When developing a marketing strategy for financial services, you must be smart enough to consider the target market, organization goals, market trends, organization weaknesses and strengths, and most importantly, the resources you have at your disposal.
Choosing an effective marketing strategy as a financial service company can help you reach your goals and focus more on growth. This article looks at some of the most effective marketing strategies for financial services you should look forward to.
1. Perform customer outreach
When creating a marketing strategy for your startup or organization, you have to research more about your customers. Know who your target customers are and learn one or two things about what they like most about your product.
Customer outreach is one of the oldest strategies that most professional marketers in financial institutions still use today. In this strategy, you simply reach out to customers to feel their need for brand awareness, education, and help.
For large companies, this strategy can be effective when they offer financial education on debt management programs. Small companies can offer a free consultation to customers on all areas of their products and services. This way, companies create awareness of the products, build loyalty, and create interest in their brands.
2. Invest in local SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the way to go if you want your business to remain visible online. When you invest in local SEO, your financial services as a company will get your company to the top of search results. This strategy emphasizes the local pack in the Google search results, making it more effective than the normal SEO.
Local SEO uses the information available on the Google My Business (GMB) account. Therefore, you should always optimize your GMB account for local and international SEO. Fill out your business listing on GMB and ensure all the useful information is included. Always include your business phone number, business category, address, business hours, coupons, specials, and photos of your business.
3. Apply omnichannel digital marketing
Omnichannel marketing, simply put, is marketing your business on more than one platform. It is all about allowing customers to access your products and services on different platforms like mobile, tablets, desktops, and many others. You should take the help of a CRM to increase demand generation, forecast sales, and measure the performance metrics across different channels that your business uses. Without a CRM it would be challenging to measure the impact of the marketing platforms.
Studies have shown that omnichannel marketing campaigns can gain up to 18.96% engagement. This is way above the single-channel campaigns, which is only 5.4%. Omnichannel campaigns also achieve up to 90% higher retention compared to single-channel campaigns.
When you choose integrated marketing campaigns for financial services, ensure it responds to all touchpoints, including adjusting to customer interactions. For example, when customers open your marketing email, there should be a link to your website landing page embedded in the email. Similarly, when customers search for your services using voice assistants like Alexa, your brand should be recommended by the device. Hence, optimizing your site for voice SEO is also crucial.
4. Educate and empower customers using content marketing
A report by Facebook IQ shows that only 8% of millennials trust financial institutions to offer them guidance. There are many reasons why this number is that low. It means financial institutions have an anthill of a task to build trust in their target customers.
To build trust for financial services, companies should adopt relationship marketing. This is employing a strategy that helps you connect and engage with your customers more personally. Content marketing inbound methodology is the best tool financial service providers can use to connect with customers.
Customer education is the most compelling content strategy in determining client loyalty to financial services.
5. Optimize your branding and messaging
When you decide to market financial services on different platforms, you want to ensure that all the content you share has a common theme and design.
It means that header images, pictures, profiles, banner ads, logos, and other elements of your message should be unique to your brand. Customers should be able to recognize your brand whenever they interact with your messaging on different platforms.
By creating familiarity and continuity in your branding and messaging, you can inform your target audience on all platforms.
Adjust your branding and marketing content for all platforms if you want to achieve results in your marketing. You should adjust the content and massage for authority, imagery, brevity, and searchability. Ensure your content is SEO-friendly if you want to improve its online visibility.
6. Apply video marketing
Video marketing is one of the best strategies you can use to engage and market your content to your prospects. According to recent research, it has been established that, on average, U.S internet users spend an average of 15 hours each week on digital video.
Also, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, which means most people are probably switching to YouTube for those ‘how to’ videos.
Most financial companies invest a lot in video marketing because it is the best tool for increasing awareness and educating customers about their products and services. At least 87% of pro marketers are saying video marketing has helped to increase their sales.
You should include these types of videos in your marketing plan if you are starting:
- Firm history – create a video explaining to your customers where your company is coming from and the steps you’ve been able to make since your establishment.
- Competitor differentiator – what makes your company stand out from the rest in the industry?
- Testimonial – use testimonial videos to convince your customers that you are the best out there.
- How-to video guides – most people are probably going on YouTube to search for a guide on doing something and navigating the financial system. You can create video guides explaining to your customers the financial market.
Final Thoughts
When you are thinking of marketing your financial service company or just putting it ahead of the rest, you should choose the most effective marketing strategy. Leverage social media, engage with your customers, and increase leads with email marketing. Apply omnichannel digital marketing, and don’t forget to research what your target audience likes in your brand.
There are many options for marketing your brand online, and you should dig more and choose the most effective channel that can help boost your sales and make you an authority in the industry.
