'Connected Consumers' Have Serious Headstart Over Financial Services Marketing

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It’s about the highest compliment I can give to:

print…
a highly designed document…
in color.

But I printed every page of the 18-page Meet the Connected Consumer and I’d urge you to, too. And then together let’s figure out how we’re going to bridge the gap between what financial services marketing is working on and what consumers are doing online.

Seriously.

In the aggregate, the findings of the second annual Razorfish Consumer Behavior Study demonstrated that “the consumer adoption curve for Internet technologies was much more significant than we had anticipated." And, “no longer are we seeing Internet technology adoption rates limited to only certain segments,” according to the report.

According to Razorfish, the connected consumers "roughly mirror" the U.S. population with broadband access. “Today’s digital consumers have moved well beyond merely sampling Web 2.0 technologies and services. They are now adopting these services at a breakneck pace and readily experimenting with new, more sophisticated offerings en masse,” writes the agency, which specializes in "marketing, experience and enterprise design."

Some random data:

  • 64% of connected consumers have customized the home page of their choice with content feeds, scheduled updates or other features
  • 87% send and receive text messages on their phones “on a somewhat frequent basis”
  • 72% have shared videos with their peers
  • 76% of all consumers think a wide range of brands including Bank of America should advertise in social media

Among these consumers are financial advisors and investors who bring their Internet savvy along when they consider your brand. And yet last year, the SwanDog Strategic Marketing/FRC Beyond The Collateral research showed that “financial marketers are dismissive of the opportunity provided by emerging media and the impact emerging media can have on intermediary brands.” The research is being re-fielded now although we’ve seen little to suggest that the needle has moved much in the last year.

Everything—every head, every project, every budget—is vulnerable as all spending is under the microscope nowadays. But it's hard to imagine even the most strapped financial services marketing executive reading this report and not feeling compelled to reserve something to either start to develop a competency in digital marketing or to step it up. The consumers have a headstart.