Financial services design: creating more positive brand experiences for your customers
When you’re responsible for marketing the services of your sharebroking, mortgage broking, insurance, superannuation fund or investment management company, you need to effectively communicate a wide range of services to very diverse groups of people. You want to encourage usage or purchase in a way that’s engaging, while establishing trust in what you’re offering. It’s a real balancing act.
How to stand out, gain trust and attract more customers
To successfully embed the values of reliability and trust in the minds of your customers, consider the following across all your communications:
Cultivate empathy and kindness
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Creating audience personas for your target markets will help you to understand what they need from you, how to talk to them, and where to focus future product and service innovation. Truly knowing your prospective and current customers will drive you and your colleagues to create the best experiences for them.
Encourage and train your staff to cultivate kindness to each other, as well as to clients. A customer is much more likely to respond positively to someone who genuinely wants to assist them.
Enhance your accessibility
Customers are very savvy about the services they research, and demand quality information from the financial service providers they’re considering. Tell them how you operate and talk to them as human beings, not as shareholders. Discuss your inclusion, charitable and sustainability practices. Showcase the people behind the products and services.
Clarity, clarity, clarity
Communicate your messages in language that’s truthful, clear, comprehensible, and jargon-free. Likewise, your visual language needs to enrich the words, be appealing, and seamlessly integrate with your tone of voice.
Speak to all your audiences
Customise information so it’s clear and unambiguous for diverse audiences – including those who speak different languages and have different financial literacy levels. Again, visuals can help to explain what you offer and you can translate communications into other languages to reach a wider audience.
Overcome the ‘this isn’t for me’ factor
Breaking through the threshold to build interest and engage your audience is critical. Customers often don’t pay close attention because they’re bored by the information, don’t understand it, or it seems irrelevant to them. Use imagery, infographics and video where you can to explain concepts. And run copy past a copywriter or someone who’s not as familiar with your business to test wording before you make it live or send it out.
Be real
Authenticity is key. Make your communications meaningful. If your customers value the professionalism and expertise they experience from your team, and trust the information you give them, they’re more likely to retain your services.
The business case for switching to a specialist financial services design agency
Working in close collaboration with a specialist financial services design agency can make your life easier, help you solve problems faster, and benefit the way you work in a number of ways.
Organisationally
Your interactions with your agency can be more efficient, saving time and helping to generate a better ROI.
Improved speed to market
A specialist agency will process work faster and more effectively. This means you can be more responsive to sudden changes in the marketplace and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.
Ongoing innovation
A specialist agency will be well-versed on the issues and challenges that financial services companies face. It will be better placed to generate innovative and appropriate solutions.
At Dave Clark Design, we specialise in creative and strategic design services specifically for financial services organisations. This means we really understand your sector and its challenges and can respond accordingly. If you’d like to see what we can do for your next project, email me directly at dave@daveclark.co.nz
