Digital marketing for financial services is your ticket to increasing visibility, improving customer perception, building better engagement, and increasing your audience. What are some digital marketing trends and strategies for those in the financial sphere to pay attention to?
The following digital marketing trends are a must for financial services companies:
· Social media marketing
· SEO
· Content marketing
· Email marketing
· Mobile-optimized web design
· Customer reviews
· Personalization
In this guide, we’ll first delve into the benefits of digital marketing for financial services as well as some facts to know. Then we’ll share our list of the top 12 digital marketing trends and strategies for a bank or finance company to incorporate.
The Advantages of Digital Marketing for Finance and Bank Companies
According to 2021 stats from marketing resource Ruler Analytics, the average customer conversion rate for financial services is 4.3 percent.
Without digital marketing, you could be missing out on a huge share of your audience!
Digital marketing involves utilizing a series of strategies within the digital or online sphere to achieve the goals of your financial organization.
Let’s now go over the benefits of digital marketing for financial services.
Build Brand Awareness and Trust
According to Wikipedia, there are almost 5,000 banks in the United States alone as of late 2021.
Customers always have options for who they’ll entrust their money. How do you get them to choose your financial institution over any other?
Digital marketing strategies are key.
By focusing on personalizing the customer experience and bettering your customer service, you’ll begin to generate trust in your existing audience.
Redesigning your website with the user experience in mind and focusing on areas of digital marketing such as content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing can pay back dividends for financial services companies.
You’ll generate brand awareness and then build on that brand awareness so that your name recognition grows.
When leads feel like they recognize your brand even if they’ve never done business with you before, there’s an inherent sense of trust there.
You can continue to build trust throughout the customer journey to cinch a conversion.
Engage with Your Audience in Innovative Ways
The financial services industry is perhaps not the most engaging compared to retail sectors, but with an improved marketing strategy, you can find continually innovative ways to connect with your audience.
That could be through a highly personalized drip email campaign, gripping social media content, whitepapers and blog posts, email newsletter content, or your website.
Track How Your Audience Progresses Through the Sales Funnel
How does your average customer go from an inquisitive lead to a loyal customer? As you begin to utilize digital marketing for financial organizations, you can better understand how a lead finds you and what their process is.
This allows you to in turn better accommodate your customers on their way through the sales funnel, so they have a greater likelihood of sticking around until they convert and then for a good deal of time afterward.
Generate New Leads
As your financial service company prioritizes digital marketing, you’ll notice an influx of traffic to your website and your social media pages. Your email list might begin filling up as well.
Some of the leads that find you will be more qualified right off the bat, which could lead to a higher rate of conversions.
Speaking of conversions, this is the ultimate goal for financial services companies, to convert more customers and grow the business.
The measures we’ll discuss later in this guide will help you reap more of that 4.3-percent conversion rate!
Facts to Know Before Launching Your First Digital Marketing Campaign for Financial Services
As we discussed in this article on our blog, a lot of strategies that banks and other financial services use are out-of-date and difficult if not impossible to measure.
Digital marketing allows financial services companies to reach out on a global scale, which is an unparalleled marketing service that was simply unfathomable once upon a time.
Tracking the success of a digital marketing campaign is as simple as reviewing analytics. All results are quantifiable.
The costs of digital marketing are also usually more agreeable to financial services such as banks. There aren’t exorbitant television advertising fees or the costs associated with mailing 2,000 fliers.
There’s more still. If your financial services company is still relying on cold calls or warm calls to drive sales, you should at least begin supplementing that with digital marketing strategies.
According to marketing resource Act-On, more than 62 percent of financial service provider calls are driven by organic search results. It’s time to focus on that SEO!
12 Strategies and Trends of Digital Marketing for Financial Services
Now that you understand the value of digital marketing for financial services, we want to take the rest of this article and dedicate it to the pertinent strategies and trends driving this area of marketing.
1. Website Design
According to blogging resource Blogging Wizard, an Internet user will form an opinion about your website in 50 milliseconds.
Not 50 seconds, as in almost a minute, but 50 milliseconds.
Your site must be easily navigable, with visual elements that complement rather than detract from the website design. You might organize patterns and elements after the way that the eye naturally scans a page.
You need clear CTA buttons above the fold, and it’s not a bad idea to consider adding a search function that’s built into the navigation. The easier is it for someone to use your site, the better designed it is.
The site must be mobile-optimized as well so users can get the same experience whether on their smartphone or computer.
We have a smattering of financial service website design examples for your perusal. They include hedge fund site examples, bank site examples, financial services site examples, and venture capital site examples.
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2. Email Marketing
The next digital marketing strategy for financial organizations is email marketing.
As you prioritize your website design and the creation of your blog, you’ll begin to collect the contact information of customers and leads who are interested in staying in touch.
Your email list is an excellent communication tool. You can send your customers monthly or quarterly newsletters that peel back the curtain of your financial services institution and grant them a behind-the-scenes look.
You can offer exclusive offers on mortgages or life insurance through your email as well as use it as a tool to inform your customers of any changes or additional services your firm now offers.
Email can lead to more conversions as well. You can use an automated drip email campaign to guide a lead through the funnel.
While you can reply to leads in real-time, the bulk of the emails they receive would be time-based according to actions they take.
3. Personalizing the Customer Experience
A 2021 study published in Business Wire by bank company Capco surveyed 1,000 customers. While there were a lot of interesting takeaways for certain, the one that matters most to you is this.
Up to 72 percent of the respondents called personalization “highly important.”
Your financial organization can utilize machine-learning personalization, real-time personalization (that relies on historical and real-time data), or prescriptive personalization (that uses historical data) to personalize your emails, blog content, and social media content.
4. Corporate Storytelling and Personal Stories
Peeling back the curtain in your bank newsletter is a great start, but customers want more transparency from you still.
That’s why corporate storytelling is the next trend on our list of digital marketing for financial services.
Every bank or financial institution has a unique story. How can you craft yours?
Corporate storytelling creates a connection and engages with your audience while increasing trust through your transparency.
In some instances, as appropriate, you may even wish to divulge personal stories. Of course, keep the subject matter tied to your financial services firm and avoid topics like religion, sex, and politics.
5. Customer Engagement
Customer engagement is another major digital marketing trend that financial services companies cannot afford to ignore. Throughout this guide, we’ve detailed many methods for increasing customer engagement and tracking that engagement.
6. Content Marketing
To build trust and further the user experience, content marketing should be a key pillar of your digital marketing strategy.
From blog posts to whitepapers, eBooks, checklists (such as tips for saving up for retirement), podcasts, and–as we’ll talk more about momentarily–webinars and educational videos, content is still king even into the 2020s.
More so than just offering content for content’s sake, you want to produce valuable content that your audience will want to engage with, including liking, commenting, and sharing your content.
Valuable content is something your audience finds interesting, educational, or even entertaining (although maybe not so much that in the finances sector).
Whether you teach them something new or help them save money, valuable content will become the benchmark of your future marketing campaigns.
7. Webinars and Educational Videos
In finance, some topics are simply too broad or in-depth to cover in one blog post. Even an eBook wouldn’t really do a topic justice.
Your financial organization might produce webinars and educational videos instead.
These highly valuable forms of content will allow you to plumb the depths of a financial concept. In the case of a webinar, it can keep making money for your firm for a long time to come.
You can charge to access the webinar initially, charge for replays, sell a transcript, or take sections of the transcript and use them as a lead magnet to build your email list.
Video content has become increasingly valuable, and thus, your financial services company should produce videos too.
Rather than an entertaining YouTube-style skit, your videos could be question and answer sessions, video tutorials, and explainers on financial topics and concepts.
8. Social Media Marketing
Your digital marketing strategy must include social media marketing.
These days, consumers expect to see all their favorite brands on social media, including banks and financial institutions.
Building a social media presence has a slew of benefits. You’ll increase brand awareness, for starters.
Social media is a great place to cross-promote your blog content, and your ads on social media can redirect traffic back to your website.
You can also engage with your audience directly by responding to comments and answering direct messages.
The key to social media marketing for any industry is to share valuable content.
This content shouldn’t only come from you. If you find a retirement report and you know that most of your customers are of retiring age, then you might share that as well.
9. Brand Building
We’ve discussed throughout this guide how digital marketing for financial services can build a brand, and we want to underscore that point here.
Your brand is about everything you convey, from the colors of your website to your logo, the font choice you use, your slogan or catchphrase, and your tone.
Crafting your brand should be a deliberate, calculated decision made by key members of your financial services company.
The key to building a brand and strengthening it is to keep your brand consistent. Multiple people will handle your brand, but none should deviate from the brand messaging.
10. Customer Reviews
Do people love your financial services? If so, then encourage them to leave a review!
You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to write a review.
Your Google Business Profile should be complete. You might leave a reviews section open on sites like Facebook or email links to your customer to leave a review after an interaction.
Free Download
Grow your client base with these proven tactics
Receive your FREE copy of “Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors: How to Build Your Firm,” to get insights into growing your business with digital marketing.
11. SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO is how your financial services company gets found. It’s another major marketing strategy to utilize.
As we discussed in this post on our blog, the following are exemplary SEO strategies to boost your online standing:
· Use keyword optimization
· Update alt tags, meta descriptions, and title tags, incorporating keywords
· Build a sitemap so Google can index you
· Complete your Google Business Profile if you haven’t already
· Get on financial business listings
12. Chatbots
The last digital marketing strategy for financial institutions is chatbots.
You always go above and beyond to help your customers, but your company is not open 24/7. When you go close shop and go home, a chatbot bridges the gap.
The chatbot can answer questions, address complaints, and keep customers patient until a banker or accountant is back in the office to speak with them.
If you’re looking to expand your digital marketing services, you should hire a marketing firm that specializes in financial services such as Mediaboom.
With our extensive services, we can redesign your website, select ad campaigns to build brand awareness, help you create and maintain a social media presence, use email and content marketing to your benefit, and track the analytics that matter to you in real-time.
Conclusion
Digital marketing for financial services is critical for building customer engagement, generating more leads, strengthening your brand, and increasing sales. With the strategies and trends we outlined today, you should have a blueprint to follow for your own digital marketing plan.
The post Digital Marketing for Financial Services – 12 Strategies appeared first on Mediaboom.
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