Söderberg & Partners talk digital marketing with Nordic Morning

Söderberg & Partners is a company that knows all about risk management – after all, they are one of Sweden’s leading financial advisers and intermediaries of insurance and financial products.

For them, partnering with Nordic Morning was a calculated decision.

Matts Frost (MF), Head of Digital Sales and Marketing at Söderberg & Partners, sat down with us at Nordic Morning (NM) to discuss how they are paving the foundations for digital transformation, as well as challenges and opportunities they have encountered on their ‘innovation journey.’

NM: Hi Matts, thanks for joining us!

First question for you - please describe the essence of Söderberg & Partners?

MF: ‘Developing!’ The company never stands still - new things happen every day. I would say Söderberg & Partners really encourages employees to be creative and come up with innovative ideas.

NM: Tell us why you selected Nordic Morning as your agency partner just over a year ago?

MF: Originally we had been working with seven digital marketing suppliers, but this had negatively impacted on our ability to have one ‘consistent voice’. It was difficult to have a common thread in the way we worked and communicated, and collaboration between all the different agencies wasn’t easy. We needed standardization.

NM: Why was standardization a priority for your team?

MF: We were really early into the process of digital transformation – not just in Sweden, but in our other markets too. We realized we would always be in the process of transformation, because the world is always changing.

To help with digital transformation we needed to find the right combination between our in-house digital specialists and the competences of one agency. We needed to create a long-term strategy; this was something we didn’t have at the time.

NM: What are your biggest digital marketing priorities now and into the future?

MF: Well, it’s a buzzword, but I would say ‘content creation.’ We have started to work with different formats of content, such as video. But the most important thing we have learnt is to create content based on real knowledge of our actual customers and potential customers.

Too many campaigns only use data obtained through the last click model. You need to not only use data but interviews and other qualitative methods too. Also, everything to do with automation is also a high priority, and we are at the beginning of that journey. Even if it is easy to say you work with automation, it is not an easy process to go straight from manual procedures to automation – there’s a lot of work to do.

NM: What are some of the biggest advantages of going full-service with an agency like Nordic Morning?

MF: When we did the procurement process, we wanted an agency that really challenged us, and wasn’t afraid of asking questions. I’ll give you an example - we were going to run a campaign, but when we talked to Nordic Morning about it they told us to pause it, start from the beginning and really dig into the target groups first. We learnt a lot.

We also really got to focus on getting to know each other, so that there was a good understanding of our business and strategy. This had been a problem before. We have now established some strategies together, which have made it easier to launch ideas quickly because we now have a firm foundation; rather than every project being a blank sheet.

NM: Looking ahead to the future, what do you see as your most important focus areas?

MF: It would have to be the big transformation related to data, cookies, and how we get the understanding of our target groups.

There is a big change overall now with third party cookies following GDPR and Google’s latest announcement. The marketing sector needs to focus on how to be more transparent about how we handle user data and find a way to market without cookies.

It is a really hard question, and I think every company is figuring out how to do it. In the next five years the foundations of digital marketing will be transformed worldwide, and we’ll have to take a totally new approach to marketing.

NM: Thanks Matts! Great chatting and the best of luck with your ongoing projects with Nordic Morning!

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As a full-service partner, Nordic Morning provides all of the services from Söderberg & Partners’ former suppliers, as well as strategic advisory. These services include a wide set of capabilities such as Web & Development, SEO, Paid Marketing, Inbound & Content Marketing and Analytics.