What is Marketing in finance?
Banks, brokers and insurers have a number of specialist areas. One of the most important is marketing. Indeed, many banks, brokers and insurers offer a wider range of marketing positions than any other sector of the economy.
As a career, marketing offers a multitude of options. It covers everything from planning and executing advertising campaigns to complex analysis of customer behaviour. It also includes press and public relations. Within each of these areas, there will be a wide range of both strategic and operational roles – all of them vital in ensuring that the organisation’s brand is projected in the right way to the right audiences, and that both product and customer strategies are based on proper analysis.
If I work in Marketing what will I be doing?
There are a number of activities you may be involved in Financial Marketing. The three main areas you will move between are:
- Media relations;
- Customer insight/research;
- Marketing and communications.
Together, these give you scope to develop your powers to persuade journalists, to measure customer behaviour, and to develop marketing activity creatively.
Marketing and public relations (PR) people act as the interface between financial services companies and the wider world.
They try to present the bank as it would like to be seen. Marketers concern themselves with ‘reputation management’, in other words how a bank’s brand is portrayed in advertising and promotional campaigns; PR people focus on how a bank appears in the media. The two roles are related, but altogether distinct as well.
However, most banks, brokers and insurers are keenly focused on the need to understand the business, so expect to do some ‘grunt work’ in a branch or elsewhere. You will also quite probably spend a lot of time outside the central marketing function, working with individual business units and getting to know their operations – both in the front line and in the unit’s management team.
You may have to demonstrate your understanding of financial services, at least showing you have a grasp of the fundamentals of the products.
How do I get a graduate scheme / internship / entry level job or career in Banking & Finance Marketing?
Obtaining a graduate scheme, internship or entry level role in Banking & Finance Marketing can be very challenging and competitive – though very achievable by getting your application, CV, interview and general approach right. You can guarantee that ninety percent of applicants for Banking & Finance Marketing roles will not know how to apply, so getting your application in the top ten percent makes things a lot more achievable.
Approaching the company in the right way will make all the difference. Combining the right approach with a strong interview (and in some cases assessment centre) writ a strong focused tailored CV will go a long way. Make sure you have gone through the free videos on this sight by entering your name and email address in the top right of this screen underneath the video. Once you have filled this in you will have instant access to everything you need to secure your career in Banking & Finance Marketing.
