Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Marta Izquierdo, EMEA head of marketing at IG exploring what it takes to be a truly glocal brand:
Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from the content mix. And I’m excited to be here today with Marta Izquierdo, who is EMEA head of marketing at IG and has over 15 years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome, Marta, thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.
Marta Izquierdo 0:31
Thank you for having me.
Carlota Pico 0:33
It’s our pleasure. It’s always great to have a local Spaniard with me on the show. Marta to get this interview started off I’d like to learn a little bit about your background, a bit about IG and how you got into your current role.
Marta Izquierdo 0:49
Yeah, so I have a background in journalism. And then I went into corporate communications with some training and experience and I joined IG almost 13 years ago, actually, it’s a long time now. I’ve been going back and forth into marketing and the business side of things on the Spanish level. So I was the marketing manager for the Spanish office and then head of Spain for about six years. And very recently, not even a year ago, I was made head of European marketing. So I’m really excited about that in such a new role. For those not familiar with IG, we’re a global company offering trading services. So we are communicating to an educated and decisive and adventurous client that wants to trade in the financial markets, and we aim to offer them the best trading experience. And the way we interpret that trading experience is not just through a state of the art platform, but also through content, education, customer service, and overall, the best platform and mobile apps out there.
Carlota Pico 1:58
Hey, excellent. Well, it’s no secret that COVID-19 has impacted industries across all fields and worldwide. So I’d love for you to walk us through best branding and storytelling practices, tips and insights for the financial service industry during these very unstable times.
Marta Izquierdo 2:18
Yeah, sure. So I think it came quite naturally to IG because we are 100% digital. And of course, we have offices in the markets we operate into. But we are digital in a sense that clients can apply for their trading accounts online and they can get them open online, find them online, trade online. So it came very naturally for us to be able to offer business continuity almost like business as usual during these very uncertain times with COVID. I think what we did really well towards our clients was a part of the – business continuity is almost like the hygiene factor right? Of course clients are expecting top level service regardless of the current situation. But we are also able to connect with them and remain relatable in these very strange times by still putting content out there. Our analysts were not recording from their homes, which I think made them much more relatable. If you’re logged in and you really need to stay at home, you’re still consuming content and you want to be up to speed with the current affairs. However, it would feel very relatable if the analyst was in a very fancy studio like in the studios that we have in our offices. Instead of that they were recording from home and they were still keeping up with the markets. They were still putting content out there in a very good shape but from home, and they even took this route of instead of wearing a suit and tie as usual, they were much more casual. I think that was a great way to connect with our audience because it’s what our clients were experiencing as well. And I think it’s important to stay relatable to them and keep the aspirational side of things. But at the same time show that you’re real. It’s not just some brand, some logo, it’s real people struggling just like everyone else. But keeping up with a great job.
Carlota Pico 4:25
Basically what you were doing is you were humanizing your in house talent in order for them to be able to connect and relate better with your audience?
Marta Izquierdo 4:35
Correct. We made a really conscious effort about making our staff, our people a priority. And it was very important for the company that everyone felt safe in their jobs and comfortable at home and we had all the resources. I think the next step was okay, now that everyone’s safe, let’s also make sure that we’re still offering the same best trading experience that I was mentioning before to our clients. And let’s show the real IG people by showing our analysts at home and recording content from home or writing articles from home. Obviously, in an article you cannot really tell, but I think it was yes, a way to humanize and to really put a face to the red logo.
Carlota Pico 5:25
Okay, what about storytelling practices? What storytelling practices have you been developing over the course of COVID-19 in order to better relate with your audience?
Marta Izquierdo 5:41
I think really, during COVID there was so much financial content to share and the financial markets, if you’ve been following, the volatility especially in March and April, it was through the roof so we really didn’t have to go very far. We didn’t have to think about story telling. It was pretty much a matter of keeping up. I think we’ve done our best in terms of storytelling, maybe earlier at quieter times when the financial markets are not going crazy like they’ve been in the past month. And I think maybe a very good example again in the Spanish office, the local team made these very nice client testimonial videos, and we did this YouTube campaign with real clients, sharing why they became traders, what they like about trading. I think the best part of it is that – and there’s like a series of videos and of course, there’s one talking about why did you choose IG as your trading provider. However, the one that we actually promoted, the one that we had paid social was not about IG, it was literally about why did you become a trader? What is it that excites you about trading? I think it was such a big success with really a quite small marketing budget, I think the reason for that is that it was completely authentic and genuine. It was real clients that we invited over to our headquarters in London. And we simply interviewed them. And you can tell in the video, there’s some footage of them hanging out with your clients, having a chat with our desks, or trading desks and having a look at the technology behind the service that we offer. And you could tell they were genuinely enjoying themselves learning more about a company. So the interviews were really candid about what each one of them likes and why they started trading and everything and that’s a very good example of how you need to put your audience on the forefront. You need to be valuable to them and you need to be really respectful of the time that they set aside for you. If someone is willing to watch a three minute video, three minutes of your time, is actually very valuable to ask and we respect that we need to give you high quality content, maybe with financial analysis around COVID time that was all we did because there was so much to cover. But for quieter periods, it’s about the trading experience and the sort of clients that we like to onboard and engage with. And I think it’s about keeping it authentic and relevant at all times.
Carlota Pico 8:24
Okay, still focusing on COVID-19. Myself, I went obviously through very uncertain times when it comes to my financial assets and also investments and one of the people that I kept on looking towards was the director of my bank who kept on reassuring me that my investments were safe, that everything was going to be okay, that yes, the markets are very volatile and they have dipped quite a lot but to keep my investments where they were because pulling them out at this moment would have or would be worse later on. So we’re also sending those type of like reassuring messages to your clients in terms of, okay, we are all experiencing very unstable and troubling times and nobody knows what the future has in store. But I want you to rest assure that we’re doing the best we able to provide you with the best analysis and also the best way forward.
Marta Izquierdo 9:23
Absolutely, and that’s one of our main USPs. I mean, we’re a very strong and secure company to trade with. When it comes to trading, we’re talking money and we’re talking volatile, fast pace investments, like very short term investments in our case, and therefore you need to pick a provider that really is stable and safe for you to trade with. We are listed on the FTSE 350. And we really make a point of we are heavily regulated, heavily compliant everywhere we operate into. This is extremely important because you will always find all the brokers that maybe operate in jurisdictions where the regulation is more lax and therefore, maybe your funds are not that safe with them as they would be with us. And also we have a over 40 year history. So obviously, you need to pick very wisely. So we were at all times reassuring clients of our stability. But also I think it’s important to notice that the main proof is that our platforms were stable, our platforms were safe and obviously you can always fund or withdraw your funds at any given time. And it’s also a matter of – our clients actually thrive in volatile times because of the type of products that we offer. As I said, it’s short term, its really fast paced investments, and therefore, they actually look forward to volatility. And they really enjoy those times where the markets are really moving very much. So I think for them, it’s not so much a matter of not wanting volatility, but really picking the safest provider to trade with.
Carlota Pico 11:24
Okay, excellent. I do want to zoom in to the millennials and also the generations Zs, according to a study published in the Financial Times over 70% of young people will manage their financial lives exclusively via digital channels by 2023. So that’s right around the corner. Keeping that in mind, what are some of the latest or hottest financial services marketing trends?
Marta Izquierdo 11:52
Yeah, that’s interesting. I think I would also mention that our client base is also very tech savvy. And I think for the target audience that we communicate to, that’s a reality already, we don’t have to wait some years, right. They can apply for our CFD or trigger accounts online, they have the account open online, they fund it digitally. So it’s all digital and that’s something that we’ve been probably leading with, for a long time. In line with that, obviously, we keep a digital journey in everything we do, from marketing to customer service, from a chat bot that we’ve been having for I don’t know how long but maybe for about five years now, to also developing really comprehensive and really exhaustive, help and support portals where you can search what you’re hoping to find. Because we find that most of the questions that we get through the chat box are pretty similar at the end of the day. Granted, its always more convenient to chat with an IG representative than to give us a phone call. However, we also find that our clients tend to prefer just searching and typing and getting an answer right away. And even if the chat box waits in line for like, two minutes which is not that bad, but still, I think it’s important to offer information that is readily available for clients to look into. And I think other than that its very important to make sure that their account opening process is really smooth, and really seamless while going digital. And that you can simply scan your ID card or whatever document you need to upload and have someone looking at it very quickly. Similarly, I think the client journey or the user journey needs to be seamless as well. I think we need to be very mindful of your audience and you need to make sure that you’re talking to them in a relevant way at any given stage, and I think that journeys are getting trickier and trickier, right? Because now with social, there’s content out there. We have the newsletter, we have the podcasts. There’s YouTube videos coming out every day. And so it’s really tricky to figure out where the user is, unless they are clients. In that case, it’s easier. But I guess it’s about really having a very detailed user journey. So you’re communicating with your audience in the right way in a relevant matter at all times.
Carlota Pico 14:35
Marta, are you also incorporating data into your strategy, like using this data in order to zoom in to your potential clients?
Marta Izquierdo 14:44
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the first step was really looking at our client base guests to make sure that we are offering the best trading experience and obviously clients are always going to be in the forefront of our mind. We need to make sure that we’re understanding what sort of technology they’re after, what sort of markets they would like to trade in. So we offer 70,000 markets to trade into, that’s a lot. But that’s precisely because we want to cater to every single one of our clients. And last financial year we had 130,000 active clients, which is, as you can imagine, very diverse, we’re a global company. And then we incorporated that into the prospect or into the brand awareness and brand consideration. So we keep a very close eye on what media they are consuming, what social media they’re using, or more specifically, the way they use it, what sort of content they’re hoping to get, what sort of analyst they would like to follow not just within IG, but also from competitors or not competitors, sometimes people from banks. So absolutely, I think data is making everyone’s lives easier, especially when it comes to communicating. As I said, you want to stay relevant to what they are hoping to get.
Carlota Pico 16:09
So, with 130,000 clients worldwide, I’m assuming that you have several different personas in your marketing strategy. So you have a persona, who might be very digitally aware and tech savvy, but then you might have the persona, who’s from an older generation that may prefer human to human interactions.
Marta Izquierdo 16:31
Correct. And not just in the interaction with our teams, our client facing teams, but also when it comes to the type of products that we offer. We recently launched turbos which are exchange traded. This was like a big pivot point for us. Because in the past in Europe for over a decade, we’ve been offering OTC products only, and we identified a real demand for extended exchange trade derivatives in there. So it’s in everything we do, from product development to of course, the platform development is used. So the mobile trading features we have 10 years to go, you would literally laugh, but the truth is our audience is really tech savvy, as I was saying. So we do work with personas, but I think the tech savy part of it is a common denominator in all of them. Again, our services are fully digital and yes, you can call us anytime and we will pick up the phone and have a really meaningful conversation about the financial markets if that’s what you’re after. But 90% of our clients would rather have a fully digital interaction with us. And and therefore it’s mainly digital that we that we focus on.
Carlota Pico 17:46
Okay, moving into localization, as IG’s Spain former country manager, what regional nuances, challenges or opportunities should marketers in mind when addressing the Spanish market in particular?
Marta Izquierdo 18:03
Yeah, I think as you were saying, we need to be mindful of the younger generations and the new waves of traders for us and of course those are much more adapted to social networks, to social content, to maybe using YouTube instead of Google right. So video is becoming more and more important. This is not groundbreaking, probably everyone listening is like yeah of course, that’s been happening for a while. But I don’t think we’re over that yet. But of course, we also cater to a slightly older audience who is still very comfortable reading articles and they’re maybe not that comfortable watching videos. Maybe they’re at their work, and they’re not that comfortable watching anything with volume. So I think it’s a matter of staying relevant to them. I think, you know what, I don’t think Spain is that different and now that I am also looking at all the European markets such as France, Germany or Italy, I don’t fundamentally see a lot of differences. I think the main thing is about staying relevant and speaking their same language. And I know this may sound cliche, but I think one really big opportunity is making sure that the local marketing teams are in constant communication with client facing teams. And they are very familiar with the terms and the vocabulary and the sort of trends that we’re seeing in our clients, I think. Just to give you an anecdote, our Madrid office has like an open plan. There are no no offices in there. And I always loved that because otherwise I wouldn’t be speaking or listening to clients on a daily basis. And as head of Spain, I really needed to stay in touch with my clients, but I was not picking up the phone and having meaningful conversations with them. So I think it was really important for me to be able to – I wasn’t actively listening but there was there were always conversations with many business teams in the background. And I think that was extremely valuable for me to understand the certain words they use, the new themes, what companies they were asking about, when cryptos became a thing how big it was, and you could really tell because every client was asking about it. So I think that’s quite important. And then I would also mention, and of course, again, purely cliche, but you really need to be glocal. You need to leverage the global tools and global teams and the expertise of someone who is more on the technical side of marketing, but you really need people on the ground. You need a team based in a market that you’re operating into. And it’s not just for the language skills, and I think more often than not in companies I see that they’re very focused on language skills. Its not the language barrier is literally living in that market, being exposed to the same news, the same advertising style and techniques and basically consuming the same information and the same content and being exposed to the same affairs that your target audience is supposed to. Otherwise, I think you would really struggle to become relatable and stay authentic to what your target audience wants to hear about.
Carlota Pico 21:23
Marta, I completely agree with you. And for those of us who are seeing our YouTube video, they can definitely see me nodding throughout your entire response. That’s actually one of the biggest tips that I give other marketing professionals as well is to watch the news, really to connect with your local audience to understand what’s happening on the ground, to understand why it matters to that particular audience. Because obviously, from the news trends we can pick up a lot on what our consumers or what our clients ultimately want or the way that they’re consuming content as well and that’s extremely important,
Marta Izquierdo 22:02
I think we tend to forget that our audience is not just consuming our content or our industry’s content, right? Our clients are not just reading financial news. And they’re not just consuming financial media. They’re full individuals, and there’s like so many facets of them. So we need to stay true to that.
Carlota Pico 22:21
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can even just look at COVID-19, for example. The health pandemic hit really strongly in Spain, back in March and April, also February a little bit, but really started in February moved into March, then April. May, we started seeing the numbers go down. And now we’re in a situation where we don’t know if we’re going to be embracing a second wave of COVID-19. But the same situation is not happening in the US. For example, the US right now is facing the most troubling part of COVID-19 that we faced back in March and April, and our marketing and our communication has to adapt to local audiences. problems, challenges and talk to them in a way that they’re able to relate to really with that audience. So I think that is a huge role in the way that we’re communicating with local audiences. And it’s important to understand what they’re going through right now, at this very moment, especially with a health crisis, because every country is approaching the health crisis in a completely different manner. In order for us to be able to really understand it, we need to understand how they’re going through this entire pandemic.
Marta Izquierdo 23:29
Exactly. And this is why I was mentioning, it’s so important for the marketing teams to be in constant communication with the client facing teams, to make sure there’s no disconnection and to make sure that we’re using the right words. And this is not just for SEO. It’s literally for everything. If you’re going to see a display banner, you want to make sure that the words you’re using are the ones that your audience would use in their minds. Otherwise, it’s probably not going to have an impact on them.
Carlota Pico 23:55
Definitely. I was working with this brand a few months ago, during the pandemic and they were doing Marketing in the UK and also marketing in Spain, and their content changed completely because whereas in the UK people were still able to go outside go for a run, gather in small groups. In Spain, we weren’t allowed to see anybody. We weren’t even allowed to leave our house. Complete lockdown. So of course, the way that we were communicating with our local audience had to change.
Marta Izquierdo 24:20
Yeah. And it was really interesting to see how big brands were really shifting really quickly and how they were able to put together really nice TV ads, for example, and you could tell they probably use stock footage because you couldn’t go out there and get like a production crew and put something together. So they were like assembling content, but it was so relevant, it really hit home for me to see some of the banks or energy companies really hitting home with their messages even if the footage was canned content. But still, it made sense. And I think it would have been a disaster for them to try to put a different message out there because all we could think of was the lockdown and the health of states. And you really you need to drop what you’re doing when something of that dimension arises. Of course you have your content plan, your marketing plan, and maybe a brand campaign waiting to go live, but hey, it wouldn’t work. You really need to have that.
Carlota Pico 25:36
Okay, I do want to put some of the theory into real life examples, although we have touched upon a few examples already. But doing a few more examples, could you walk us through some of the content marketing or promotional campaigns that you’ve led that have really exceeded all of your KPIs? So, keep So first, why did you lead a campaign on that topic in particular? What KPIs were you measuring? And what made that project special or the results that you were able to obtain?
Marta Izquierdo 26:07
Yeah so, I already mentioned a client testimonial one, I think that was really special because it had a little marketing budget behind it, we didn’t know how it would turn out. And then results were really great. I’m also thinking and linking it back to the pandemic, the Italian marketing team was working on a really nice seminar with a very famous trader, Larry Williams. And obviously, Italy was also heavily affected, the seminar should have taken place in Milan, as you can imagine, it wasn’t an option anymore. So instead of canceling or postponing, because they still thought, well, our clients are at home, they still want to trade. There are plenty of opportunities in the financial markets for them to trade. More than ever, we should really deliver this really great content that we had in store for them. So instead of cancelling, they partnered up with a TV channel and made sure to that they would broadcast the content in a very professional and high quality way. And the final result was – I can’t quite remember how many people that were expected to gather in the hotel conference room. But let’s say it may have been like 300, maybe 500 at most right. By going digital and actually doing a very high quality content for a professional TV channel and, of course, working with Larry Williams, they were able to gather, if I remember correctly, over 3000 viewers that connected to watch live. And then there was also the option to watch on demand. So it was almost like, it wasn’t just the silver lining, it actually made the whole event of success because instead of limiting themselves to Milan, they were suddenly able to broadcast to the whole market, which is really good. So I think that’s the really amazing. And that’s a very good example of, well, life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right? And another thing that we’re particularly proud of, there’s literally so much going on in Europe, we have six different local teams working on very different initiatives. But I think one that has been getting more and more successful lately is our Swedish podcast. And it’s a shame that I cannot listen because I don’t speak Swedish. However, they’re getting over a million listens now per episode. That’s amazing. And I think the part that’s making it so successful is that instead of having only our IG analyst doing content, which is good enough, because actually he is such an influencer in this market, but he’s taking advantage of his network to invite all sorts of analysts and different experts into the podcast. So again, just like we did with the client testimonials video, instead of making these about IG, we’re putting IG content out there. We’re literally just bringing good content, good quality content for our audience, they may be clients or not clients yet, and hopefully they will, at some point, they realize that they should trade with us. But for the time being, he’s just really, really committed to producing great content and tapping onto his network to make sure that the podcast is always interesting, valuable and authentic and he covers all sorts of topics. So I think that’s what makes the whole podcast a success. And I really recommend it for those of you that speak Swedish.
Carlota Pico 29:48
Those are excellent examples. Marta, thank you so much for zooming into them. I mean, it’s a great way of turning a really horrible situation into a really positive situation, especially for IG and for its clients and audience. Okay, we are moving into our set of rapid fire questions which are basically your recommendations to our audience. To get this section started off, I’d love to learn about your source of inspiration. So for example, an influencer or professional role model that you really admire?
Marta Izquierdo 30:19
Yeah. I think there are a few really remarkable women in the IG senior management team, I think that’s my main source of inspiration. Our commercial director or our chief marketing officer, they stay super focused, they’re able to really look at an array of topics and make sense out of them and stay completely strategic and keep a clear mind in in all of that chaos. I guess you’re probably looking for a more public answer. So I think, probably the influencer that I like the most or that I follow closely is probably Hillary Kerr, founder of Who What Wear. She runs these amazing podcasts. That’s probably my favorite one, its called Second Life. And she covers women that at some point in their careers decided to shift lanes and go for something completely different. And I think I find that very inspiring. And I think the way she interviews everyone is really, really smart because she finds a way to tap into so many different aspects. Not just that change in career, but also the way they went about marketing when they maybe didn’t have a lot of budget in the beginning or the way they built their network. So I would really recommend that podcast.
Carlota Pico 31:51
Okay, excellent. Now moving into a group, a publication or a book that you’d like to recommend?
Marta Izquierdo 32:01
So this year, I think the main book, other than fiction, I’ve been reading this book called The Daily Stoic, which is not self help, but it is a good book where you read one page per day. It starts with a quote by Roman philosophers. And then it gives you some insights and some words from the author Ryan Holiday. And it’s all about having clarity in thoughts and understanding what events you can control, what events you cannot control and how the only thing that you can control is your reaction to things and how to really keep your priorities aligned, and not be pushed around with urgent things. You know how urgent things are not necessarily important. During the pandemic, the lockdown with so much uncertainty, the children at home, having to work, it’s been really busy and really hectic. And I find that starting off the day reading that one page and really trying to stay focused and keep clarity of mind, it’s been really helpful. I probably wouldn’t recommend it any other year, but it’s 2020. I think we can all use a little bit of less frustration.
Carlota Pico 33:25
Yeah, no, definitely. I was about to say, I’m gonna have to buy that book myself. And especially because time is limited so only having to read one page a day is completely manageable.
Marta Izquierdo 33:39
Absolutely. It takes like five minutes and I find that you can probably read it in one minute and it’s much more about okay, thinking about it and how does this apply to my day to day situation? And of course, some of the pages are not that useful depending on your line of work and your life situation. But I think its the book read in 2020.
Carlota Pico 34:02
Okay. And last but not least, what’s your favorite app at the moment, Marta?
Marta Izquierdo 34:08
I’d love to be original but its Instagram. I found lately that traditionally I used it for it just for entertainment purposes. But lately with the Black Lives Matter movement, I’ve been using it for really like educating or re educating myself. And I’ve been doing this conscious effort of following more people of color, and really getting like a different view on things I think. I’m a Spaniard, I live in Spain. It’s not a very diverse country. I think it’s about 1.5% of the population that is black and therefore it’s not something that I am very familiar with. And I would really like to improve myself and learn more about that. And I think Instagram has been a really good source of information.
Carlota Pico 35:00
Well, those were great tips mattify thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you and to learn about experience so far.
Marta Izquierdo 35:09
Likewise, thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.
Carlota Pico 35:13
And thank you everybody for listening in to The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe. Check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every week. So keep on tuning in. Thank you again, have a fabulous day and see you next time. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai