Crafting Creative Strategies in Finance: 5 best practices
Crafting campaign strategies in finance; The business-to-consumer finance industry, across markets, is one that leans heavily on customer trust.
To establish a credible brand is of critical importance to all players in the finance industry – especially those that are non-legacy brands, new fintech innovations or operating in emerging markets.
Creativity, content and communication form a decisive part of the end-to-end customer experience as part of any good finance campaign strategy. To build trust and establish credibility, how we communicate is key.
An effective creative strategy is instrumental in the process. Here are 5 things to consider before your next campaign.
How ready is your target market
We can safely assume that across markets and datasets, the care with which one evaluates a financial service is very different from any other purchase. How familiar is your audience with your service is pivotal and deciding how you plan your campaign creative strategies in finance.
For example, the needs of insurance consumers in a market that has been investing in policies for generations are very different from those in emerging economies where the majority of customers are first-generation buyers.
Another example is, Vietnam is yet to devise and formalize a legal framework for crypto, however for 2 years in a row in the global crypto adoption index Vietnam has ranked first. What does that say about market readiness?
It is important to decode familiarity, adoption rate, other players and their performance to determine how ready the market is for you. The foundation of an effective creative strategy lies here – with a keen understanding of how ready the market is we can identify where in the spectrum of simple to esoteric we need to be in our creative communication.
How clear are your campaign goals
There is no one-size-fits-all campaign strategies in finance.
On-ground reality is in the finance industry, like any other industry, the tendency is to try to maximize the potential of a campaign driving home multiple important messages. Different target audience sets also demand personalization to drive relevancy.
Against these moving parts, clarity of objective and knowing which part of the funnel is of primary importance for the current campaign serves as a guiding light for crafting creativity with impact.
A clear (as much as possible) single-minded goal and desired outcome/takeaway should be the starting point of any creative execution and touchstone for all creative reviews.
A good example of assessing market-readiness and having a clear goal.
Wealthsimple is a Canadian online investment management service. Founded in 2014, the firm today holds over C$15 billion in assets today. A provider of ‘forward-thinking financial tools’, Wealth simple rightly assessed that their market at large was still familiarizing with their products and moved with the clear goal of attracting first-time investors.
One of their most successful campaigns is actually an integration with Masterclass and effective content creation – a jargon-free Masterclass on investing that actually makes future-forward investments seem simple.
What is your unique brand voice
Your brand voice needs to be distinctive to rise above the noise, run through all customer-facing communication and create a cohesive brand strategy and experience.
Brand voice can make your creative and content memorable and your brands personality distinct. Brand voice inform whether you move, shock or tickle your customer, informing the desired reaction.
In a content overloaded digital world, a carefully crafted brand voice that consistently runs through all assets lends your brand tremendous personality.
It is worth considering what is your brand’s unique voice and defining its characteristics as a precursor to creative efforts. Let’s say, if your brand personality is witty, you might choose to define its characteristics (quippy, repartee, wisecrack, quick or wry for example) factoring in what you want to portray and what has longevity.
How to monitor and measure a successful campaign strategy
Digitally focused brands need to make sure they are engaging the best digital practices to monitor and measure their creative/campaign performance periodically and iterate as necessary to understand how your communication experiences are impacting the way customers perceive your brand, so you can fix perception, experience or action barriers, and craft communication that better connects with customers and more efficiently delivers on goals.
cred.club is a fintech Indian start-up (and one of India’s top start-ups in 2022) that has been turning heads for a while now with its extremely quirky, high budget and polarizing style of advertising that has sparked many debates. Cred has established its unique voice – they are the jester of the Indian fintech world. Read more here: https://www.livemint.com/industry/media/behind-cred-s-viral-wacky-advertisements-digital-savvy-writers-11618511281660.html
However, as a forerunner Indian start-up Cred is obviously monitoring and measuring more than just vanity metrics. While the above-the-line advertising makes the noise and garners awareness, Cred with their large budgets also invests in content series like Cred Curious on Youtube – a podcast-style engaging series which brings insights from top financial minds in India and more tactical feature-driven content steered to drive action/use:
Are you ready to meet your audience where they are
Creative campaign strategies in finance are only as good as their distribution.
If your audience is on Tik Tok – don’t think formats suitable for Tik Tok as an afterthought, they should be at the core of the campaign. Cryptocurrency Dogecoin saw a 40% rise in value after it went viral on Tik Tok!
On the flip side, in a world of Metaverse and omnichannel, we need to deeply consider if it’s really necessary to get on what is trendy.
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