Marketing Financial Products to Millennials
It appears that Millennials don’t trust banks, they don’t believe in investments and prefer to keep their wealth in cash. In simple terms, we have a generation that has been impacted by the economic crisis of 2008 and do not trust or want anything to do with financial products. The current COVID-19 crisis and the massive economic impact will only push Millennials even further away.
Managing your financial life with all the complex financial options is complicated business and only 24% of Millennials claim to have a basic understanding of financial concepts. (Based on research by PwC)
Relying on a strong brand will not work as there is a complete lack of loyalty between consumers and financial products. It appears that over 1 in 5 Millennials have ditched their bank in the last year alone.
The key is being able to speak their language, explain why your financial products are good for them and why it is financially responsible for young people to leverage financial tools available to them. They need educating!
Other studies highlighted by Investopedia, state that many Millennials still trust and hire financial advisors, it appears that the personal connection provides confidence that the advisor has a stake in their success and they feel they have received the most training and schooling in the field. So what can we learn from this?
From a marketing perspective, there may be some key things to consider to help improve trust and relate more to Millennials.
- Define your core values within your marketing to help build trust. Don’t just define these values, show the world that you mean what you say. Millennials want to see company values in action and they should be marketed every day.
- Build social proof, maybe experiment with role models and celebrities who can endorse your products. We live in an age where most young people look up to various influencers in order to make the next investment or use the next financial product. It is possible that financial marketing companies should pay even closer attention to influencers than perhaps marketers in any other industry.
- The branding, messaging and tone must be relatable to your target audience. You wouldn’t market an afterlife financial service the same way that you’d market a financial product targeted at younger investors, so it’s amazing to see that some companies are using the same branding, language and tone across all their financial marketing. You need to speak their language & understand what Millennials need to hear and tailor your marketing message towards those needs. (Use a conversational tone as opposed to an authoritative tone)
- Teaching your audience and leaving them more informed is important to building a relationship with them. Too many financial services marketing professionals treat their audience as finance experts when customers, especially Millennials are not. The financial industry is riddled with jargon that no one outside of the industry can relate to. Many big brands seem to struggle in turning complex financial examples into digestible information that Millennials can consume and act on. Millennials want to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into and as a marketer you need to answer the questions, be a thought leader and help Millennials understand the value you bring to the table.
There are much more complex strategies to reach out to Millennials including multi-channel optimisation and personalisation, though the aim of this article is to share ideas I have discussed with my clients that are actionable in the short term.
Vuture works exclusively with professional services organisations within legal, accountancy, private banking and wealth management. Our in-house customer success team is always happy to provide advice on best practice, security and data management. If there is anything you would like to discuss or if there are any specific challenges you are facing, feel free to get in touch and I will arrange a call with the appropriate experts at Vuture.
Sean Mallen