Marketing a financial services company offers many challenges and opportunities, especially in today’s digital world. Which channels should you focus your limited budget on? You cannot do everything, so you need to be strategic.
The “marketing mix” you choose (i.e. your blend of marketing tactics) will be highly specific to your own goals, strategy, business structure/processes and clients. Yet the list of tactics on offer to financial firms is broadly the same. In this article, we explore ten possible options from that list.
We hope you find the pros, cons and information here about each marketing tactic helpful. If you’d like to find out more or discuss your own marketing project or campaign, please get in touch to arrange a free, no-commitment marketing consultation with our team.
#1 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Google is the biggest player in the UK’s search engine market in 2021, with the majority of desktop and Android users still preferring it. With such high volumes of people using Google to search for content, information and solutions to problems, it can be hugely beneficial for a financial firm to appears at the top of the relevant search results.
This process is known as SEO, and SEO for the financial sector is one area where we specialise here at CreativeAdviser.
#2 Pay Per Click (PPC) in Search
Financial firms can strive to get to the top of Google search results organically, or they can pay to achieve them. This is known as PPC marketing, and it involves paying the platform (e.g. Google Ads) for each click a user performs on your adverts. It can be expensive, as other firms drive up the cost per click via the “auction” process.
Yet PPC can be a powerful way to generate traffic and leads – with the right campaign.
#3 Social Media Outreach
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are sometimes used by financial firms to increase their brand exposure, customer engagement and lead generation. For instance, financial planners might use their LinkedIn profile to send personalised messages to their target clients – hoping to arrange a free consultation and bring them on board.
This type of financial marketing can take time to gain traction. However, it is growing in effectiveness with new automations which take out a lot of the legwork involved.
#4 Email Outreach
Under GDPR, it is now ill-advised for financial firms to buy email lists from vendors and then send out mail shots in a “cold email” campaign. Yet there are still legitimate, effective ways to build up your list and send out relevant, value-driven messages to prospects which deliver strong engagement.
Consider which channels you might use to build up your list – including PPC, SEO and other digital avenues. Again, many automation tools now exist to help you do this without taking up too much time.
#5 Content Marketing
Articles, videos and guides can be powerful ways to draw the attention of your target audience and drive action. For instance, does your financial firm have any relationships within mainstream media outlets such as Professional Adviser, The Financial Times or another prominent blog with lots of readers? If so, perhaps you could offer to write an article for them – linking back to your website.
#6 Direct Mail
Today’s world of marketing is now highly digitised. Yet that does not mean that there is no longer any place for offline forms of marketing. Printed media, for example, can still be a powerful way to reach target clients – especially if they are not particularly active online.
Direct mail is a good case in point. Here, you could produce 100 leaflets/brochures for a distinct group (e.g. CEOs in XYZ industry/region) and post it out. Making sure you include relevant, useful information and a compelling call to action, this tactic could be a good way to gain interest and new enquiries.
#7 Social Advertising
Looking to promote your webinar on pensions to over-50s within a particular geographic region? A tool like Facebook Ads could be a great way to do it. You can be very specific with your targeting, but bear in mind that social platforms have a strong business incentive to keep your audience on the platform.
This can make it difficult to convince people to click on an ad which takes them to an external landing page, for instance. As such, you might want to consider driving people to your Facebook business page, or attracting sign-ups using Facebook Lead Ads.
#8 Client Newsletters
Want to increase client engagement with your brand and also encourage referrals? Client newsletters can be a great way to achieve both. For instance, an investment manager may offer a weekly “market round up” to their investor clients – a resource which is so useful, some of the recipients even forward it on to friends, family and colleagues. There is a lot of work, however, in designing and managing a client newsletter – even setting aside the content creation involved.
#9 PPC for Display & Remarketing
Woudn’t it be great to “pull back” those people who previously saw your website, who were interested but didn’t complete the call to action? Remarketing is a powerful marketing tactic because it allows you to show valuable content to these types of people on other websites they visit. This is a type of “display advertising”, which itself is a powerful way to extend brand reach beyond the search engines.
Whilst display ads are usually cheaper than search ads, they can be harder to achieve a conversion action.
#10 YouTube Marketing
As the world’s second-largest search engine, YouTube is a hard one for financial firms to ignore in their financial marketing. Yet the curious thing is that most do. Perhaps decision-makers feel like their audience is not active there, or that the workload involved is too great. In any case, it’s worth considering again whether video marketing (e.g. on Vimeo or YouTube) could be a viable way to grow your following and market engagement in 2021.
