How one financial firm successfully rebranded — and reached millions of consumers in the process

JG: What impact has the aging of the advisor population had on your marketing strategies?

AG: We work with financial professionals across all our businesses, and each industry has its nuances. What we're focused on is listening to, and working closely with our advisors and agents to provide products, training, and support that help them engage with clients and offer products to meet their unique financial needs.

One example is the social media training we've provided to a select group of the advisors affiliated with our registered broker-dealer, Voya Financial Advisors. Because we work in a highly regulated industry, we partner with a company that enables us to track all of our social media activity. We work with that same company to train our advisors in the use of social media and offer them access to Voya's social channels once they understand the process. This gives them another avenue to communicate with clients using pre-approved and original content.

JG: What are the roles of content marketing and social media marketing in your overall strategy? 

AG: I'm a big proponent of an integrated marketing strategy. Voya wants people to understand that it's never too early — or too late — to plan for retirement, so we're trying to reach consumers of all ages. Television commercials, print ads, and social media activity each resonate more effectively with different age groups, so we make sure we have a robust presence on a variety of channels.

But social media requires an entirely different approach from traditional media. If you're too self-promotional, you run the risk of losing people. So we're always trying to think of ways to provide information that's useful to our followers. 

A great example is our Facebook Live Q&A series, which has grown exponentially in engagement over the past year. Each quarter, Voya hosts an online, one-hour open forum where our 200,000 Facebook followers can have their retirement and personal finance questions answered by a professional financial advisor. Each Q&A is devoted to a specific topic or theme. These forums allow us to interact real-time in a personalized manner with our social media audience, and they provide our followers with information to help guide their retirement strategy. It's the ultimate win-win.

We're also active on LinkedIn and YouTube, and we have 54,000 followers on Twitter. We often leverage byline articles, interviews, and thought leadership pieces on our website and social channels to keep our content fresh and offer consumers financial services tips and guidance from leaders in the industry.

JG: By all accounts, it sounds like the Voya Born to Save campaign was a success. Do you plan to repeat it, or do you have other campaigns in the works?

AG: I would say … stay tuned! We're thrilled with the response we've received from Voya Born to Save. I'll give a quick recap in case any of your readers aren't familiar with the program.

We launched this national campaign in celebration of National Save for Retirement Week. The morning of October 20, 2014, we announced that every baby born that day in the U.S. would be eligible to receive a $500 mutual fund investment as a head start on their retirement savings. The promotion kicked off with ads and editorial coverage in a number of major news outlets, as well as a boosted social media campaign – and that momentum continued throughout the week, culminating with a visit to the New York Stock Exchange. The combination of print advertising, and traditional and social media allowed us to help educate millions of Americans about the importance of early saving. 

We want to be recognized as America's Retirement Company^TM, so we're always looking for innovative ways to reach our customers with messages about retirement readiness. So, stay tuned. We anticipate more exciting programs like this at Voya!