Acquisitive Minds

Changing the polarity of attracting customers is critical. “It's not about pushing your message, but pulling in your customers,” says Joe Pulizzi of leading marketing blog Junta42, “and the way to pull is to publish content.” For today’s expectant customer, it is content marketing—actionable information that consumers expect and want to receive, delivered across a broad range of media—that becomes the beating heart of engagement and a sure vehicle back to loyalty and trust.

“It's the art of understanding exactly what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way,” says Pulizzi.¹²

Join The Conversation

This is not a time to hide from customers. In April 2009, responding to the “tough economy,” San Antonio-based financial services giant USAA experimentally launched “What’s On Your Mind,“ its open online community for people “to talk about the economy and share ideas.” The company has since migrated the concept to its members-only corporate site, but the essential commitment to frank, genuine customer interaction remains.

Plus, USAA maintains a Facebook site with over 47,000 fans, and is active on Twitter. Social-
mindedness, if not an outright social media 
strategy, is one of the many ways financial firms are repairing broken social covenants and realizing new dividends in trust.¹³

As U.K.-based banker-turned-publisher and social media advocate Christophe Langlois explains, the first step in reaching consumers is tapping into their existing conversation networks.

“Engaging in social media is viewed as risky in the tightly regulated world of finance,” says Langlois who tracks more than 1,300 financial online and social media initiatives in over 40 countries on his Visible-Banking.com site. 
“The risk is in not participating, though. People are talking about you online regardless, so not being there to at least listen in, let alone participate in and act upon the conversation, means you are missing a key engagement opportunity.”