SYDNEY: Content marketing could offer the key to millennials for the financial services industry, a senior marketer at Westpac has suggested.
Ash Gray, Head of Youth and Millennials at Westpac Australia, addressed this topic at the Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit where he explained that, contrary to popular belief, young Australians do want to look after their finances but they aren't necessarily heading to established channels such as a bank's homepage to seek out information.
"If a brand is working to stay up with millennials, by default, they're putting themselves in a really good position to be perpetually relevant and around for a long time," Gray stated. (For more details, read Warc's exclusive report: Westpac targets Australia's millennials with content marketing.)
"They're really hungry for content that's going to help them get from A to B faster," he said, "but the content needs to be helpful, relevant, and accessible.
"The chance of an Australian millennial proactively going to Westpac.com.au and scrolling through our various product pages to figure out what they need to do to become smarter consumers is pretty unlikely," Gray added.
So the bank has turned to content marketing, using its platform The Cusp to engage millennials with content on finances, life style and health. But given the digital native nature of the audience, social media also plays major part in the approach.
"Fish where the fish are," advised Tim Duggan of Junkee Media, which partnered with Westpac on the initiative. "The audience is sitting on Facebook. They're sitting on Snapchat. They're sitting on Instagram. We need to create content on those platforms."
Gray sees this as a win for Westpac as it targets millennials customers.
"The by–product of this is being able to build a pipeline of engaged and reliable customers, and ultimately increase brand loyalty to form lifelong, meaningful relationships with those customers," he said.
Ash Gray, Head of Youth and Millennials at Westpac Australia, addressed this topic at the Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit where he explained that, contrary to popular belief, young Australians do want to look after their finances but they aren't necessarily heading to established channels such as a bank's homepage to seek out information.
"If a brand is working to stay up with millennials, by default, they're putting themselves in a really good position to be perpetually relevant and around for a long time," Gray stated. (For more details, read Warc's exclusive report: Westpac targets Australia's millennials with content marketing.)
"They're really hungry for content that's going to help them get from A to B faster," he said, "but the content needs to be helpful, relevant, and accessible.
"The chance of an Australian millennial proactively going to Westpac.com.au and scrolling through our various product pages to figure out what they need to do to become smarter consumers is pretty unlikely," Gray added.
So the bank has turned to content marketing, using its platform The Cusp to engage millennials with content on finances, life style and health. But given the digital native nature of the audience, social media also plays major part in the approach.
"Fish where the fish are," advised Tim Duggan of Junkee Media, which partnered with Westpac on the initiative. "The audience is sitting on Facebook. They're sitting on Snapchat. They're sitting on Instagram. We need to create content on those platforms."
Gray sees this as a win for Westpac as it targets millennials customers.
"The by–product of this is being able to build a pipeline of engaged and reliable customers, and ultimately increase brand loyalty to form lifelong, meaningful relationships with those customers," he said.
Data sourced from Warc
