Here’s an insight into how financial firm marketing works, and what you need to do to get started on your marketing strategy.
No matter what industry you work in, there are going to be areas you’re not entirely comfortable with.
Chefs need to be across cooking and managing a team; architects need to liaise with clients and embrace design; and even artists have to file tax returns.
For those wanting to grow their finance company and increase revenue, effective marketing is essential – and financial firm marketing can seem overwhelming, or at the least, an area that falls outside their everyday expertise.
The truth is, marketing for financial companies requires particular knowledge and skills – but embracing it can result in the growth of customer leads, a regular client base, and importantly, revenue.
Here’s an insight into how financial firm marketing works, and what you need to do to get started on your marketing strategy.
Define your expertise
Financial companies are competing for business in a crowded market, but in terms of marketing for finance companies, thinking small can lead to big results.
Instead of being all things to all people, drill down to particular expertise. Marketing for finance companies is often most successful when a niche area of expertise is identified and leveraged.
Perhaps your financial firm is focused on small businesses; maybe you have a strong presence in a particular field, such as construction; you might offer a service that few other others offer.
The key questions to ask are: what’s our unique selling proposition, what makes us different to our competitors, and where do we stand out from the crowd?
Find your audience
If you’re like most businesses, the answer to the question ‘who is your ideal client?’ is ‘everyone!’
In reality, once you have identified your expertise, your customer profile (sometimes known as a marketing persona) becomes clearer.
The initial stage of marketing for finance companies involves creating as detailed a profile as possible.
What sector do your clients work in? Are they largely male or female? Do they work within a particular cultural sector? It’s most important to identify their needs: what are your clients looking for?
Research and plan
You’re not the first financial services firm to undertake marketing, and planning and doing some research into the successes (or failures) of previous campaigns can help define yours.
This does not this mean copying a previous campaign – every financial company is different and what works for one may not work for another. Instead, drill down to what element worked and why.
A campaign by a financial company focusing on the health sector may have focused on the people who make up the industry in its images and copy – would this work for your potential clients?
When developing your financial firm’s marketing strategies, it’s crucial to look back on your previous marketing efforts, big and small.
Data gained from what you learned can help shape your next campaign and provides the foundation for all successful marketing.
Once you know who you want to target and what they do or don’t respond to, it’s time to plan your own marketing campaign.
Remember, every marketing campaign needs clear and measurable outcomes. It may be to increase the number of clients; it may be to gain a certain number of registered attendees for a financial seminar. All your marketing activities must be created with this end goal in mind.
Build brand awareness
For professionals who are most comfortable with numbers, equations and rules, the concept of ‘brand’ can seem a little airy-fairy.
How customers and prospective leads feel when they see your logo is hard to define and difficult to quantify. But think of it this way: growing brand recognition is simply increasing the number of people who know who you are, what you offer, and that your business is the best for them.
This is achieved by strategic targeting and messaging. Say, for example, you’re a financial firm that supports families to grow and secure their wealth. You might produce marketing content that provides tips for tax time for families with kids in childcare and promote it in parenting magazines and social media pages where new parents visit.
Generate leads
Business growth depends on supplying a steady and constant stream of potential customers you can then market to, and it requires an intimate knowledge of where the leads are and what they respond to.
You might think that in this digital age and given the abundance of platforms on which to promote your business, the opportunities are endless – but remember, every single other financial firm is out there pitching for business too.
Financial firms with marketing strategies that use landing pages have proven particularly effective in generating leads. These are pages that sit outside your website and have the singular purpose of enticing new customers.
Every word, every image, every infographic on the landing page is committed to this outcome. Often they contain promotions or special offers, and landing pages are often promoted highly on social media.
Retain clients via marketing
Once you’ve got the customer through the door, the next challenge is to keep them.
Marketing for finance companies then involves the retention stage of the buying cycle. Many financial firms have found success in targeted email campaigns.
While regular updates do serve the purpose of building your brand and keeping clients engaged, it’s the bespoke contacts that really seal the deal, and this is particularly effective using specific email campaigns and email segmentation.
Speak to the marketing experts
If you run a financial firm and are looking for clever marketing tactics tailored to the finance industry, we can help.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, that creates and delivers marketing strategies particular to finance companies.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.