We work with financial services and fintech companies to help scale digital marketing programs, refine and optimize existing programs, or even build new marketing programs from scratch. And regardless which of those stages your business is in, studies show that 80-95% of your audience is not in buying mode. We reach that massive group with brand marketing to build brand awareness and a preference for your brand. So that when it comes time for them to shop and buy, they will easily recall your brand as they get ready to act. In this way, brand marketing is the foundation of a well-balanced marketing program that drives long-term growth.
But what about the other 5-20% of your audience? Those are the ones that are in market and moving closer to buying, and we utilize performance marketing strategies to capture those leads and customers. But the strategic balance is critical – brand marketing creates demand, performance marketing captures it. They of course are not mutually exclusive in the outcomes they drive, but that is generally how they are designed to work. And in fact when run in concert, brand marketing campaigns and performance marketing can amplify each other to create a better outcomes in the short and long term.
Brand Marketing: Build Brand “Memories” for Long-Term Growth
While performance marketing aims to capture leads and is easier to measure, brand marketing has a different complimentary role to play. rand marketing is in the business of creating “brand memories.” And why are brand memories so critical to growth? It’s because your success depends on your audience’s ability to recognize you, recall you, and prefer you before they will most likely do business with you.
Brand marketing aims to build “mental market share” – a memory of your brand for easy recall when your audience is in market for what you provide. And the more mental market share you have, the more likely that your performance-based campaigns will succeed.
Brand Marketing for Financial Services and Fintech
We’ve been developing brand strategy for years, and the positioning, messaging, and visual identity come alive through brand marketing. Brand marketing is especially important in the financial services industry. Beyond the earlier points about it being a foundation for long-term growth, brand marketing helps communicate trust and expertise to financial customers and partners. It builds positive associations with your brand and products by helping to articulate your value proposition in ways your audience will understand and appreciate. Once that positive association is in place and they are aware of your brand, it’s far more likely your brand will be top-of-mind when they are in the market for what you offer.
Brand marketing can take a variety of forms in different marketing channels.
Content Marketing
Financial services content marketing covers a broad range of content types. From blog posts to infographics, videos to podcasts, as long as what you’re putting out there is relevant and engaging, you’ll start to build an interested audience of potential customers who appreciate the value you’re giving them.
It’s not about directly selling your products and services, it’s about positioning your brand as an expert in your fintech or financial services arena. The right content draws your target audience in and shows them that you understand their problems…and that you’ve got the solutions. Once they’ve found your content you can nurture them all the way from leads to customers to lifetime loyalty.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Note that we mentioned above the need for your audience to find your content in the first place. That’s partly where Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, comes in. Optimizing your content so it’s easy to find when potential customers are looking via search engines is where performance marketing and brand marketing strategies work in concert. SEO drives the clicks to the content, and the content delivers the message, value, and answers your audience is searching for.
And while we realize the basics of SEO are fairly well-known, the world of SEO strategy and best practices is one that evolves at a rapid rate. Making sure your content is optimized using the most up-to-date tools and tactics is key for a successful SEO campaign. And SEO touches on pretty much every part of an overall strategy, so it’s important to integrate it throughout.
Social Media Marketing
A social media presence is no longer a nice bonus if you have the spare time and budget. Pretty much the whole world is active on at least one of the most common platforms, from LinkedIn to Instagram, so your brand needs to be seen. And it’s not just fintech companies and challenger brands, even the most traditional financial institutions understand and leverage the reach of social media to build brand awareness and preference.
Social media is a channel that offers options for both performance and brand marketing, often supporting each other to both target specific audience segments as well as reinforce the strengths of your offering to wider audiences. The tailored algorithms of the social platforms make brand marketing even more powerful once a social media user has shown a preference – that that’s free targeting, if your content is engaging enough.
Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
Email marketing is your brand arriving right in your audience’s inboxes. The aim here is to be a welcome visitor bringing them valuable, useful information, not one that makes them immediately hit UNSUBSCRIBE. While a particularly direct form of marketing that is easily measured, it’s still part of an overall brand marketing strategy.
With so much information and content arriving in our inboxes every day it’s important to make your emails both seen and appreciated. From crafting just the right subject line to the design of the email once it’s opened, email marketing can inspire your audience to take action.
You can automate and optimize your email marketing to great effect, things like welcome emails, newsletters, and personalized offers. But there’s more to marketing automation than just emails. You can make use of multiple channels and mediums. Think about social media automation, building and managing your databases and lists, and so much more. With the right technical know-how and support, pretty much every corner of your marketing ecosystem can be automated.
Build Long-Term Success for Your Brand
As fintech and financial services marketing experts, CSTMR can craft a brand marketing strategy that’s designed with you and your customers in mind. Working hand-in-hand with performance marketing and other aspects of successful growth campaigns, we can take your brand to exactly where it needs to be.
