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Talking recently to clients in the financial services sector and leaders in online marketing, we've heard a recurring theme: we need online brand ambassadors. With the advent and rise of online interactions, promotion and branding in financial services, ensuring this vital channel is as well served as those of the offline world is simple good sense.
If you’re scratching your head about the term ‘online brand ambassador’, think instead ‘online spokespeople’ and the tactic of building their profile ‘online personal branding’.
Why do we need them? For exactly the same reason as we need (offline) brand ambassadors. And that’s because the right hand-picked individual can exemplify and make tangible what your brand stands for, be an advocate for it, promote trust in it and in so doing, build trust and boost its credibility, accessibility and relevance among your target audience.
Which brings us to the how.
In my view, there are three things you need to get right when building an online personal brand:
Value: this is what you must give your target audience.
Visibility: must be high, ‘above the fold’ on Google and thus in social media.
Volume: think quantity but not at the expense of quality and at a level that you can maintain long term.
1. Value
I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek’s ‘why’ idea. Essentially this is about starting with purpose. What is your goal?
So, in this case let’s say it’s to educate SMSF advisers (accountants and financial planners), which is part of the reason Aaron Dunn does what he does online with the SMSF Academy.
When you interrogate your reasons for wanting to have an online personal brand for yourself or others you should have a very good reason that’s NOT about you. Rather, it should be about providing value to your target market.
‘Value’ means value to them, not you. That’s the marketing concept that’s often taught, rarely used. And to deliver value you not only need valuable content, you have to give it away.
Back to Aaron and the SMSF Academy: it’s a whole business built around a blog that simply delivered value (content) that was needed – technical information to SMSF professionals looking for help.
In thinking about your own business, where do you find the value that you have to offer your target audience?
The clues rest in knowing who you are. And, if you’re a financial services executive, you’re likely to find them in your:
- professional expertise and work history
- strongly held views
- how others see you / characterise your ability or expertise; in other words, what you’re known for.
Once you've examined the above, we recommend you further refine your personal branding ‘offer’ in reference to your target audience’s needs or want, commonly either:
- pain points or information needs you can solve, and / or
- current market opportunities or challenges they’re faced with that you can shed light on.
2. Visibility
Let’s suppose you now have this wonderful, valuable stream of content.
(For some examples in financial services and elsewhere, as well as Aaron Dunn, think @henderson_sam (Henderson Maxwell), @naomisimson (RedBalloon) or @jacquelinearias (Republica Coffee.)
But if no one knows you exist, you might as well not exist. So your next step is making yourself or your online spokesperson highly (and I mean highly) visible.
Right now, in financial services in Australia, this isn’t so hard. Despite increased and increasing uptake of social media, there is plenty of digital real estate still up for grabs.
The best way to grab visibility is to consistently produce targeted (niche) content and disseminate it via social channels – while continuing your conventional profile building activity, such as networking, conference speaking, media relations and other PR, EDMs and events.
This is called ‘atomising’ content – taking one piece of content such as a media release, an infographic or a bylined article and distributing it through all your touch points. You should be following an agreed strategy, your message should be consistent – and you should not be afraid of reinforcing it time and time again.
If you have budget and the ability you may want to selectively blend paid digital tactics with your owned and earned channel strategy. Just consistently blogging, tweeting and LinkedIn sharing (over time) will get you a long way.
3. Volume
Volume does matter. I’m not suggesting that you pester your LinkedIn network with endless drivel about things that don’t matter to them. I am, however, recommending that you set clear goals around frequency of updates, or posts, across all online channels – whether you own them or they are earned, like social media.
A marketing textbook I once had (doubtless many others of my vintage did also) posed the question: “Will the world beat a path to you door if you build a better mousetrap?”. The fact it was a marketing text says it all: NO.
There’s no point having that better mousetrap (online brand, great content) if you don’t tell the world about it.
So work out ahead of time where and how your online brand is going to be ‘dialled up’ in terms of volume. If Facebook isn't right (and it’s probably not for the financial services sector) then how might LinkedIn, Twitter or SlideShare help you increase the volume on your online personal brand?
After due attention to these three ‘Vs’ you’ll be well on the way to having created – and be ready to use – one of today’s must-have marketing tools: an online brand ambassador.
