It’s no secret that all aspects of the B2B services economy is becoming more specialized. This is especially true in financial services.
Pension funds don’t put out RFPs for do-everything fixed-income managers; instead, they’re looking for managers with deep expertise in private credits, high-yield bonds, or other highly specialized fixed-income asset classes.
High-growth technology companies aren’t looking for an investment bank that is a generalist in terms of sector expertise; instead, they’re looking for advisors who have extensive experience raising capital not just in technology, but in a specific sub-vertical.
As a result, the messages and tools that financial services firms are using to market themselves are becoming more specialized as well.
This shift toward specialization is being reflected in types of people and resources that firms use to build their marketing departments.
This theme was addressed at the Gramercy Institute’s forum on financial marketing trends in 2018 that we attended in Chicago on February 15.
“We’ve gone from a department of 20-25 generalists to 35 specialists,” said Matthew Doubleday, senior vice president of marketing at Wintust Financial Corp., on one of the event’s panels discussing the move from generalist to specialist.
Indeed, gone for many marketing departments and agencies are the “Mad Men” days of generalist buckets of “Creatives” and “Account Executives.” In are titles like “SEO Specialist,” “Email Marketing Manager,” and “Banner Ad Copywriter.” Rather than looking to employ many people who bill themselves as jacks-of-all-trades when it comes to marketing skills, firms are identifying the specific tools and disciplines they need and hiring people or agencies with deep experience in those areas.
And if internal marketing departments don’t employ a specialist in a given area, they’re not afraid to go outside the organization and hire them on a project-basis to get the work done, according to Doubleday and other financial marketing executives featured at the Gramercy event.
Whether it be internal employees, freelancers or outside agencies, more and more companies find it efficient to operate in a specialist model, allowing them to rapidly deliver precise marketing needs, rather than hoping an internal generalist can do an adequate job learning a specialized skill.
This provides departments with an added level of flexibility in an increasingly customized marketing world, the financial marketing executives at the Gramercy forum said, where one client or project looks completely different from another.
How Specialization Shapes WFC’s Perspective
Wentworth Financial Communications is a prime example of the trend of financial services marketers relying on specialists. In fact, we think that our decision to narrow the scope of the services we offer and the industries we serve is what allows us to deliver the caliber of writing that our clients demand.
We’re not a general, full-service marketing and communications agency; we’re a team of writers, editors, and designers who focus on creating thought-leadership content for our clients. We don’t work with clients across industries, or even clients that are primarily trying to reach B2B audiences. Instead, we focus on the financial services industry, specifically institutional asset management, private wealth management, investment banking, private equity and venture capital, accounting, and consulting.
We do this because we feel that we can provide the most value focusing on this specialty, instead of trying to be all things to every company that has a need for business-savvy writers, communications consultants, branding specialists, or digital marketers.
Does that mean that we’re not capable of taking on work that doesn’t fit neatly into this bucket?
Of course not.
A large part of what we provide clients isn’t just writing and designing, for instance, a white paper or investor letter. It’s helping clients understand the best channels for delivering their thought leadership—whether it be through an expansive email marketing campaign, over specific social media channels, or through interactive web pages, audio, or video to bring their content to life.
At our core, however, we’re writers with deep experience and interest in financial services.
Not Overlooking the Value of Generalists
While much of the financial services marketing world is shifting toward the specialist model, it’s important to not ignore the valuable role that generalists still play. To be sure, not everyone agrees with this specialty-based model—and for good reason.
Given the rapid pace of technological change, it’s impossible to know what tools or skills will be essential to your marketing team three years from now. Plus, even if you did have perfect foresight, you would still need people who have the ability to work across these disciplines and pull everything together.
Just as asset managers preach the value of diversifying portfolios to optimize risk-adjusted returns, we believe that financial marketing departments should build teams that are diversified across specialists and generalists.
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About the Author
Frank Kalman is the chief operations officer at Wentworth Financial Communications. Frank and the team of writers and editors at WFC help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing.