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A quick scroll through our most recent blogs will leave you in no doubt that at BlueChip, we are passionate in our view that content marketing is a vital weapon in the arsenal that financial services companies can use to more closely connect with – and acquire - customers.
Last week, my colleague Aideen McDonald wrote that once you have accepted the power of content marketing, the next step is to consider what form that content should take. This week, through the use of an example that we were intimately involved with, we would like to demonstrate one of the great beauties of clever content marketing. And that is that great content can reinvent itself over and over and be used in myriad different ways. You don’t need to come up with brand new ideas every day of the week.
Before you get too excited, let me stress that what we are not talking about is creating content (no matter how good it may be) and sending it out over and over again. What we are talking about is being clever and targeted in what you produce, and being innovative in the ways you slice the content for different audiences and channels.
To demonstrate the point, let’s take a look at the RaboDirect National Savings and Debt Barometer. We think it is a great case study in how one good piece of content can tell a thousand stories.
RaboDirect is an online bank (and yes, a client – that’s how we know this story). It offers low fees and generally higher interest rates for an online only service. It is seen as Australia’s savings champion – an alternative to the Big Four.
To help cement this savings champion positioning, starting in 2010, RaboDirect commissioned annual research into the debt and savings behaviour of the nation. The results of the research are published in what’s known as the National Savings and Debt Barometer – and it provides some very interesting insights.
In conjunction with BlueChip, RaboDirect took the research (let’s call this the ‘content’) and from it, identified a number of different story angles that we could run as mini ‘campaigns’ over an extended period of time. In this case, our channel was the media, but the principle remains the same whatever channel you choose.
We created ‘tags’ for different generations which illuminated the core debt/savings related themes for each group. This enabled RaboDirect was able to speak directly to each of its different target audiences about the issues that were most relevant and pertinent to them.
The next step was to use the research findings to create other quality content, such as summary reports for each of the three generations including practical tips and suggestions for those struggling with their finances. The aim of these pieces was to offer solutions to the problems identified through the research.
Ultimately, we created a campaign around the research, including a multi-platform program to drive the longevity of the results of the NSDB across key communication channels. We created a story bank of 12 individual feature pieces targeting specific outlets, and these stories were rolled out over a period of months
Ultimately, RaboDirect experienced some very real rewards from a media campaign devised around one piece of ‘content’, namely a piece of research.
Brand awareness of RaboDirect increased and media coverage echoed the messages that resonated with their audience, in effect a significant step along the road of positioning RaboDirect as Australia’s savings champion. It was also perceived as helpful and useful rather than overtly sales-oriented, as the content which flowed out of the original research contained practical suggestions and solutions to help Australians take control of their savings.
But don’t just take our word for it. Just ask the judges of the SABRE 2012 Awards, who judged it as the Financial Communication Gold Winner.
