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If you've attended a marketing or communications meeting in recent years, you've heard someone earnestly pronouncing that: “Our aim is to go viral …” Welcome to the world of ‘content marketing’. But what does it mean for financial services?Every now and then a clever little piece of work captures the imagination and attention of millions. From the frankly appealing to the grotesque, the catchy to the repellent, the irreverent to the inspiring: if a message resonates with a certain audience and is easily accessible via a host of digital devices, then it has vast potential to reach and engage millions.
If you haven’t seen them yourself, likelihood is you’ve heard about them: Gangnam Style (1.3bn views on YouTube); Metro Trains’ Dumb Ways to Die campaign (39 million views); President Obama’s 4 more years re-election tweet (320,000 re-tweets) or Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign (a research poll found it had reached more than half of all young adults in the US in the days following the launch) … and the list goes on.
Internet sensation. Viral campaign. Guerrilla marketing – we've all heard the terms. The dizzying allure of low cost, high reach and high measurability offered by a successful online marketing or thought leadership campaign – viral or otherwise – is hard to ignore.
And as the hard business implications of social media, online marketing and the rest of the digital world are increasingly felt, it’s clear that it’s been a long time since its impact was felt primarily among hip consumers and subversive geeks.
Today, even the most conservative of organisations (yes, I’m talking to you, financial services stalwart) are obliged – to a greater or lesser extent, by law – to address the potential risks associated with operating in a digital world – whether or not they even have an online presence of their own.
And, having duly tackled the hurdle of compliance and online reputation management, some of those organisations may well feel it’s time to sit back and smell the (non-virtual) roses.
That’s especially the case when you look at the business and operational context of most financial services organisations. High financial stakes, enormous – and frequently changing – levels of regulation, huge fiduciary obligations and consequent total reliance on customer trust. And all the dealing with complex (sometimes even impenetrable) subject matter.
It hardly sounds the stuff for the next Gangnam Style sensation or Kony 2012 ‘call to action’, does it?
And likelihood is that it’s not. But the whole point is, it need not be. You don’t need to ‘go viral’ to get your company’s story in front of the people you want to hear it (not that we’d necessarily knock it back, either).
But what can’t be ignored, by financial services firms or any others, is the sheer power of a compelling story or message to engage and inform a vast number of people for minimal cost.
We now have the ability to make contact with our audiences and give them the information they need via more channels than ever before – and, thanks to technology – to measure the results. Surely the stuff of a financial professional’s dream …
As well as traditional media and other channels, we now have the whole online world and the increasing opportunities for broadcast (and, perhaps more important, interaction) offered by social media. Broadly, we call the use of these multiple channels to get your business message across ‘content marketing’.
In a way it’s just a more advanced and efficient version of old school direct mail and / or custom publishing, but a whole lot cheaper, with wider reach and backed by far more powerful analytics that can give you the information you need to get closer to your audience – and grow it – than ever before.
In coming weeks, you’ll be hearing a lot more about content marketing and how it can work for the financial services industry.
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 Content Marketing World Sydney. Guest speakers at these two events, conducted for CEOs and CMOs of financial services organisations on 7 and 8 March respectively, will be Joe Pulizzi and Todd Wheatland.
Appearing at a BlueChip CEO Breakfast on 8 March is Joe Pulizzi, 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.
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.
So, if you’re not sure you’re Gangnam Style material but wouldn't mind just a fragment of that 1.3 billion audience, engagement and goodwill, then stay tuned.
