The article by Shiva Sharif below appeared in AdvertisingWeek. Read it in its entirety here.
The upheaval of the past two years has touched every aspect of consumer lives, including their finances and how they think about money management. Particularly as the competitive landscape of online direct-to-consumer banking and investment players becomes more crowded, it’s never been more important for financial marketers to forge deep connections with their customers than it is today.
Today’s consumers are more willing to switch their banking and investment providers than ever before, making customer retention a key component of the financial marketer’s playbook.
But it goes deeper than that. These days, if you’re not up-leveling your first-party data with consumer insights to unlock deeper connections at every stage of the buyer and customer journey, you can bet that your competitors are.
Let’s take a look at how third-party intelligence can help financial brands identify, understand, reach and resonate with consumers at every stage of the buyer and customer journey.
Upper Funnel Marketing: Awareness and Consideration
For financial brands, identifying prospects and ensuring a robust pipeline of new customers has never been more important. By onboarding a company’s first-party data set to a consumer intelligence platform—for example, a data set identifying recent visitors to your website—you can deepen your understanding of known customers and prospects and unlock insights on unknown prospects engaging with your digital touchpoints, such as visitors to your website.
For example, a financial brand might want to identify, understand and target above-average-income millennials who are looking to switch banks but who lack awareness, familiarity and understanding of the brand itself. Using the right consumer intelligence, financial marketers can create unique personas using a combination of brand metrics, psychographics, investment interests and bank satisfaction scores.
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