The importance of brand building for your financial services business
It has certainly been a turbulent time for financial services businesses. Once in a lifetime events such as the Royal Commission, significant changes in legislation, a global pandemic and in turn a global recession have all impacted the industry and have resulted in consumer confidence plummeting.
As a result, consumers are extremely cautious and less trusting of financial institutions and financial services. US business tycoon, Warren Buffet once said: “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it”. For a financial adviser or broker, there has always been a heavy reliance on the one-to-one trusted relationship and subsequent ‘earned’ trust. The findings from the Royal Commission have impacted this trust and the sector’s reputation but it can be rebuilt by investing in the power of brand.
As a financial adviser or broker, your personal reputation goes a long way; however, your brand should also be doing some of this heavy lifting.
Branding can deliver many benefits for your financial services business, whether you are just starting up, in a growth stage or you need to rejuvenate your business after the downturn.
What is a brand and how does it help?
A brand is an identity mark – the dictionary definition describes it as an identifying mark burned on livestock with a branding iron. This enabled ownership to be identifiable and avoided theft.
In business terms, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods and services from another. In reality, it is much more than this.
In terms of business brand strategy, a brand can be thought of as the promise you need to keep to your customers in order to gain their trust and loyalty, so they choose you over another brand/business. It needs to connect from an emotional and functional point of view with consumers.
Your brand should set you apart, not make you look and feel the same as everyone else in your industry.
If you invest in building your brand, it will not only start to take the load off you when it comes to finding new prospects or leads, it will also benefit you by:
Increasing awareness of your business and service, helping to deliver a higher quality of leads.
Build credibility and trust.
Allow you to demand a premium price for your services.
Help to differentiate you from your competitors.
Attract the right talent as your business grows.
Add value to your business, as your brand is an asset.
Building a strong brand
In developing your brand, firstly, you need to ask yourself what is the purpose of your brand? What sets you apart from your competitors?
Secondly, you need to ensure you have a good understanding of who you are talking to (your ideal target audience).
These two factors will help you position your brand to create a point of difference that will cut through and resonate with your audience.
Your brand should then deliver this consistently across all channels and touchpoints, not only via a strong visual identity, but also through a consistent tone of voice used across all communication, whether it be online, on the phone, or in person.
Find your brand purpose.
The most successful brands have a clearly defined purpose and customer promise which reflect the company values and align with its long-term strategy. They have moved away from a sales and product-focused mindset to one of genuine customer-centricity.
Your brand purpose essentially defines your reason for being.
There are four key questions you should ask yourself when considering your brand purpose:
Why do you exist?
What differentiates you?
What problem(s) do you solve?
Why should people care?
The answers to these questions will help you define your brand purpose, vision and values. It will help you rise above the dollar signs and spreadsheets and connect your business to your customers on a deeper level.
Get to know your customers.
Building a profile of your ideal client is the first place to start. This means having a deep understanding of your customer – who they are, what they need and how they are feeling.
It is important not to try to be everything to everyone. Focus on understanding your core target audience. To do this you may find building a customer persona useful. Brand creation relies on truly understanding the buyer persona. A handy tool to utilise to build out your buyer persona is the Hubspot persona building tool - https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona
You can create more than one buyer persona, as long as you define each one and then plan your marketing communications to reach each of these specific personas.
The more you know about your customers the better you will be able to meet their needs.
Examples of strong Australian Financial Services brands
There are several brands within the financial services industries we could highlight as successful and strong brands.
Firstly, in banking, – there are of course the stalwarts – the big 4 banks – CBA, NAB, Westpac and ANZ who have been building their brands for many decades. While they have had their ups and downs in terms of reputation, their investment in brand has helped them continue to find relevance in the market.
There are several brands that are leveraging their ability to create a connection with their ideal consumer via their brand purpose – two that come to mind are Bank of Australia and ING. Both are focused on their clear and strong brand purpose –
Bank of Australia’s purpose – "to create mutual prosperity in the form of positive economic, social, environmental and cultural impact".
ING’s purpose – ‘To empower people to stay a step ahead in life and in business.”
There is a range of emerging brands in the digital banking space that have also built strong brand awareness, such as AfterPay and PayPal. In mortgage lending, there are several new and emerging brands taking market share from the major players – including Athena, Lendi and UBank to name a few.
Brand building takes time
The brand-building process takes time, it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. A memorable brand requires consistent and disciplined investment. If done well, the investment will certainly pay off.
If you get your branding right from the beginning, the dividends will come down the track. If you need help creating your brand strategy, reach out to us today.