Well-planned, effective content marketing campaigns in any industry typically have some basic attributes in common. They begin with a thoughtful strategy that’s designed to meet a set of measurable objectives. The content is authentic and tells a story that the audience cares about, so they remain actively and consistently engaged.
In financial services, it’s also important to demonstrate to customers that your organization knows and understand them, so you can build trust.
The recent “Curious Customer” campaign by Fifth Third Bank — also known as “The Curious Bank” — is a best-in-class example of content marketing for B2B financial services because it does all of these things and more.
Setting Goals and Creating a Strategy Around Them
The marketing team at Fifth Third began the process of planning a strategy for the Curious Customer campaign with a very clear set of goals. They wanted to show Fifth Third’s small business customers that the bank is committed to helping them succeed, despite the bad press and negative perceptions surrounding the industry over the past few years.
“We wanted to showcase the variety of services that we provide to small businesses, while also telling the unique and inspiring stories of some of our small business customers,” explained Brian Barnard, marketing director for business and commercial.
Sharing Authentic and Engaging Content
Small business customers across ten markets stretching from Michigan to Florida were invited to share their businesses’ stories and answer one key question: “How has curiosity helped your business?”
Businesses from diverse industries submitted real-life stories of how they overcame challenges and made the most of opportunities. Then these Curious Customer stories were shared on Fifth Third’s Curiosity at Work microsite, where visitors could read them and were invited to vote for their favorite “leader in curiosity.”
For example, entries came from a band uniform manufacturer that was curious about marching to their own business beat, a healthcare organization that was curious about improving the patient experience and a construction equipment manufacturer that was curious about generational growth.
The integrated marketing campaign promoting participation in the project involved advertising, social media engagement and public relations outreach to online influencers. From June 10 through Sept. 30, this year, each element of the campaign encouraged people to engage by visiting the microsite and voting. The winners were announced in October and received cash prizes.
Measuring Results
About halfway into the campaign, digital ads had already generated nearly 110 million impressions; the social media campaign had reached more than 52 million users with more than 35,000 clicks, and 15,000 of those sent social media users directly to the campaign microsite, which received more than 108,000 page views and nearly 16,000 votes. Most importantly, the campaign demonstrated to business customers that Fifth Third is interested in knowing and understanding them.
“Through the ‘Curious Customer’ campaign, Fifth Third promoted the passion and creativity of customers as well as the bank’s ongoing commitment to helping businesses of all sizes grow and achieve their goals. That’s exactly what we were hoping to accomplish,” said Barnard, who’s is looking forward to expanding the bank’s B2B content marketing in 2014.
Want to learn more about Fifth Third Bank’s content marketing and how other financial services organizations are using content to connect with customers? Join us for a webinar tomorrow with panelists including Shannon Paul, Fifth Third Bank’s vice president and social media strategist:
Reputation Capital Media Services is a Baton Rouge marketing agency that helps B2B companies and their marketing agencies produce high-quality digital content, including blog posts, e-mail newsletters, white papers and multimedia. Our editors and writers are experts in their fields, which include HR technology, employee benefits, and financial services and accounting. Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation to find out how great content can help you attract and retain your customers.
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