Digital marketing strategy
Digital media is essential for financial services companies to drive leads and sales. Yet, our research shows that many companies still need a digital marketing plan within their financial marketing strategy.
With a strategy in place, companies can take advantage of the invaluable opportunities that come with integrating digital marketing into their overall goals or having a roadmap for digital transformation.
More than ever, financial companies need guidance to make the most of digital marketing.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing allows financial services companies to promote their services or products online. It encompasses all marketing activities done through digital channels, such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, Content Marketing, Video Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing strategies and more.
Creating a digital marketing strategy
A digital marketing strategy is essential for financial services companies to stay competitive. Many financial companies lack a comprehensive digital marketing plan within their overall goals or have no roadmap for digital transformation. To make the most of your brand and to stand out from competitors, it is crucial to create an effective digital inbound marketing strategy that outlines clear objectives and strategies tailored to meet those goals.
Developing an effective digital marketing strategy involves several crucial steps:
1. Define your target audience
Understand whom you are trying to reach with your message. Identify the needs and interests of the audience so that you can tailor relevant messages.
2. Research the competition
Research other financial services companies in your industry to understand what they are doing in digital marketing and how successful they are.
3. Establish SMART Business Goals
Smart goals are a type of goal-setting strategy that involves creating specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives.
This strategy is used to identify what needs to be accomplished and how it can be achieved in a set timeframe. Smart goals can help you focus on your desired outcome while providing structure and direction for success.
Example goals include increasing website traffic or increasing financial lead generation from your website.
4. Allocate budget
Determine how much you can spend on digital marketing efforts and where to utilise your budget for maximum return on investment.
5. Choose your digital channels
Decide which digital platforms will work best for your business based on your target audience and objectives. For example, search engine optimisation might be most effective for attracting new clients, while email campaigns can help to build loyalty with existing ones.
6. Track performance
Monitor critical metrics such as website traffic, lead sources and client engagement to measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.
7. Conduct SWOT Analysis
A SWOT Analysis is a tool used to identify and analyse a business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is often used to help make strategic plans to improve a company’s operations and efficiently use resources.
8. Identify your buyer personas
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal client. It helps financial services companies better understand the needs and behaviours of their target audience to create more effective marketing strategies, products, and services. Buyer personas are based on market research, surveys, interviews, and even existing clients. They include demographic information such as age range, income level, gender, occupation and interests.
Knowing your buyer persona can help craft messages that resonate with your target audience.
By following these steps, financial companies can create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to help them achieve their business goals and drive success.
How can I create an effective Digital Marketing strategy?
The RACE planning framework is an effective way to Improve your digital marketing strategy
The RACE planning framework is a digital marketing strategy model developed by Smart Insights. It stands for Plan, Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage and provides a step-by-step approach for planning, executing, and measuring success in the digital marketing world.
Plan
A successful digital marketing strategy begins with a proper plan. To get the most out of your efforts, you should take a data-driven approach and look at how effective your current tactics are.
An omnichannel marketing approach will give you plenty of opportunities to tailor analytics, set up KPI dashboards, and establish SMART objectives. A coordinated marketing approach will allow you to build a solid strategy to improve your digital media, technology, and data utilisation to generate more leads and increase sales.
The RACE Framework is an ideal tool for financial services companies that need a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to reach their business goals. This framework follows a 5-step plan to help you acquire new leads, nurture interactions, convert leads into clients, and engage and build advocates.
By implementing this strategy, you can ensure your overall vision is supported by a fully integrated data-driven digital marketing funnel.
Reach
The Reach stage involves gaining an audience’s attention through search engine optimisation (SEO), content promotion, and advertising.
SEO involves optimising your website so prospective clients can find it easily when they search your business or industry on search engines. Quality content is essential for SEO success; creating articles, blog posts, social media posts, etc., that are interesting and informative for your target audience will help get your message across and drive more traffic to your website.
Promoting this content on social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can also help you reach a more extensive prospective client base and grow brand awareness.
Finally, targeting paid advertisements to specific audiences on these platforms can ensure your messaging reaches the people most likely to convert into clients or leads.
By focusing on these three strategies – SEO, content promotion and advertising – financial services companies will have the best chance of successfully reaching their desired target audience.
Act
The Act stage involves capturing leads or prompting a target audience to take action. This stage requires building an effective landing page and creating meaningful content to draw the user further into your website.
Your landing page design should be clear with a call to action, such as signing up for a newsletter, viewing an explainer video or downloading an informative guide. You can also use other methods like eye-catching headlines and emotional triggers in your copy to encourage readers to take the desired action.
Additionally, you should ensure that the text is easy to read and comprehend, with well-defined headings, visuals and multimedia content that draws the reader’s attention.
You can create automated email campaigns based on user behaviour or preferences to optimise your lead capture strategies further. Automated emails can help you build deeper relationships with leads by providing timely offers and information about their interests.
You can also use web push notifications to target specific users who have visited your website but have yet to complete an action, such as downloading a guide or subscribing to your newsletter. These targeted notifications will remind them of their intent and encourage them to take the desired steps towards becoming customers.
Remarketing is another effective strategy in this stage; ads displayed on social media platforms or search engine results when users search for products or services related to yours will increase the brand recall rate and make them more likely to convert into clients.
By implementing these tactics, financial services companies can effectively capture quality leads at scale and convert them into customers down the line.
Convert
The Convert stage is when leads become clients through email nurturing, remarketing campaigns and conversion rate optimisation. This stage involves providing relevant, personalised content that addresses the needs of each lead. You should segment leads into different categories and send them personalised offerings and information related to their interests.
Email nurturing campaigns should provide a more interactive experience for the user, such as integrating videos and surveys into emails, to further engage the user. These campaigns should also offer a clear call to action at the end to prompt quick responses.
Remarketing campaigns re-engage leads by targeting them with ads displaying information when they indirectly search for products related to yours on search engines or social media platforms. You can take advantage of retargeting pixels embedded in your website; this will allow you to target previously interested users with ads tailored specifically for them based on their browsing behaviour on your website.
Financial services companies can improve conversion rates by continually engaging users through multiple channels such as email, remarketing campaigns, and retargeting pixels. You should implement social proof tactics such as client reviews and testimonials into your marketing strategies; these will help build trust amongst prospective clients while creating an environment that encourages conversions.
Engage
Engage stage involves cultivating existing customers with ongoing communications such as newsletters or content upgrades.
The Engage stage involves cultivating existing clients with ongoing communications such as newsletters or content upgrades relevant to their interests. Ongoing communications can include sending them emails containing information about new services or products.
Alternatively, you can provide valuable and informative content regularly, such as webinars, blog posts, explainer videos, topical guides or factsheets. Ensure your content is tailored to your client’s needs and interests to ensure maximum engagement.
You can also use social media channels to engage existing clients further. Reposting client reviews boosts your brand visibility amongst prospective clients and creates an environment of trust. It would be best if you considered creating targeted campaigns using data from both online and offline sources to identify potential trends in client behaviour for a more personalised marketing approach.
It would help if you also strived to build meaningful relationships with clients by providing attentive service and promptly addressing any queries they may have. Meaningful relationships help increase client loyalty while improving overall engagement levels across digital channels.
Finally, you should measure the success of engagement efforts by tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTRs) and unsubscribes over time. Tracking metrics will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your engagement strategies while helping identify areas for improvement.
By implementing these tactics, you can effectively engage existing clients across digital channels and enhance the overall user experience for better retention rates over time.
