The Beginner's Guide to Digital Marketing for Financial Services
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, digital marketing for financial services is becoming a fundamental component of success. Financial marketers are investing heavily to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends and establish a strong online presence that will beat their competition. If you don't have an online marketing strategy for your financial institution, you're missing out.
This blog post explores how leading digital marketing solutions reshape how financial services connect with clients, leverage data analytics, and drive growth. Whether through search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or social media ads, it's time to explore how your business can benefit from these innovative strategies and forge lasting business partnerships in a digital-first world.
Why Do Financial Services Need Digital Marketing?
In today's online world, financial service providers must integrate digital marketing into their business strategy. According to Invoca, 90% of loan and mortgage consumers and other consumers in the financial services industry begin their journey with an online search. This initial step sets the stage for potential customers to assess their options and choose a provider that best suits their needs.
By leveraging digital channels, financial service providers can increase their visibility, provide strategically focused content, harness data analytics, and create an environment conducive to forging lasting business partnerships. There are many digital strategies a financial institution could implement, such as mobile marketing or omnichannel marketing. At Noetic Marketer, we have a proven marketing strategy that helps our serviced-based clients attract more leads and sales to their businesses.
Digital Marketing Strategy for the Financial Services Industry
At Noetic Marketer, we implement an effective lead generation strategy for our serviced-based clients, including financial services. The process includes generating leads, capturing prospect information and converting them into clients. Let's dive into each step.
Step 1: Generate Leads
The first step of digital marketing for financial services is to generate leads. Here are all the ways you can attract more clients to your business:
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: Target potential clients actively searching for financial services, ensuring your services are displayed in search engine results. Optimize your PPC campaigns with specific keywords related to your services, driving high-quality traffic to your website to increase client acquisition.
Social Media Advertising: Target potential clients through demographic and behavioural data, leading to more qualified sales leads. Design creative and innovative ads that stand out, offering new and inspiring ideas that align with current digital marketing trends.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Optimize your website with relevant keywords reflecting your services. Leverage data analytics to refine your SEO strategies and improve your search engine ranking, making you more visible to potential clients searching for your services.
Social Media Marketing: Engage with prospective clients by sharing industry news, innovative ideas, and testimonials, encouraging trust and loyalty. Build relationships through regular interaction and providing excellent quality content that resonates with your audience.
Content Marketing: Create and share access to strategically focused content that addresses your target audience's pain points and interests. Use blogs, whitepapers, and ebooks to establish your expertise, provide valuable insights, and build relationships.
Here is a Facebook ad example from Marketing Results for Fundera, a financial services company that lets business owners search and compare loan rates. This ad shows prospective business owners a sliding scale graphic of how much funding they could expect using Fundera. An ad like this is a great way to entice curiosity and encourage your target audience to provide their contact information.
Implementing any of these channels into your digital marketing strategy could help you stand out in a crowded market. However, if you want to acquire your prospects' contact information, an opt-in form can be used to capture their information.
Step 2: Capture Prospect Information
Capturing prospect information is essential for building customer relationships. This can be accomplished with a well-designed landing page or opt-in page acting as a touchpoint, providing a targeted and persuasive call-to-action for gathering your prospect's data.
Look at this example that Instapage provided from Kabbage. This landing page follows many of the best practices we implement for our clients.
Here are three best practices to create a landing page that converts:
Clear Messaging: Your landing page should clearly articulate the value proposition of your financial services. Use a compelling headline that resonates and speaks directly to your audience's needs.
Simple Design: A cluttered page can be overwhelming. Keep the design clean and focused on the action you want users to take, such as filling out a form to gain access to content or signing up for a financial services summit.
Short Opt-in Form: The form on your landing page is where you capture prospect data. It should be straightforward and only ask for essential information, such as name and email, to maximize conversion rates.
Landing pages will convert at a higher rate than your website when done right. By following these practices and consistently testing and optimizing your landing pages, you will generate valuable leads that can be converted into paying clients.
Step 3: Convert Prospects into Clients
Once you've successfully captured leads through your landing page, email marketing becomes your next powerful tool to convert these prospects into clients. Start segmenting your leads to ensure the content of your emails addresses each group's needs and interests. This personalized approach demonstrates a deep understanding of your potential clients, building trust and credibility.
Write emails with compelling subject lines and content that provides real value, such as unique insights into your firm’s services or invites to exclusive events. Remember to include clear calls-to-action that guide prospects toward the next step, whether scheduling a consultation or registering for the event. Finally, analyze data analytics to monitor the performance of your campaigns, refine your strategies, and enhance the customer experience.
An email software that we recommend using is Active Campaign. It's a versatile platform that provides various tools for email marketing, marketing automation, and customer relationship management (CRM), designed to create exceptional customer experiences. Automated email software can help you consistently deliver valuable content and personalized interactions to convert more prospects into clients and build lasting relationships.
Conclusion
Adopting digital marketing for financial services will attract more clients and ultimately grow your business. From generating leads to personalized email marketing campaigns, acquiring a new client for your business can be a repeatable and predictable process that’s more dependable than cold outreach or referrals.
With the right digital marketing strategies in place, you can ensure your business will thrive in the online landscape. That said, digital marketing for financial service institutions requires time and effort. If you’re interested in creating your own campaigns, read our previous blog post about our favourite AI marketing tools to save time.
Book a Free Consultation
If you need help with your next campaign, we offer customized, full-service digital marketing services for professional service providers. You can schedule a free consultation with one of our experts to learn more about our services and how they can help your business grow!
Who We Are
Noetic Marketer is a full-service digital marketing agency with roots in Ottawa and the GTA. We specialize in creating and optimizing digital marketing campaigns for higher education, e-commerce, professional services, and contractors.
Over the past few years, our team has developed and implemented complete digital marketing solutions for professional service providers across North America.
Our services include digital strategy consultations, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media advertising, content marketing, website design, email marketing, CRM implementation, and conversion rate optimization.
About the Author
Krystal Wiltshire first entered the digital marketing world when she interned at a small agency in Montreal, Quebec, where she discovered her knack for blog writing.
Since then, she has continuously improved her skills, working closely with small business owners and marketing teams in larger-scale businesses.
As a Digital Marketing Coordinator at Noetic Marketer, Krystal strives to create content that positions our clients’ brands or companies in a positive light and uplifts them to become industry leaders.
When she’s not working, Krystal loves to break into spontaneous dance sessions, look up new cooking recipes, and watch her favourite crime shows on Netflix.
