(c)Barclaycard
A couple of weeks ago, our marketing team embarked on a campaign that diverged from the normal B2B marketing activity: rather than writing copy extolling our technical specs and shooting photos of products in action, we chose to hero our people.
Because of this, we requested three colleagues to give stories and their faces, forming the cornerstone to our campaign.
This strategy was the crux of ‘People Included’, an eight-week marketing campaign that highlighted our human touch that is unique in an environment where clients are increasingly introduced with ‘self serve’ ecommerce payment solutions.
The effort was the part that permits retailers to accept payments the retailer or a break out of the aggressive advertising that was so widespread in our obligations industry.
However, by taking a leap of faith, we learnt a great deal about the different facet of promotion, both in terms of navigating stakeholders inside also the value of reaching out with human interest stories and our organisation.
We have since distilled four key lessons that we’re going to continue to lean for future marketing activity. Here’s what worked for us when we made a campaign that went ‘zig’ when everybody went ‘zag’:
Become a true business partner
Although we started this campaign we began as we did : by getting under the skin of the company ambition. What did our commercial team wish to achieve — and how can a new advertising approach best service that?
By scoping the project, putting this ambition and bringing stakeholders board in the ground level, we adapting the expectations of everyone and took them as we ideated, strategised and implemented ‘People Included’.
Root yourself in penetration
We conducted extensive market research to comprehend just how far we were from our goal. The results from desk research and our different focus groups, customer surveys told us things.
To begin with, we learnt that despite our power in providing payment terminals for channels, we were not top of head in the space.
Since the human-focused effort was so different from what we’d done previously, we needed to check ourselves from veering into marketing-speak
We found key insights that informed our advertising activity to shut this awareness and consideration gap; namely, when it comes to the complicated and fluid universe of payments, merchants want easy access to someone who can provide simple and practical advice on technical innovation, regulatory change, and new customer requirements.
They wanted a way of implementing and identifying e commerce solutions that are ideal for them as opposed to being ‘pushed’ a product that may not suit their enterprise.
Identify your USP — and share it broadly
Armed with this, we looked at how to make a Barclaycard effort stick out. A landscape audit revealed lots of technical and sound jargon.
At precisely the exact same time, we tried to spot our USP. In this, the year of the anniversary, we realised it was our knowledge in helping retailers sell.
Putting two and two together our recommendation was ‘Individuals Included’ — an ecommerce effort that pivoted from our technology offering to concentrate on our experience.
Again, to deliver together our stakeholders we introduced our findings and proposal .
Since our discussions were rooted in penetration was quick and easy — especially because the ethos of ‘helping our customers make the complex simple’ with what coworkers were doing adapting.
Stay true to your creative notion
We discovered experts of how they aided our customers with real life stories within the industry.
These formed images and the copy of our security. We needed to test ourselves to carry on the authenticity of the activity, because the campaign was different from what we’d done before.
Remaining true to the imaginative notion helped ‘People’ hang together as an innovative effort that cut through the sound.
Throughout the last few months, we have realised that fantastic marketing still comes down to best practice — beginning with the conclusion in mind, making insight the cornerstone of this effort, bringing stakeholders along for the journey and finding a distinctive, authentic perspective.
We zigged when others zagged and produced something that surpassed our expectations, by following all these.
