Challenge

In recent years, we found that some marketing tactics like advertising were having a much lower impact and the associated media costs were too high.  We were of course familiar with social media – many of us, me included, used Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as part of our daily lives.  

We saw social as a potentially low-cost way to have a high impact, especially since research showed our target audiences were rapidly adopting social as a way of getting information. The challenge however was not setting up accounts and distributing information.  It was with our compliance colleagues, who were concerned about the liabilities raised through what they saw as an uncontrollable channel. Their initial reaction to our using social media was an unqualified, unhesitating “No.”

Solution

I was determined to find a way to leverage social channels. After all, our analysts and strategists produce volumes of high quality, sought-after content, and the highly individual nature of social media gave us a good opportunity to strengthen the brand. So we launched a pilot program, setting up Twitter accounts for a handful of our more prolific analysts who covered higher profile industries.  We invited compliance to our first meeting, and working together developed comprehensive submission and approval processes to ensure that all tweets were compliant.  Leveraging software solutions which enabled retention and measurement, we gained the trust of our colleagues and over several months phased out the most restrictive approval procedures and grew more nimble in our posting.

Since then, we’ve seen engagement levels consistently rising, and have begun to use social media alongside more traditional tactics to roll out well-integrated, effective marketing campaigns.

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