Consumer trust can be especially difficult to maintain in the financial services industry. In fact, a recent Customer Quotient study found less than half of consumers would recommend their financial services provider. Highly publicized negative events involving banks and their customers have fed into the skepticism consumers feel toward financial institutions, with 46 percent of Americans believing they can’t trust these brands, according to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer.
That’s not good news for banks, especially in this age when consumers have more choices than ever. Relationships matter, and with the rise of digital media, customers are savvier about researching and making decisions about who they can trust with their money.
Digital helps brands reconnect
Many financial services brands are leveraging digital advertising as an avenue to earn consumer confidence or, in several cases, win it back. After Wells Fargo was fined for illegal sales practices in 2016, it increased its ad spend across digital media and mobile apps in the following year.
Wells Fargo’s “Re-Established” campaign, launched earlier this month, is a necessary mea culpa in an effort to mend customer relationships through ad placements in nearly every major channel, with digital at the forefront. Michael Lacorazza, head of integrated marketing at Wells Fargo, says of the company’s advertising strategy, “Digital, and mobile in particular, are important because they are channels where we can connect with our audience with scale.”
In premium content consumers trust
Research from Oath reveals that context plays a huge role in shaping consumer perception of brands. According to a 2017 Oath proprietary research study, a stunning 75 percent of consumers feel brands are accountable for the high or low quality of content that appears adjacent to their advertising. In other words, even though brands are not responsible for creating content environments on sites and in apps, they are being held responsible for their content associations.
It’s no surprise that consumers gravitate toward premium sources, but their preference for verified, professionally generated content is staggering. In fact, consumers are twice as likely to consider premium content as trustworthy and important compared to user-generated content.
As a result, finance brands should seek out these types of content spaces exclusively. The same Oath study revealed the three main attributes consumers in the finance category associate with premium content: trustworthy (56 percent), insightful (48 percent), and easy to understand (42 percent). Top Oath brands in finance, sports, news and lifestyle verticals have earned the trust of 78 percent of consumers, thanks to content that consistently delivers these attributes, representing an excellent (and safe) opportunity for brands.
Go full funnel to earn reputation points
Ad adjacency is certainly an important concept, but it’s not the only piece of the trust-building puzzle for finance brands. Knowing how to play in these premium spaces is just as critical, and marketers should be using full-funnel execution to align with preferred content to build brand favorability.
Early data reports on the recent Oath/Wells Fargo campaign show a 2-3x increase in site visits when running premium takeovers, with users spending twice the amount of time on the site as they did during previous brand campaigns. When engagement and content consumption are used as key performance indicators, as they are with Wells Fargo, alignment with premium content is crucial to success.
An insurance brand recently partnered with Oath to align with premium content to drive awareness, increase credibility and deliver the brand attribute of trust. Campaign results yielded an 8.3 point lift in the brand favorability metric, which is most closely aligned with brand reputation. Pairing with original content environments already viewed as trustworthy was a double shot of positive association for the brand, deepening its connection with consumers.
Trust may be eroding between financial brands and their customers, but that doesn’t mean institutions are fighting unwinnable battles to flip perceptions. Brands matter and trust matters to deliver the best experience for advertisers and consumers alike. By making smart advertising decisions and paying attention to content environments favored by consumers, banks are in a strong position to repair relationships and inspire confidence.
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John Piontkowski is responsible for leading a national field sales advertising team consisting of managers and sellers focused on the top Financial Services companies in the US. His team of sales professionals sell all aspects of Oath’s solutions to accounts such as American Express, Wells Fargo, E*Trade, Fidelity, Progressive Insurance, Geico and Farmers Insurance among others.
