Client
This Sydney-based client came to us from the financial services industry. They needed a holistic marketing and communications strategy clarified and their ideal target customer redefined in order to move forward as a business. Their main objective was to grow trust in their brand.
*Due to the details we share in this case study, we’ve withheld our client’s name for privacy reasons.
Client Background
This client specialises in the creation of wealth for Australians. And at Oddball, we specialise in defining marketing strategies and campaigns that generate real results. Working together with this client, the initial priority was to define their audience and reframe their marketing plan to target that audience. The client wanted us to build a strategy that could increase their turnover by 100% over the next three years.
Their brand’s unique asset was its ability to dispense personalised financial guidance to customers in the areas of mortgages, property, conveyancing, legal, business, accounting, asset management, insurance and more. We knew the focus should be on how to best communicate this through a tailored communication strategy.
The Problem
While the client had a clear vision of where they wanted to be, there was a massive blank space between their current position and how they planned to get to their goal. The client didn’t have a holistic marketing strategy or overall plan in place. Before producing one, their current audience needed redefining and their strengths as a business needed to be identified.
The next hurdle to tackle was the disconnect between the financial services they offered and their clients. On closer inspection, we saw that one of their main strengths as a business was the ability to align a client’s lifestyle with a relevant financial advisor – but this was not being adequately communicated in their marketing. We needed to help them outline a robust communication strategy, including the best channels to market and an execution plan.
The Oddball Approach
To start work on a client’s marketing strategy, we always sit down with them and lay everything out in the open. Less of a workshop, more of a conversation. We get a clear, transparent idea of where our client is, and where they want to be. This objective, external review of a brand is extremely valuable if you’re struggling to get perspective on what makes you unique, and what to take to market!
After conducting research into the client’s brand, we confirmed their focus audience was Small to Medium Business Owners (SMEs). Next we needed to identify their business’ strengths and unlock the value perception of their customer.
As part of our approach, we assessed a series of essential criteria to choose the best way forward. We’ve spent years perfecting this particular document, pouring our team’s collective insight into it generously. It’s one of our most valuable assets as a marketing agency! We give our client’s complete access to this ‘Playbook’ as part of the collaborative process of building a plan that works (and doesn’t sit on the shelf collecting dust).
For this particular client, we focused on exploring several key areas of that strategic marketing document:
- Market analysis (PESTLE / Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal & Environmental)
- Customer / audience clarification
- Customer segment potential: WHO and WHERE are they?
- Defining USPs (unique selling points)
- Persona building (produce an image of their customer type)
- Buyer journey and the path to purchase
- Buyer’s remorse (ask us what this means, it’s important)
- Decision criteria: average spend, product price, convenience, stress?
- Risk Mitigation: remove reasons for customers to say no
- Competition: who else is out there doing the same thing?
- Tiered list of competitors for client reference: similar to loosely linked companies
- Channels to market
- Content opportunities.
The Oddball Effect
Defining Personas
One of the most valuable elements of producing a marketing strategy for this client was building personas. This was mainly for their team to reference going forward, allowing them to shape their efforts around tangible “people” that we created in the image of their core audience. They had a checklist of the pain points to solve.
Main pain points of their target audience were:
- Wanting an actual person to talk to
- Receiving conflicting advice from multiple ‘experts’
- Time-poor and not knowing who they need to talk to
This insight opened up an opportunity for our client to own that space and solve these pain points as one of the core offerings of their service.
Understanding the Customer’s World
To help our clients stand out in the market, we generate a greater idea of the world they exist within. The completed Marketing Playbook we offer paints a great outline of their “world”. This includes who their audience is, where they can access and appeal to that audience, and how they can shape that interaction through future marketing.
Defining Channels to Market
Through our comprehensive research into this client’s brand positioning potential, we determined the most viable channels they could market their brand and services included:
- Website refresh
- Social Media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube
- AdWords and remarketing campaigns.
Next Steps
Our work with this client aimed to provide them with a practical execution plan they could move forward with. We like to call this our ‘Marketing Playbook’. It includes all the above mentioned elements rolled into one easy-to-use package.
Armed with professional guidance on the industry landscape, audience, channels, business strengths and content production opportunities, this client confidently moved forward with marketing their business. They also commissioned us to completely overhaul their website. Watch this space!