in Sydney between 31 March and 2 April. BlueChip MD, Carden Calder, attended and spoke at the conference. Previously Carden had tracked down leading content marketer, Joe Pulizzi, and asked him the big question. Does content marketing really make commercial sense for financial services firms?
Joe’s response was unequivocal.
“Traditional means of educating clients about your products, like advertising, really only work for a very small part of the buying cycle. Financial services companies need to become their customers’ trusted adviser – and advertising just isn’t going to achieve that. In the new digital world, access to information is easier, cheaper and quicker and customers can turn off from your messages very easily. Everyone is inundated with content, so standing out from the rest is essential. Customers are ruthless, they push away things they are not interested in, and pay attention to content which solves their specific problems in a way which is valuable and compelling.”
So what skills do CMOs need to conceive and execute content marketing well?
“Storytelling. That’s key here. People like stories, they want to be entertained, they want to be informed, and that’s why advertising is increasingly ignored. Distraction, even in the form of clever and original advertising, just doesn’t work. We need to give people information. So, in addition to telling a good story, we need to really understand analytics, what our customers and potential customers are doing online, what sites they visit and for how long and what problems are keeping them up at night. So we can offer them a solution.”
Joe Pulizzi is the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, 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. He evangelises content marketing around the world through keynotes, articles and his many books. For more on Joe, read his blog or follow him on Twitter @JoePulizzi.
See more interviews with Joe on the BlueChip Youtube channel.
