Top 7 Financial Services Marketing and Advertising Tips & Strategies
The financial industry is not a glamorous one. Many may even find it somewhat dull. Hence, it is not the easiest of tasks to execute a successful marketing plan for financial services. Marketing a financial institution, product, or service is not easy unless you have the right marketing strategy.
So, the question here becomes how you can create successful marketing campaigns for financial products or services. There is no one one-step trick that can magically give you the desired results. However, the proper marketing and advertising tips and strategies can bring you closer to your goals.
Hence, today, we will discuss some tips and strategies on how you can optimise your marketing. We will also elaborate on the significance of advertising in financial services and why your financial business needs it.
Why Do You Need A Marketing Plan For Financial Services?
The financial industry is vast, encompassing a wide variety of businesses that deals with:
- Money lending
- Money management
- Investing
- Insuring
A few years ago, every financial institution used to offer the same services to everyone. However, digital disruption has long since changed the financial industry forever. Furthermore, a 2017 research by Accenture found that 17% of financial service providers entered the industry over the past 13 years.
With more and more players entering the financial industry, it is becoming incredibly competitive. Marketing strategies for financial services are crucial for any business that wants to make it in the financial sector.
New Players, New Changes, And New Technology
Whenever new players start to enter an industry, they bring in new products or services to make themselves stand out. These new products or services are technology-driven to make the customer experience smooth and streamlined.
The use of new technology-driven financial products and services often leads to radical changes. It may even redefine how you do business. With so many options available, the marketing of financial services has become a necessity for financial service providers.
Automated Marketing Tools
Just like technology helped financial services optimise their operations and services, it can also help you optimise your marketing efforts. With advanced automated marketing tools like PostGrid, you can even automate offline marketing strategies like direct mail.
Financial institutions should use automated marketing tools whenever possible to save valuable time and money. Furthermore, automation also takes away the risk of manual error from your advertising in financial services. Some automation tools like PostGrid even offer specialised marketing services for the finance industry.
7 Most Effective Marketing Strategies For Financial Services
Acknowledging that your financial institution or organisation needs advanced marketing strategies is the first step to reaching your revenue goals. But, how do you make sure that your advertising in financial services yields the desired results?
The most convenient and logical step would be to use tried and proven methods for marketing your financial business. Here is a list of some of the most effective marketing strategies for financial services to get the desired results or ROI.
#1 Automated Direct Mail Campaign
Did you know that direct mail campaigns offer a higher response rate and ROI (Return On Investment) than most online marketing strategies? Companies have long used direct mail for the marketing of financial services. However, the growing customer database made it increasingly challenging to run direct mail campaigns.
Are you wondering how good the response rate for direct mail campaigns is? Read our blog, “Direct Mail Response Rate“, to find out!
Unlike other online marketing methods like email campaigns, making the target read your direct mail is not that difficult using direct mail. A feasible mailer is not so easy to ignore compared to an unopened email that can remain unread until eternity.
Carefully Choose Your Direct Mail Automation Tool
There are several direct mail automation tools available today, making choosing the right tool even more difficult. One thing you should look for in a direct mail automation tool is full automation capability.
It means the tool you choose should be able to personalise, print, and deliver your direct mail to the target audience. Tools like PostGrid offer full automation capability to customers and take care of all aspects of your direct mail advertising in financial services.
Advanced Targeting And Tracking Features
Direct mail tools like PostGrid come equipped with several additional features and capabilities that make marketing easier for businesses. You can even use PostGrid’s address validation tool to validate the addresses of your target audience.
It ensures that your advertising in financial services using mailers reaches its destination without fail. Furthermore, you also get access to advanced features like geocoding, which enables you to map the location of your target audience. You can even track the deliverability of your mailers and optimise your campaign based on the insights.
#2 Create Trust
In the financial industry, there isn’t anything more important than trust. However, it is also the hardest thing to come by, regardless of how hard you work for it. Consumer behaviour has come to the point where they even check out the reviews of grocery stores online before using them.
Hence, you can imagine how hard it is to convince customers, especially millennials, to trust your brand when it comes to matters concerning money. The back-to-back news or stories on financial crises, misdeeds, data breaches, etc., do not comfort the customers either.
Build Social Proof And Promote Values
Building social proof is an effective way to build trust among your target audience. However, merely making social proof is not enough to gain your customer’s confidence. To ensure your advertising in financial services works and garners the trust of your customers, you need to promote values that your prospects hold dear.
For example, you can try implementing special events to help the elderly or homeless. You can then talk about the event on your social media handles and share pictures and videos. The more aligned you are with customer values, the more trusting they become of your brand.
Personalisation
Personalisation is another way to build trust with your prospects through advertising in financial services. The first thing you need to understand is that financial services are very personal to people. For most people, their dreams depend on the financial assistance you provide.
Hence, your marketing approach needs to have a personal touch regarding financial services marketing. Personalising your financial marketing strategies is more manageable by using advanced automation tools like PostGrid.
For example, you can easily connect PostGrid’s advanced direct mail system with your CRM. You can print personalised adverse action letters, privacy notices, etc. and mail them with just a button click. Similarly, you can use tools with such capabilities for all your marketing channels, online and offline.
Leverage Existing Customers
Leveraging your existing customers is an excellent way for financial institutions to establish trust among their target audience. Use your loyal clients for generating positive reviews and referrals for marketing financial products in Australia.
Think back to all the times you looked up a brand, product, or service online before purchasing. Financial services are no exception to this. If anything, generating positive reviews and referrals is crucial in the financial industry.
You can increase your odds of success by publishing reviews on multiple websites or platforms. Social media and review websites are excellent places for you to start implementing advertising in financial services via reviews.
#3 Prioritise Mobile As Your Marketing Channel
Did you know that an average Aussie spends 5.5 hours per day on their phone? In other words, a person spends almost 1/3rd of their awake time staring at their phone. At this point, it is not enough to have a mobile-friendly approach for your business and marketing operations.
Adopt A Mobile-First Approach
You need a mobile-first approach to help you get ahead of your competition. Even Google now uses a mobile-first approach in ranking sites. So, you can guess how effective and urgent it is to have mobile-first marketing strategies for financial services.
The ideal place for you to start to ensure a mobile-first approach is to create a mobile-first website. A mobile-first website will enable you to provide easy and convenient access to all your customers. It is especially true for the younger audience, including the Millennials and Gen Z. However, as we said, the mobile-first website is only the beginning.
Some essential tips for creating an app for financial services are:
- Never forget to SEO optimise your website
- Ensure that the site loads within 3 seconds
Create A Mobile App
The only thing better than a mobile-first website for your financial business is a dedicated mobile app. Does that mean you can have a non-mobile-friendly website as long as you have a dedicated mobile app? NO! A mobile-first website is a must for your marketing plan for financial services.
It is also worth noting that most people don’t even go to their financial institutions if they can meet their needs online. In most cases, the customer only visits the physical location of their financial institution once or twice a year.
When building a financial service app, you must allow the customer to manage their accounts. It should also have features so the customer can easily access all essential financial services, including statement access.
#4 Use Social Media Platforms
The marketing plan for financial services is incomplete without a good social media campaign to support it. Almost every prospective customer of your financial services is on one social media platform. Some are active on Facebook, some on Instagram, and others on LinkedIn.
Furthermore, it’s not just individual customers you can target through social media advertising in financial services. You can also target companies across all industries through social media because every top company has a noticeable social media presence.
Use Meaningful Content
The content on social media is different from your website content. It needs to be gripping and often short. However, social media content/posts also require enough information to grab the customer’s attention and interest.
Your advertising in financial services also needs to be consistent and provide value to the customers. Consider using a storytelling approach for your content, as it tends to resonate well with the audience.
You can even use humour in your social media content and become a part of the infamous meme culture. But, no matter what you do, always ensure that you maintain a positive attitude toward your content.
Educate Your Prospective Customers
Social media advertising in financial services is the best way for your financial business when you need to educate your prospects on products and services. It also lets you plant ideas in your prospective customers and introduce them to services they were unaware of.
Collect Information From The Customers
Social media offers more opportunities to interact with your customers than any other marketing channel. Additionally, social media lets you convey information to customers and enables you to collect data from customers.
Social media polls and quizzes are great examples of how you can collect valuable information from customers. The social media polls are so engaging that people rarely ever skip them. You can use the polls to ask questions, engage with customers, and generate leads.
Use Video Content
We can not ignore video content when it comes to financial services marketing. With the ever-growing popularity of video content, including on Instagram Reels and TikTok, partnering with relevant influencers can be surprisingly effective.
Video content lets you tell a story and appeal to your audience on an emotional level. Another advantage of using videos for marketing of financial services is that you can choose an individual/influencer. The influencer who speaks your target audience’s language and appeals to their genuine interests.
#5 Content is (Still) King
The catchphrase “content is king” is relatively old in digital marketing, but it remains true even in 2023. Every successful marketing campaign needs to have quality content to back it up, including for marketing plan for financial services.
However, financial institutions need to understand their audience better and develop high-quality content for their marketing campaigns. You can not create high-quality content that resonates with the audience if you do not know how to make an impactful engagement.
Use Content Across All Channels
Choosing the channel for delivering your content is crucial to ensuring your marketing of financial services is effective. You can capture key audiences by pitching relevant and attractive content in your blogs, social media channels, and your financial services app. Furthermore, your content can come in all forms, including extended features, interviews, etc.
Regularly Publish New Content
Content marketing is not a one-time process. Much like SEO, you need to optimise your content regularly. By regularly publishing new content, you can keep your customers coming back to your website and boost organic traffic.
Provide Value To Prospective And Current Customers
When we say you need to use high-quality content for your marketing of financial services, we do not mean using eloquent words and stunning images. Quality content provides value to prospective and existing customers.
The type of content you use decides what you are as a brand and what values you represent. Hence, it would be best for your financial service company to carefully establish these values with a combined effort from the sales and marketing team.
Use Relatable Content
Your content for marketing of financial services can hardly help your business if it is irrelevant to the audience. Take Millennials, for instance. You first need to understand what type of financial product or services Millennials want and then offer them that.
One of the popular online finance services preferred by millennials is online credit cards. You can pitch them with relevant content after finding a product or service your target audience is interested in.
#6 Use Social Media Influencers
We briefly talked about how social media influencers can be a part of your marketing plan for financial services when we talked about video content. Many people suspected that influencer marketing would never really take off.
But, influencer marketing is now one of the most effective marketing strategies for all businesses, including financial organisations. Your younger audience is more likely to listen to their peers than big brands and their ambassadors with whom they can’t connect.
Use Influencers For Building Awareness
Most millennials don’t even know about basic financial concepts. The younger audience does not hesitate to take financial advice from an influencer they follow on social media platforms. Several influencers specialise in providing financial advice to young people.
Such influencers are great for building awareness around your brand and its products/services. It is relatively easier for the audience to trust an influencer they follow. On top of it all, influencers use their unique presentation style, such as satire, comedy, etc., for the marketing of financial services.
Choose The Right Influencer For The Job
The success of your influencer marketing campaign depends upon the influencer you choose for the campaign. You don’t always need an influencer that creates financial content. Instead, you can pick an influencer most relevant to the financial product or service you want to sell.
For instance, your financial organisation offers financial assistance to people who want to buy a superbike. In this case, the ideal influencer is someone who creates their content on superbikes. It could be a bike stunt person or racer or something similar.
#7 Use Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising or PPC campaigns are an integral part of advertising in financial services. The best thing about PPC campaigns is their micro-targeting compatibility. It enables financial institutions to boost their website’s visibility, promote new products/services and raise brand awareness.
Use Multiple Platforms
When employing PPC campaigns for your financial organisation, you need to use multiple platforms. Don’t limit yourself to popular channels like Google Ads alone. Diversify your PPC platforms by using PPC platforms such as Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, etc.
Furthermore, advertising in financial services needs to target specific market segments you are trying to reach. Using more than one platform for running PPC campaigns can help you reach diverse audiences and optimise your marketing efforts.
Types Of Paid Ads
There are mainly five different types of paid ads you can use for PPC campaigns, and they are:
- Display Ads
- Social Media Ads
- Native Ads
- Search Engine Ads
- Video Ads
Display ads include the banner and image ads that we often see appear on websites. Social media ads include paid advertisements and sponsored posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Native ads are the recommendations you get on your feeds on different websites and apps. Search engine ads usually refer to Google ads due to their significant dominance. However, Bing also provides a reliable platform for search engine PPC campaigns. Video ads are content-rich and highly informative, ideal for advertising in financial services.
Conclusion
Marketing strategies for financial services are constantly changing and evolving. In 2023, you can no longer afford to neglect new and technology-driven solutions. It is high time financial organisations expand their marketing efforts to online and offline marketing channels.
Automation is a must for streamlining your marketing plan for financial services. With advanced automation tools like PostGrid, you can easily optimise your direct mail marketing campaigns. You can personalise, print, and deliver marketing mailers to your prospects.
Advanced automation tools like PostGrid can also help you streamline your communication with customers. Financial organisations can personalise and send important documents like adverse action letters, collection letters, etc., to their customers.
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The post Financial Services Marketing and Advertising Tips & Strategies appeared first on PostGrid.
source https://www.postgrid.com.au/financial-services-marketing-advertising-strategies/
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