For Beth Stelluto, the current marketing environment is very reminiscent of Dr. Doolittle: not the eponymous doctor himself, rather his fictional two-headed llama, the Push-Me-Pull-You.
It’s an apt metaphor, really, because not only are marketers today feeling pulled in different directions, they also need to reconcile their classic “push” strategies (transmitting information out to consumers) with emerging media channels that require more of a “pull” approach (getting consumers to request information from you).
Stelluto is senior vice president of investor services marketing for financial services giant Charles Schwab, and she knows all too well the push-me-pull-you dynamic. Stelluto is charged with making sure that Charles Schwab breaks through the clutter of competing messages in a highly competitive industry. And she’s found that successfully rising to that challenge requires an artful blend of classic push (broadcast, print, out-of-home, direct mail) and modern pull (paid organic search, e-mail newsletters, customized Web pages) techniques.
“We’re seeing an escalating demand from consumers for more information,” she says. “You hear a lot that consumers are in control. Well, it’s not that we’re giving them control; they are taking it from us.”
Stelluto is all for giving consumers what they want, and in the process giving the Charles Schwab brand more relevance to the consumer. “The key is engagement, increasing the number of touch points,” she says. “We’re creating more opportunities for customers to get the information that they need from us, and in the process we’re creating a stronger relationship because Schwab is giving them what they want.” For the folks at Schwab, this has meant switching from one-time transactions to continuous relationships.
And that’s the focus of the company’s latest marketing campaign, “Talk to Chuck,” which launched in the fall of 2005. The general strategy has been to create awareness through a mass-media campaign, including TV, print and out-of-home, then to foster engagement through an integrated campaign of paid search and online banner ads, as well as a generous dose of customized marketing tools, including newsletters, Web content and sales support tools.
The success of the “Talk to Chuck” campaign lies in its integrated nature. For Stelluto, the changing face of the consumer and media landscape have made integrated campaigns a necessity. “So when you advertise on TV, it has to inform your direct mail strategy, which has to inform your online strategy, which has to inform how you e-mail,” she says. “There’s no such thing as brand-only marketing anymore. Everything has to deliver results.”
“Talk to Chuck” is, at its essence, an invitation to a conversation, a call to action. “We’re not just saying how great Charles Schwab is, we’re inviting consumers to come talk to us, and that we can help you solve the problem that you have,” says Stelluto. “We’re showing them that we understand their pain points, and we’re addressing their dissatisfaction with the industry. It’s showing them that you not only understand what their problems are, but that you know how to solve them. That’s really how you differentiate yourself.”
STARTING THE CONVERSATION
One of the key areas in which Stelluto is adding more “pull” to classically “push” channels is customer prospecting, which for Charles Schwab means getting consumers to open to new investment accounts. To accomplish this, Stelluto and her staff use a combination of online banner ads, paid search and direct mail.
You might think that banner ads would fall entirely within the “push” category, but for Stelluto, banner ads are a great opportunity to add some “pull” to the marketing mix. For example, Schwab recently ran ads on Yahoo’s finance pages inviting consumers to enter a stock symbol and receive Schwab’s rating for that stock. This not only gives immediate value to the consumer, says Stelluto, it also encourages further engagement. “If we tell them that stock has a ‘C’ rating, they can click through to find out more about equity ratings, about what that ‘C’ really means,” she says. “This gives us more time with the consumer.”
“DURING OUR RESEARCH, PEOPLE TOLD US that they want to be anonymous longer in the shopping process. It’s a value exchange: We give them the information – and the space – that they need to make a decision.”
Another series of banner ads touts Schwab’s StreetSmart Pro software, a product aimed at active traders, which for Schwab means someone who trades stock four or more times a month. The banner ads featured a series of “challenges” exhorting potential investors to show off their knowledge by identifying investment arcana, as in a recent ad that asked prospects what a “trailing stop” might be. (Basically, it’s a specific way for investors to lock in profits and minimize losses.) Prospects who clicked through could find out more about the StreetSmart Pro product, download a demo of the software, and even take part in a pop-up live chat.
Schwab has also retooled its paid-search methodology to add more “pull” by softening the sell and increasing the amount of information searchers receive. For example, previously Schwab would bid on a series of keywords, such as “retirement information,” on Internet search engines, and searchers who clicked through would encounter one in a series of eight landing pages. Prospects would fill out a form online and eight to 10 days later receive a paper retirement guide in the mail. Stelluto eventually deemed this method too slow and not interactive enough.
