Developing a Financial Marketing Strategy
Marketing in the financial services industry requires a detailed and customised approach. At Goldmine Media, we offer strategic marketing plans tailored to your unique goals and needs.
Key elements matter at every stage of your business cycle, no matter how big or small your financial services company is.
This guide aims to outline these critical components. It will help you understand and prepare for creating an effective and profitable marketing plan for your financial services firm.
Step 1: Identify Your Business Cycle Position
Recognising Your Business Cycle Stage
Understanding where your financial organisation is in the business cycle is essential. Each stage has unique characteristics and demands different strategic approaches.
Start-Up Stage
At this stage, your financial institution is new to the market. You’re working on creating a website, developing your brand, and completing FCA registration.
Expansion Stage
During expansion, your business begins to grow. Employment increases, profits rise, and you may need to adjust your prices upwards.
Peak Stage
The peak stage is when your business reaches its highest growth potential; it’s the pinnacle of your success so far.
Contraction Stage
At this point, the business starts to decline. Employee numbers may decrease, and there could be a reduction in profits and prices.
Trough Stage
In the trough stage, the organisation needs help to maintain its current state and might face significant challenges.
Remember, sometimes businesses linearly progress through these stages. For example, a company might reposition itself, causing an expansion to follow a contraction. No matter the stage, always aim to return to the peak stage of the highest growth potential.
Aligning Marketing Strategy with Business Cycle
Identifying your firm’s stage in the business cycle can inform your digital marketing campaigns. For example, during the expansion phase, you should invest more in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to speed up growth. Conversely, at the peak, it might be more beneficial to focus your marketing budget on maintaining relationships and building customer loyalty.
Step 2: Establish Your Market Position
Understanding Your Market Position
The key to successful financial marketing is understanding your business’s position in the market. Your market position involves identifying what sets your business apart and why clients should choose you over your competitors.
Competing with Price
One way to set yourself apart from competitors is through pricing. In some cases, offering lower prices can give you an edge. Some investment funds exemplified this strategy by cutting their annual management fees, which gave them an advantage over other active managers.
However, price competition has its challenges:
- What happens if competitors match your prices and you can’t reduce your costs further?
- What if you’re in the expansion phase of your business and need to raise your prices?
Creating a Distinction
The second, and often more effective, strategy is to create a unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is what sets you apart from your competitors.
You might be a financial advisor working with pension transfers or serving people in the Far East. Whatever makes you unique, embrace it and make it known to your potential clients.
Utilising Client Personas and Competitor Analysis
Use client personas and competitor analysis tools to find your unique selling point. These strategies can help you stand out in a competitive market and improve your financial services marketing plan.
Step 3: Determine Your Marketing Direction
Evaluating Market Strategy for Financial Services
Choosing to sell your financial products to your current customers or to a new group can greatly affect your business. Moreover, this decision could lead to new opportunities.
Strategy During Expansion
During the business expansion stage, question whether your current approach is sustainable.
Value Assessment During Contraction
In the contraction phase, evaluate if your products and services still hold value for your clients. Consider if you need to provide tailored financial paths for them.
Balancing Current and Potential Markets
It’s important to keep your current market and have reselling strategies. But, to keep your business at its best, you might need to find and reach out to a new audience.
Step 4: Understand Your Target Audience
Enhancing Your Marketing Plan
Your marketing strategies should look beyond basic details like gender, age, income, and location. Begin by checking if your target audience is growing or shrinking.
Understanding Your Audience
In basic terms, know your audience’s problems and determine how your services can solve these problems better than existing solutions.
For instance, if your audience has trouble with financial terms, your service could offer easy-to-understand financial advice.
You’ll likely attract and retain your audience by showing you understand their problems and can help solve them.
Decision-Making Process
Understanding how your target audience makes decisions about financial services is also essential.
- Do they rely on online research to make their financial decisions?
- Word-of-mouth recommendations from people within their social circle?
- What will build their trust in your brand?
By understanding their decision-making process, you can tailor your marketing techniques to align with their habits and preferences.
Problem-Solving Approach
Lastly, find out your audience’s problems and consider how your services can fix these better than current solutions.
For instance, if your audience struggles with understanding complex financial jargon, your service could focus on providing clear, straightforward financial advice.
You’ll likely draw in and keep your target audience by proving that you know their problems and can offer useful solutions.
Step 5: Components of an Effective Marketing Strategy
Many important parts work together to help you reach your goals, create a solid marketing plan and provide great digital experiences.
Set Clear Objectives
Your marketing plan should have clear goals that you can measure. Your goals could be getting more people to know your brand, selling products, attracting more consumers, or satisfying your current clients.
Develop Captivating Content
Making engaging content is key to any marketing plan.
This could be:
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Whitepapers and guides
All these formats should attract your audience, boost your brand and improve the user experience.
Apply SEO Techniques
Use SEO to make your content easier to find. Do this by using appropriate keywords, enhancing meta descriptions and tags, making good quality links, and bettering your online content.
Harness the Power of Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms are a good way to talk to and improve customer engagement. You can improve your marketing by regularly sharing interesting posts, chatting with your followers, and using paid ads.
Monitor and Modify
In simple terms, always check how your marketing efforts are doing and change your plan if needed. This could mean watching your website visits, how many sales you’re making, and how people interact with your social media. Use this information to make your marketing better and get better results.
The Bottom Line
Simply put, this is about how to start a financial marketing strategy. It involves several steps, such as studying the current market and setting goals for the plan. It’s also important to keep checking and improving your plan after you start it. All these steps are important and don’t have to be in any particular order.
For instance, deciding who your target audience is can change the whole plan. It might seem complicated, like a puzzle, but we’re here to help you put it all together.
How Goldmine Media Can Help
Our services include:
Furthermore, if you’d like more information on how we can assist with your brand, please contact Goldmine Media. Moreover, you can reach us by calling 0845 686 0055 or email findoutmore@goldminemedia.co.uk.
