5 Strategies To Grow Your Financial Services Business Using Digital Marketing

Highlights

Ad spending in the Digital Advertising market is projected to reach US$616.00bn in 2022.
The market's largest segment is Search Advertising with a market volume of US$260.00bn in 2022.
Financial Services represent approximately 6.1% of total digital ad market in 2022
In the Digital Advertising market, 69% of total ad spending will be generated through mobile in 2027.

Research analysts expect the digital marketing market to grow from approximately $616 billion in 2022 to over $1 trillion by 2027. More and more firms will be embracing digital marketing strategies as part of their new client acquisition and reaping its benefits. Effectively developing the tactics that direct your firm’s focus to certain targets, desired marketing actions and clearer messaging can help you achieve your growth goals in the next year. Here’s the strategies most of our clients are utilizing to effectively grow their businesses - what’s working now, with an idea or two to illustrate. Maintain an active social media presence If you want to grow your business using digital marketing, you have to establish a solid online presence, both on your own website and on social media. This includes both search engine optimization (SEO) actions on your website, and also an active presence on social media The largest advantage of social media is it gives your company a way to attract more attention without a huge financial investment. But you can’t just flog Twitter telling people they can “open an account” and see success. The simplest way to get started if your social media presence has been lackluster is to:

Decide which platforms have the largest potential target audience for your company. If your goals are to attract programmers for your team, LinkedIn might be a good place. Have more of a retail customer base? Facebook is likely to have your people. Looking for active traders and day traders? Twitter might be the place.
Make a list of every goal you might use in a social media campaign. These might include “increase followers”, “lead magnet signup”, “video views”, “qualified marketing lead” or other ideas that fit your business.
Try to plan out your posts a couple of months in advance, if possible. While it’s fine to post something in the middle about current events or respond to a breaking news item, marketing campaigns usually lay over the top of these and keep the drumbeat going.
By planning your social media calendar, you can mix up the various marketing goals you’re using on each post, which will make your channel more interesting and valuable.
Measure and track results! Track followers, impressions, clicks, conversions, and more. If you don’t see any results after giving something a good try, debrief with your team - was the problem the offer? The platform? The content? Something else? Even if you think it’s a great offer, if the market disagrees, you have to learn the lesson - just as with a trade that goes against you.

Recognize And Respond To All Reviews and Feedback According to BrightLocal, more consumers are reading online reviews than ever before. In 2021, 77% of them always or regularly read them when browsing for local businesses (up from 60% in 2020). This can be a tough one to embrace as an organization, especially when you have compliance and regulatory demands that the public often doesn’t understand or appreciate. But responding to positive AND negative feedback and reviews can help you manage the perception of your business, and those responses are often read by prospective clients when they are deciding whether to open an account or not. Having reasonable, sincere responses - that don’t point the finger of blame at the reviewer - help prospective clients see what it’s like to interact with your team. When responding, you should:

Respond quickly
Thank the customer for their feedback, even if negative
Acknowledge the problem, if the customer had one
Explain how you plan to solve the problem, to the degree you are able to publicly
Take the discussion away from social media for further follow up or resolution
Follow up with the customer after the solution is in place

Work With Market Influencers Other industries and businesses utilize influencers as an effective way to get their message out. This can go well, or look ridiculous. But the technique is one that has been used by brokerages, advisors, CMTs and more for decades. I’ve noticed that using this kind of “business development” channel for new account acquisition seems to ebb and flow over years, often tied to how much M&A activity is going on in the space. Partnering with educators, media personalities, and other market commentators can drive awareness, leads, and even new accounts. Always look first for partners that fit your brand (have similar ideals, audience, discuss the same instruments your customers frequently trade). Different compliance departments look at where the line is in these kinds of arrangements very, very differently. Over the years I’ve seen everything from a total ban on outside partnerships to very deep, very public relationships. (Of course, as a marketing person, my view is more in line with the latter than the former - but my advice is to openly discuss in advance with your compliance team how various arrangements might work, and discuss every deal term you could imagine to get their feedback before talking with a prospective partner about it.) Most of the time, the best partners are not registered parties, so it usually is a very difficult thing to do any sort of revenue sharing with these partners. But think creatively and develop marketing strategies that support the partner, gain the results you’re looking for, and track the metrics over time so ROI stays positive. Organize Online or Virtual Events By targeting the right audience at the right time, you can reach your prospects at different stages of their decisionmaking. Webinars are good examples of virtual events, particularly after the pandemic brought so many people’s understanding of Zoom and other software to the forefront. A study of virtual events recently said that the average webinar attendee conversion rate is 61%, also. There’s a great opportunity if you can get your prospect to attend an online event. The biggest mistakes I see in webinar planning are being too broad about the target audience - especially doing the same event for both existing customers and prospects. Use webinars to highlight the unique selling points or things that make your offering different than your competitors. Add value by educating your prospective clients, and add value to your existing clients by showing them how to get the most out of their relationship with your firm. Competitive Research and Positioning Stay on top of how your competitors are positioning themselves in the market, so you can refine your own marketing strategies to counter their challenges and strengthen your position. Tools that can help you look at where your competitors are finding success include:

Ahrefs
Semrush
SpyFu
BuzzSumo
Moz
Searchmetrics

You can also keep tabs on their website design, copywriting, social media presence, and blog to understand how they are reaching out to their prospects. Conclusion Of course, it can be daunting to get started and create enough momentum to move your results - just like when learning to trade. By implementing these strategies and tactics consistently, you will start to see results and learn what works best for your firm. Have any questions about these or other marketing topics? I’d be happy to answer. Skip Shean CEO, 16Wells Phone: 312.613.6591 Email: skip@16wells.com

5 Strategies To Grow Your Financial Services Business Using Digital Marketing

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