68: Taking a Look at Provenir’s Marketing Risks and Their Path Towards In-House Communication Distribution

Mar 9, 2018

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The term “marketing risks” is not often heard in the financial technology industry, but Adi Bachar-Reske, Global Head of Marketing at Provenir, is making it commonplace. She has overturned the company’s communication strategies and is sharing her insights on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

In her conversation with Drew, Adi explains how Provenir went from using a third-party communication distribution company to handling all of their press releases and supporting content themselves. She also fully explains why Provenir seeks to help financial lenders make better, faster decisions.

Taking marketing risks is one way to ensure your company stands out from the competition, even though it takes courage as a CMO. Drew shares his top four qualities for entrepreneurs as well as why you should avoid too many micro-campaigns all on this episode.

You’ll enjoy Drew and Adi’s conversation, and it’ll leave you thinking, so be sure to listen.

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What You’ll Learn

[2:07] Drew introduces his guest for this episode, Adi Bachar-Reske, Global Head of Marketing at Provenir
[3:33] Adi’s approach and philosophy for risk-taking in marketing
[10:17] Why Provenir decided to go with in-house communication strategies
[14:07] The content that Adi created and the mechanisms they used to direct customers
[17:00] Viewing new campaign strategies from an evaluation standpoint
[19:23] The full story behind how Adi brought Provenir’s marketing in-house
[21:10] Why you should avoid too many micro-campaigns that drive leads but don’t add up to a bigger story
[24:01] Provenir’s main goal as viewed through a car lease example
[30:00] Adi’s go-to inspirational resources for marketing risks and CMO advice
[32:42] Adi looks forward into the rest of 2018 and talks about the challenges she hopes to tackle

Provenir’s main focus within financial technology and why empowering people to make better, faster decisions is so important

Provenir strives to orchestrate a company’s decision making processes for customers. Adi first experienced this decision-making dilemma after wanting to lease her third car from the same company in four years. Even though the company knew her as a customer and was familiar with her positive financial history, the company still made her wait over 48 hours before they would approve another lease agreement. She believes that decision making needs to be faster, more automated, and that you should never make a customer wait while you decide on whether or not to take their business because it gives them time to go to your competitors. That’s what Provenir prevents. They empower lenders to make better decisions faster and enables them to provide their customers with an even better experience. Adi shares some great anecdotes with Drew about why automating decisions is so critical to a company’s success and you don’t want to miss them.

The path towards in-house communication strategies and how Adi artfully crafted this process from start to finish

Even though working with public relations organizations has been an industry standard for years. Adi and her team at Provenir recently decided to create and distribute their own in-house press releases. This decision came after a few of their self-published blog posts received large amounts of feedback and engagement. Journalists were attracted to the company and they connected with their audiences even without the third party assistance. While bringing communications in-house, Adi realized that there were a number of needs that now needed to be fulfilled by their team: create a CRM database, produce content to follow up each press release, measure the impact, etc. No one could do all of this work on their own, which is why Adi has teams across the world working on these communication and marketing strategies. She tells Drew that there are always trade-offs for bringing work in-house, but that it was definitely a successful marketing risk that Provenir took. To hear all about Adi’s challenges and successes with this venture, be sure to listen to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Taking strategic marketing risks can provide greater benefits, and your company can learn from Adi’s successes at Provenir

There are four main qualities that Drew encourages every CMO to have: courage, artfulness, thoughtfulness, and scientificness. Of these, he believes that courage is the most essential and the one in shortest supply. Taking marketing risks can be difficult but it is necessary even in financial industries. If your team decides to go after a risky marketing venture rather than going with the standard methods and it’s successful, the payoffs will be far greater. You can learn from Provenir’s recent in-house communications successes and adapt their strategies to your company. Taking the initial steps is often the most challenging part, and requires every bit of courage that you have as a CMO. For inspiration, be sure to check out Adi’s story on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Connect With Adi:

Provenir’s company team webpage
Adi’s Provenir author webpage
Connect with Adi on LinkedIn
Follow Adi on Twitter
Follow Adi on Facebook
Follow Adi on Medium

Resources & People Mentioned

Adi’s article on chocolate-cinnamon cake
Provenir blog article: “Is Google Picking on the Payday Lending Industry?”
Provenir’s chosen database service - Hubspot
PR Newswire website
Inbound conferences
Stratabeat B2B marketing agency
BOOK: “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business”

Connect with Drew