How to Find the Right Financial Services Marketing Talent for Your Firm
Finding ways to stand out in the crowded and highly competitive financial services industry becomes more challenging every quarter. Banks and other financial institutions continue to aggressively market to consumers, while fintech disruptors keep cutting into market share. The upshot? To keep pace, a robust financial services marketing strategy is more crucial than ever.
The problem is that skilled financial services marketing talent isn’t always easy to find. There’s a supply-and-demand imbalance when it comes to top talent with expertise in this niche. Strict regulations, complex products, and a rapidly evolving digital landscape can complicate marketing efforts. Cutting through the noise requires savvy communicators with a deep understanding of strategic messaging in the nuanced world of finance. So, you need marketing talent that can mix compliance with creativity, analyze data, and then translate those insights into compelling campaigns that will resonate with real people.
Following are tips on what to look for when hiring financial services marketing employees or freelancers:
What Makes Financial Services Marketing So Unique
Financial services marketing comes with distinct challenges, requiring distinct strengths and abilities. First, it’s a heavily regulated industry with strict compliance rules around communications. Your organization’s marketing talent must have a strong command of these regulations to avoid costly missteps. In addition, financial services marketing professionals will face the ongoing challenge of conveying complex products like loans, insurance offerings, and investments in simple ways that will connect with average consumers. They must also walk a fine line between “selling” and educating. In short, financial service is an area that calls for specialized marketing expertise.
Skills Your Financial Services Marketing Team Needs
Given the specialized nature of the vertical, you’ll want to look for financial services marketing professionals who possess a mix of hard and soft skills. This includes:
- The proven ability to distill complex financial messages and concepts into clear campaigns
- Outstanding collaborative abilities to work closely with internal groups such as Compliance and Legal to ensure creative and marketing messaging adheres to all financial regulations and guidelines
- Advanced SEO and SEM skills to boost organic and paid search visibility and traffic
- Sharp data mining chops to uncover actionable customer insights and analytics that inform targeted messaging strategy and campaign development
- Analytical thinking to track complex KPIs and pinpoint the most promising lead drive channels
- Up-to-date expertise in customer personas, customer journey orchestration, and customer experience best practices
- A continuous learning mentality to keep pace with the ongoing evolution of financial tech innovations
Identifying Top Financial Marketing Talent
With this array of skills needed, how do you accurately assess candidates during the vetting process? Consider these tips:
- Review portfolios and focus heavily on previous financial services content, campaigns, and assets
- Conduct skills testing on technical abilities like Google Analytics, marketing automation, and AI tools
- Evaluate experience by asking about specific financial services initiatives and the quantifiable results achieved
Interview Questions to Ask Financial Marketing Candidates
Whether you’re hiring a full-time marketer or a freelancer, as part of the screening process, develop a targeted list of interview questions. Examples might include:
- What experience do you have working under strict regulatory compliance rules?
- How would you go about simplifying a complex financial vehicle or technology for a digital campaign?
- Can you explain [insert a financial topic here] in layman’s terms?
- Describe a time you had to balance innovative ideas with legal or compliance limitations.
- How do you stay on top of the latest trends and innovations in fintech?
- What specific metrics and KPIs do you find most effective in measuring marketing performance?
Listen for sophisticated responses that convey strategic thinking and creativity based on previous successes.
How McKinley Marketing Partners Can Help You
Highly skilled financial services marketers are in high demand and short supply. As a staffing firm with deep experience in helping financial services organizations achieve their marketing goals, we understand the type of talent needed to get the job done. And we have an existing pipeline of pre-qualified talent ready to hit the ground running.
Many of our recruiters have personally worked in marketing, creative, and communications roles prior to staffing. This real-world expertise allows us to swiftly identify best-fit talent and make the hiring process smooth and focused for our clients.
Whether you’re looking for one financial content marketing manager or you’re building out a team, we can help you quickly find optimal full-time or freelance talent tailored to your needs.
McKinley Marketing Partners makes it easy to find talent in just a few simple steps. Get started today.
