-1.svg "Close Icon (3)-1")
.svg "Close Icon (3)")
- Share
-
A relaxed start to the first of two re-presentations of Carden Calder’s Content Marketing World 'how to take a financial services business from old to new world’ saw clients past, present and perhaps future reveal the challenges they’re facing as financial services marketing leaders keen to keep pace with the changes content marketing brings.
The transition-focused session hosted by BlueChip Communication showcased the practical and simple ways that marketing directors can turn such challenges into opportunities for their organisations as well their own ‘personal brand’.
1. Staying relevant
Not a digital native? Not a problem. As a marketing director, you've most likely been around the block a few times, which gives you some highly valuable assets that the average digital native doesn't have: experience, wisdom and humility.
You've learned your craft using the basic tenets of marketing. The good news is that, regardless of which discipline is flavour of the month, these do not change. So, when you take on the task of repurposing your existing content assets (a.k.a. Content Marketing 101), you can draw on this experience, knowing what works and what doesn't as you decide what material you’ll re-use and how you will shape it to build the bigger picture.
This ability to know how the moving parts of a marketing campaign fit together and make strategic calls is an essential for success. If you’re creating a content marketing program that your internal stakeholders, particularly the senior ones, are going to support, you’re in the best position to earn their trust because you’ve already earned your stripes.
But this is not about having a pop at the digital natives. Far from it. Marketing directors need to harness the inherent knowledge of these crucial team members. If you’re not staying in touch in terms of the tactics available and being part of conceiving the possibilities, you’re not going to be in a position to make strategic decisions that are brand and platform appropriate.
2. Knowing who does what
Today’s marketing eco-system is one in which everyone has their role to play. But are those roles always clear? Not always, agreed today’s session attendees. There’s often confusion, especially in marketing teams of 10 or more, largely because the professional boundaries have and will continue to shift. As leaders, marketing directors can provide the bridge between old and new worlds, using where the organisation’s been to take it where it needs to go next.
So once you’ve identified which content you’re going to reuse, you’ll need to work out who is going to leverage it. A review of your team goes hand-in-hand with reviewing assets when it comes to making your business ‘content marketing relevant’. Three choices: hire, outsource or up skill. And yes, you can have a blend of all three providing you identify the right person for the right job and make single person accountability mandatory.
This means thinking about where your best skills lie. So if it's strategy, then get a writer in to do the lower-value work that you can do, but only if you let another priority drop. Lean teams are common in the B2B financial services sector BlueChip consults to and we encourage our clients to outsource where they can. For example, ex-journalists are wonderful writers and great design and interactive elements in content marketing can transform the way audience engages with your organisation. Once you’ve added a project manager to bring the execution discipline required on an ongoing basis, you could have a really efficient content marketing team adding a new dimension to your overall marketing mix.
In next week’s post, we’ll look at the two of the other key issues the group of financial services marketing directors identified as relevant for content marketing success – overcoming old school thinking and convincing internal stakeholders about return on investment.
