[Financial services professionals need to develop a better understanding and appreciation for what it takes to successfully operate and compete in a business environment of accelerating change. Every firm needs to rethink and elevate its business strategies from just tactical efficiency to strategic effectiveness.
Even in the core areas of marketing and technology, this exploration needs to go beyond traditional thinking about mixing technology and marketing toward an efficiency goal over the short term to a more encompassing strategic solution of how you will compete and thrive in a hyper-competitive marketplace. Essentially this strategic thinking is not just about marketing, nor even about technology, but going beyond to how you are future-proofing your business and how you are adapting and building resiliency. It also becomes a cultural issue for your firm internally and externally with strategic fintech partners and a growing number of digitally savvy clients.
As the Institute keeps reinforcing, innovation does not merely equate to technology. Technology is the greatest tool of innovation, but the proper mindset and strategic application of technology are the primary drivers of successful innovation.
To explore this further, we reached out to new Institute founding member, Niharika Shah, General Manager of Clout—an AI-powered, fintech growth marketing platform and a subsidiary of the fintech platform TIFIN. We asked Niharika to share her thoughts and experiences in designing her platform at the intersections of marketing, financial services and technology.]
Bill Hortz: What was the thesis or friction point that Clout is trying to address for the wealth management industry?
Niharika Shah: In a recent report from McKinsey, 76% of consumers reported receiving personalized communications as a reason to purchase from a brand. While many brands in the fashion and retail space have prepared to respond, the thesis behind Clout is financial services needs to close the gap to win with this and the next generation of clients.
That is why we created Clout by TIFIN that takes a modern approach using AI and II (Investment Intelligence) to hyper-personalize the marketing campaigns of financial advisory firms and does it at-scale.
Why does it matter? In a world where every investor is unique, we believe relevant content and insights will help advisors stand out amidst a ton of ambient noise. It demonstrates the three pillars of engendering trust, which as we all know is THE most important currency in this business of credibility, care and congruence.
Hortz: Why do you think that financial services firms need to rethink their marketing approaches?
Shah: I think marketers at large firms get the imperative above. Their challenge is twofold: adoption and their tech stack. For smaller advisory firms: the challenge is similar from an adoption perspective but is compounded by the lack of a programmatic approach to marketing.
On the second point, many financial firms today struggle to understand the value of marketing as a growth driver for the business. It is seen as lesser in importance to sales, and often bucketed as a cost center or some type of distraction or overhead to the bottom line. And then even when we speak to firms who have made investments in their marketing efforts, they often boil these efforts down to simple direct response through lead generation. The reality here is if a firm is going to adopt a marketing mindset, they need to view this from the full funnel and incorporate a thoughtful application of marketing tactics across the entire customer journey. That means from lead generation and prospecting through client conversion and then delighting existing customers. Success on all those fronts can then create a virtuous cycle of firm and advisor growth.
From a tech stack perspective, there are a myriad of offerings on the market today. From marketing automation solutions to marketing agencies, to social media amplification platforms, an advisory firm is not short on solutions. However, many of these platforms lack specialization in financial services or will require time and/or staff to manage. Not to mention, that some of these options can be high cost (e.g., agency services) or are not simple and easy to use for non-marketing people.
This is where we seek to differentiate our efforts at Clout.
We have built our platform from the ground up to meet the needs specific to the financial services industry and coupled that with an affordable, turnkey solution that drives quick impact to our clients. But most importantly, we are able to take firms from basic digital marketing to empowering them into a true growth marketing mindset.