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Coinciding with corporate Australia revving its engines for the post-Australia Day ‘real’ start to 2014, here’s a round-up of some of the BlueChip team’s communications tips and predictions. Think content, social media and ROI measurement as the financial services sector is dragged (sometimes kicking and screaming) toward the digital frontier.
News aggregators, ‘hyper-targeted’ marketing and crowd funding
Katharine Verville
News aggregators will rule the world: think HuffPo, BuzzFeed, BusinessInsider.
Hyper targeted (bordering on Big Brother) marketing involving the use of ‘big data’ for small relationships will grow. This is why the ads on my Facebook are for J. Crew, cheap flights to America, yoga studios and virtual personal assistants. Sites that record your history, location and purchases will target consumers based on ever narrower profiles. It’s terrifying. But useful for marketers.
In financial services, keep an eye on crowd funding, which will move from rising trend to full on phenomenon. Everyone from big-time Hollywood types and tech gurus to the average person looking to start a T-shirt business will use these sites (KickStarter etc.). And people will view them as an attractive hybrid of charitable donation and investment.
The year to be seen – literally and figuratively
Michelle Ryan
Being seen in 2014 has a ring to it. Here’s what I mean.
Social media sites will be all about the visuals. Those that rely too much on text will fall by the wayside in terms of adoption rates and engagement. If you can get your message across in a Pinterest board or an Instagram pic, you could be onto something! And if that doesn’t work with your business’ target audience, you can still have fun in your spare time with these channels and can at least engage with your friends and family.
People will increasingly realise the importance of their own ‘personal brand’ and will actively start to build and promote it in different channels, whether by updating their online profiles and image e.g. via LinkedIn and by building strategic business relationships and increasing contacts in social media.
Businesses will also be telling their stories externally with more gusto. As consumer and business confidence increases, companies will be more willing to tell their success stories externally – and those with a compelling story will be the ones to look out for.
Strategic communications the key for financial advisers
Sophie Schuler
Post the 20 December 2013 Federal Government announcements of a suite of changes to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) legislation, 2014 will hopefully see unfolding resolution around the rights and obligations associated with providing advice. For advisers, increased clarity will enable greater focus on enhancing their practices, whether through growth and consolidation, addition of new service lines, partnering with other professionals or aligning themselves with like-minded groups.
One of the essentials to support these aims will be quality communication with a strategic focus, for example encompassing peers, prospective partners and clients/consumers via a range of channels. Accordingly, even at this early stage we are seeing an uplift in interest in developing communications strategies from the wealth management space. This includes approaches that combine more traditional areas such as profile building and media with social media and content marketing / thought leadership.
The power of a good story and effective measurement
Valentina Ciampi
As content marketing takes centre stage compelling storytelling that resonates with clients, partners and customers, breathing life into your brand, will be the key to communications success.
Measurement will also be vital. Assessing the true impact of communications campaigns in business terms rather than judging them primarily by output has always been a bugbear for communications professionals. Thanks to online platforms, it's becoming easier to show how effective our efforts are. Reporting functionality can show more detail and analysis about our audience, its habits and behaviour than ever before. Using these insights to create better informed and tailored comms campaigns is an exciting prospect and one we’ll be seeing a lot more of in 2014.
Content is King … but distribution is Queen – and the power of innovation in advice
Aideen McDonald
2013 saw content marketing become the communications buzzword. While the phrase may be new, in essence it is something that’s more familiar to many of our clients – thought leadership. Now that more in the industry understand the importance of making quality content available to their target audiences, it’s time to turn attention to content distribution. There’s no point spending time and resources developing content if it doesn’t reach the intended audience. Any successful communications strategy should be built around the effective distribution content across the key identified channels: be they paid, earned and owned or, more likely, all three.
The ongoing repercussions of FoFA reforms and the new government’s response to them will continue to be felt during 2014. That said, there is also more clarity around some of the more confused issues and the more innovative advice firms will be seeking every opportunity to act on it. Many industry contacts believe that this year will see financial advice being sought through different channels and with more flexibility, including telephone advice – as one of our clients did late last year. Other clients are increasingly using social media to access clients and prospects. With the increasing onset of digital communications, we expect 2014 to provide even more accessibility and transparency around financial advice to Australians who may not previously have sought it.
Sponsored content, longer term strategies and smart data
Holly Clark
Sponsored content enables financial services companies to build a presence in harder to penetrate, non-financial sites such as Mamamia. The content matches the look and feel of the rest of the site, but it's paid for by your company. The content doesn't upset the user experience, and you gain the value of attracting a larger audience.
Financial services brands need to be more strategic and think long-term. This means developing a content strategy that looks further than the next month. And it’s not about producing more. It’s about working smarter, not harder. The rule of thumb is to use content on at least three different platforms, aiming to reach the same audience multiple times – which is what you need to do to get your message across.
We now have access to more data about communications than ever before, whether it’s Facebook interactions, Google search rankings, followers or more traditional metrics. The key is not to be blinded by the metrics. Focus on what’s meaningful. Less is more.
Stay tuned for more tips, predictions and insights from the BlueChip team during 2014.
