3 Biggest Challenges Financial Services Marketers Face

By Sean Sullivan, Vice President of Sales, MarcomCentral

Marketing for financial services can be a challenging task; as you have to make sure your marketing assets meet regulatory requirements and stay on brand image. And if you are a big financial institution, it can be extra tough to make sure the many different offices are using the correct marketing materials.

1. Compliance
2. Controlling the brand
3. Accomplishing goals with limited resources

We’ve seen this particular challenge with many financial service sector companies. For example, in the early stages of talks with a customer (at the time a prospect), he explained to us that they had a team of financial advisors around the world that hosted “Lunch & Learn” type events on a daily basis as part of their customer engagement strategy.

This was great for their in-person marketing plan as personal relationship building was a key driver of conversions; however this presented a problem for the Corporate Marketing department since they were responsible for supporting marketing needs of every single advisor in their global network.

Daily requests poured in for custom email invitations, brochures, landing page registrations, PowerPoint presentations, email follow-ups, and posters. The creative team would spend most of their day editing dates, locations, contact information, logos, and speaker information on the same types of assets.

This led to a mundane, task-laden, “Groundhog Day” for the marketing team. Their creative services team was unable to focus on higher value-added design work. Even worse, when they became overwhelmed with requests and were not able to deliver content assets quickly enough, the advisors would take it upon themselves to create their own using inferior design programs exposing the business to brand confusion and regulatory risk! Not only does this pose a regulatory risk, but it shows inconsistency of brand image to the clients.

While this anecdote is unique to this customer, the story line is the same as what we hear from many marketers we meet. Overwhelmed marketing departments are the norm these days with teams being asked to create more with less. Complying with regulatory requirements is not an option; it’s a must (the Legal department will agree).

When they reached a point where production delays were causing lost revenue, this financial services company decided to research a marketing on-demand solution to see if there was a way to alleviate their daily pains, which is how they found MarcomCentral and became a customer. By investing in marketing asset management technology, they were able to provide every single advisor with marketing assets that were approved and compliant, yet were able to be edited to include customized information about the products and services for their customers.

Another benefit of deploying a marketing on-demand system was that the view of the Corporate Marketing department by the rest of the company shifted from a “bad cop” enforcement and gatekeeping department that hindered success to a “good cop” enablement department that provided solutions to daily problems. Marketing assets were delivered quickly and with correct branding, which contributed to an overall positive brand experience for both customers and employees.

An additional benefit of having brand consistency is gaining a competitive advantage over other companies in the financial industry who do not have an organized marketing system.

MarcomCentral is your solution to streamlined marketing asset organization and customization. It is an important investment your financial service firm should make in order to help foster long-term relationships with your consumers and employees. The ease of having all of your marketing materials in one centralized location is unparalleled, especially if you are a large financial service company.