Marketing to the financial services industry is a different ballgame than it was a year ago, before the subprime mortgage crisis sent shockwaves down Wall Street and Main Street, and the country's economic health became a significant concern.



The extent to which these concerns affect marketers and their messages depends on which piece of the financial arena they're targeting. In general, though, companies will be focusing more on the bottom line and looking to cut costs where they can. “There's a lot of pressure associated with an economic downturn,” said Christi Rankin, CEO of Martopia, a marketing consultancy and creative agency that serves clients in the financial services industry. “You have to take your creativity up to a whole new level because a little bit has to go so much farther than it does in better times.”



Rankin said marketing strategy also becomes more important than ever in a difficult economic climate. With fewer dollars to spend on marketing efforts, companies tend to run in circles, she said, because they have so much they want to accomplish on a limited budget they can't commit to one direction. She recommends that marketers take a step back, talk about objectives and goals and then create a strategy that they can commit to. “Otherwise, they're wasting their time and their money,” she said. “When the money is flowing, you can do a bit of everything and make headway. But when the money is not flowing, every dollar has to count.”Yet developing marketing strategy represents a challenge for many financial services companies. In November, Financial Research Corp. and SwanDog Strategic Marketing released a study called “Beyond the Collateral: Unlocking Marketing's Strategic Potential for Competitive Advantage,” which surveyed senior management, heads of distribution and marketing executives from both large and small financial services companies. (Findings are based on 125 online survey responses, as well as dozens of in-person interviews.)



“Our premise was that the financial industry is overly reliant on producing sales materials—brochures, that sort of thing—and that the classic professional marketing initiatives, things like segmentation and client relationship management, had fallen far behind,” said Dave Swanson, managing principal and founder of SwanDog Strategic Marketing, a strategic consulting and marketing firm that serves the financial industry. “In short, the financial industry is underserved by marketing unilaterally.”



The study revealed that senior management at financial services companies see their marketing departments as being highly reactive but not very strategic. “They view marketing's contribution at their firms as being average or below, and yet they expect more of a contribution to their firms' growth over the next five years from marketing,” Swanson said.



One hurdle the study identified is that financial marketers generally aren't in a position to lead. “Marketing needs to have a role as part of the management team,” Swanson said. “In the financial world, for the most part, marketing is viewed as a staff function. ... The head of marketing doesn't sit on [the] management team.”



The study suggested developing a knowledge center inside the marketing department to validate marketing's function. It also suggested reorienting marketing by client rather than by product, packaging or channel. “We believe marketing is a business function,” Swanson said. “We believe it's a client-centered function and, unfortunately, in a lot of financial firms, marketing tends to be siloed by product type.”Marketers in this industry also often face the challenge of a lack of data on prospects and customers. “There's no list that you can go out and buy for wealth management [executives],” said Vicki Morris, VP-marketing at NorthStar Systems International, a provider of software solutions to financial services institutions (see case study, page 17). “So we've had to take a very relationship-oriented approach to finding our potential buyers.”



Even if marketers do have data on customers and prospects, this information can become quickly outdated because of the industry's significant merger-and-acquisition activity and high executive churn. NorthStar meets this challenge by keeping tabs on wealth management executives who change jobs and inviting them to receive its newsletter. “It's a way for us to constantly grow our list and make sure we're finding new people,” Morris said.



The churn and change common in the industry makes a consistent message tremendously important to a marketer's success, Rankin said. She also tells clients to focus that messaging on solving clients' and prospects' business problems.



Martopia client Fidelity National Information Services, which markets technology solutions to banks, did this by making thought leadership efforts a significant part of its integrated marketing strategy. Company executives write articles for industry publications, speak at events and record podcasts about relevant topics.



Doing so builds credibility and trust with the target audience, Rankin said. “This industry is risk averse, and it's very important to [buyers] to be working with a company that they perceive to be a leader who has domain expertise and understands the banking business,” she said. M