How To Market To Online Consumers In Capital Markets While Staying Fully Compliant Post-Covid

One of the pain points as a Marketer, especially if you come from a highly regulated industry like Banking or Fintech, is to strike that balance between adhering to the marketing compliance as well as being able to deliver high SEO friendly content to drive traffic, be it online or offline.

Regulations may easily take a back seat for those marketing enthusiasts who may want to rely on copy-paste for all their campaigning. It may also be that many Marketers already have a lot on their plate which is impacting their creativity and regulations may seem like a necessary evil.

A marketing strategy need not be this difficult; try seeing SEO and Regulations as two sides of the same coin.

Since the backbone of all operations is to comply with the regulations, a Marketer must learn to deliver high customer service while adhering to all regulations that apply to the industry they belong to. Though these laws are designed specifically to protect the consumer’s privacy, they will also protect the interests of all the stakeholders, eventually. Thus, it is important for all departments (such as accounts, sales, legal, product and compliance) to collaborate with the marketing department to lower the risk of non-compliant actions.

How is it possible to abide by regulations in a pandemic-driven ‘online only’ digital marketing era?

As most of the population is stuck back at home, the opportunity to grab the attention of a consumer offline has gone down to less than 15% of the total marketing target. This leaves all businesses to look at Digital Marketing with a whole new respect that did not get the attention of capital markets until the 2019 lockdown. That is because Capital Markets have enough offline consumers that drive the actual businesses that run offline and not online. Their real consumers were offline. That has all changed now. Almost every customer is online and businesses have became more of an online presence, with little to do with any offline work.

There are numerous incidents when regulated content had improved customer’s experience with a brand because it had built transparency between the two. The reason is that as much as SEO helps in growing a financial institution, even regulation does. It is just about trying to offer the customers a transparent experience and improve the brand value. An increase in brand value helps in capital markets like no other magic potion can.

So, a truthful brand will only focus on quality web pages that appear as per the customer’s web search intent and not non-compliant, forced, irrelevant and non-deceptive experiences that have hidden information that was never showcased in that attractive advertisement. When one can realize that this shortcut may harm a financial institution in the longer run, it is no more a necessary evil, but an angel to be embraced.

If you can deliver what the consumers want, understand and enjoy at the same time, you have pierced through the maze.