Digital Marketing and The Financial Services Industry Update

It's fair to say that digital marketing is surpassing traditional marketing methods. Across every industry, businesses are increasing their digital marketing budgets exponentially, while simultaneously decreasing their spend on traditional marketing methods. One of the industries that digital marketing is impacting the most is the financial services sector.

Initial Push Back on Digital Marketing

Historically, the financial services sector has been hesitant to integrate digital marketing into their overall marketing strategy. Financial advisors were more focused on their client returns than their wealth management brand. Fast forward to 2019, and digital marketing is no longer optional for financial service firms. With consumers evolving and demanding more, digital marketing meets the needs of the modern buyer, and financial marketers are taking note.

Social Media Works

The financial services sector has been slow to integrate social media into their marketing mix due to fear of compliance, and a perceived lack of value in social media and social media marketing.

Financial marketers who have begun integrating social media strategy into their overall marketing plans are finding success because of the behavioral habits of the modern consumer.

A great deal of consumers free time is spent on social media platforms. eMarketer research shows US citizens (aged 18+) spend 43 minutes per day on Facebook. Research from 2017 shows the average person spent 1163 minutes per month on YouTube. This equals to a little over 38 minutes a day. Being where your customers are matters.

Here are some of the benefits of integrating social media into your financial marketing strategy:

• Enhanced customer service — Social media platforms offer customers another touch point to interact with your brand. Whether you're an individual financial advisor, a large corporate bank, or an investment firm, you can increase your customer service standards with social media. If you are worried about compliance, simply keep all communications stored and supervised per FINRA guidelines, and use your discretion to determine which types of communication should be kept to other touch points.
• Increased brand trust and humanization — Only 32% of people say that they have confidence in banks. The financial services industry has a wrongful reputation of being distrustful. Social media offers financial services marketers a chance to humanize their brand, and build trust between themselves and potential new clients.
• Marketing opportunities — As mentioned earlier, a great deal of the modern consumer's time is spent browsing social media feeds. With financial marketers integrating social media into their overall marketing plans, opportunities for social media marketing open up as well. Social media marketing offers financial marketers the opportunity to target very specific audiences, due to the large amount of information collected by social platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest offer advertising services at quite the reasonable cost.

ROI and Data

With digital marketing redefining the amount of data access financial services marketers have, it is easy to track where each sale began, and where each conversion happened. Tracking ROI on traditional, outbound marketing strategies can be challenging. It is difficult to tell how many new customers were attributed to specific actions or advertisements. Data is a crucial aspect of the financial services sector, and financial marketing is no exception.

Data is also being used to inform future marketing decisions. All-in-one data platforms like HubSpot make it easy to create campaigns using the Campaigns feature. From here, you can easily group assets including blog content, social media efforts, landing or website pages, CTA's, and workflows together under one singular effort. From here, you can explore how these assets attributed to new contacts, revenue, and more, which can also help you inform your future marketing decisions.

Marketing for Personalized Experiences

Digital marketing has opened the doors to the idea of personalized content. Digital marketing is personal, with marketing reaching consumers at their pace on their personal devices. For financial marketers, this has caused a shift in thinking about who they're marketing to.

The idea of writing for your buyer personas, and creating personalized content around these personas, is becoming a necessity for financial marketers. Content that is written for your ideal customers, that helps them navigate their daily struggles and pain points, helps you nurture your relationship with your future clients.

Websites for Financial Advisors

The final and arguably most important piece of the 'digital marketing for financial services' puzzle is your website. Your website is often the backbone of your digital presence — as your social media, data, and marketing strategy all rely on your website for different reasons. Financial marketers are finally starting to shift towards the mindset of prioritizing websites.

Research shows that 48 percent of people say that a website’s design is the #1 factor they use when determining the credibility of a business. As a financial advisor, credibility can make or break your business, which means a website that functions well and represents your business isn't an option.

Make sure your financial advisor website has the following elements:

• Branded — Keep your brand imagery consistent across your website to add to your credibility
• Mobile-Friendly — Over 70 percent of web traffic happens on mobile devices. Keep your website optimized for mobile users so they have the best experience no matter what device they use.
• Search Engine Optimized — Your website pages should be optimized for important keywords search engine optimized, informative pages that clearly explain who you are, what you do, and why you are the right choice for a clients' business
• Secure — an SSL certificate keeps your visitors safe, and Google will even ding you in the search engine results pages if you don't have one.
• Easy to Use — Keep user experience at the forefront of your website design process. Your website should have a menu structure that makes your site easy to navigate. Contact forms that make it easy for your future clients to get in touch with you are a huge plus.

Digital marketing is changing the way financial marketers think, plan, and execute their marketing strategies. If you are finding it difficult to keep up with the modern way of marketing, contact a financial marketing consultant you can trust. They will be able to help you integrate social media and personalized marketing into your business, as well as sufficiently analyze your digital marketing efforts for success and error.

If you want to see double-digit growth, contact The Diamond Group. As a HubSpot Agency Partner, we believe in the inbound methodology. We are a marketing group that offers supercharged website design and inbound marketing solutions that maximizes your businesses potential. Whether you need a custom web design, a full inbound marketing strategy, or just want double-digit growth, The Diamond Group has your back.