Maybe you’re different from other financial gurus. Maybe you can genuinely help individuals grow their wealth. Maybe you have what it takes to be the best financial partner that a working professional needs. But you can offer this and more only when you can reach those in need.
The best to do that in today’s time? It’s by using digital marketing.
Digital marketing has revolutionized the way we consume or sell our products or services. It is no longer restricted to door-to-door sales, cold calling, or one-sided newspaper ads.
The world is slowly being powered by technology. The web has managed to help make the world look even smaller than before by providing us with the ability to connect with individuals sitting miles apart.
You should be leveraging this digital revolution to reach your prospects and help them understand what they are missing out on if they’re not choosing your financial advisory firm.
There are plenty of ways for you to do that.
The first step is for you to build a website. A website is your virtual salesman and thus, should be built with complete focus and determination. Make sure your website adheres to the user experience principles if you wish for your customers to stick around.
Your main aim with digital marketing should be to rank this website on top of the SERPs or search engine result pages.
In this article, we have mentioned the top digital marketing strategies that you should be using to reach your potential customers.
-
Search Engine Optimization
When you are entering the world of digital, your first goal should be visibility and awareness of your brand.
Over the years, thousands and thousands of businesses have managed to transform from brick-and-mortar building to a website on the web. This only means the amount of competition you are going to face today is more than you can anticipate.
But don’t worry. There are a few strategies that you can use to outrank your competitor’s websites. The first one is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
When you optimize your website for the search engine, it means you are trying to make a few changes to your website that will result in shifting it to the top ranks.
There are two types of SEO that you must work on – on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO includes the tactics that you use to optimize the content for both search engines and the users. This is where you add the key phrases (keywords) that your prospects are using to search for solutions on the web. You must optimize and add these keywords to the title tags, meta description, first 100 words of your content, and URLs.
There are several tools for you to use and find keywords that are relevant to your website.
On-page SEO also requires you to interlink internally. Internal linking is when you link one piece of content on your website to another piece of relevant and more elaborated content on your website itself.
You can use tools like website checker to understand what all you can do to improve your on-page SEO.
On the other hand, off-page SEO is basically the strategy that you use outside of your website to rank better on the SERPs. This is focused on your credibility, popularity, and authority.
The biggest off-page SEO strategy is external linking. External linking is when you add such brilliant content to your website that others aren’t able to hold themselves back from linking your website to theirs. These are called backlinks.
You can also gain backlinks by the means of social media shares, guest blogging, or by reaching out to influencers in the finance industry to link your website to their content. Just make sure you offer them the promised quality.
When you optimize your web page for search engines, it improves the chances of your website landing on the first page of the SERPs. The better you rank, the more are the chances of your prospects finding you.
Every time you are not ranking, you are losing out on customers.
Just keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process. Do not start and then leave it in between. It won’t do you any good.
-
Search Engine Marketing
Now, what we read above about search engines was purely organic. It means you would only be paying to an SEO company (if you are not doing it by yourself). But with search engine marketing, you will also be paying a few dollars to the search engines like Google.
Search engine marketing is basically putting in money and bidding to rank on a few key phrases to get your website displayed on top of the SERPs.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose you are targeting the keyword “financial advisors in London”. Now, if your prospect searches for this particular keyword, you would be among the top searches they come across.
However, it is not as easy as it might seem.
One of the top search engine marketing strategies is PPC or pay-per-click. PPC marketing is where you pay the publisher every time a user clicks on the ads that are displayed on top of the SERPs.
When you are strategizing for PPC marketing, you will have to start by finding the relevant keywords. Once you do that, you will have to bid (the maximum value you are willing to pay per click) against others in the industry.
The higher your bid is, the higher are the chances of your ad being displayed. One thing to be careful about when doing this is, however, that you only bid on certain keywords instead of trying to rank for all of them. This will save you time and money.
Think of search engine marketing as a booster for your search engine optimization efforts.
-
Content Marketing
Content marketing strategy is what you can use to add value to the lives of your consumer.
One common phrase that still holds value is ‘content is king’. Your content is what can truly sell your services to your prospects. Content is what highlights your firm’s values, your services, and helps others understand how it is best to choose your brand over others.
With this marketing strategy, you can use and play around with different types of content forms including videos, images, infographics, and more. This means you have the ability to add value to the lives of your prospects in more ways than one.
One of the common tactics of performing content marketing is blogging.
You can add a blog section to your website. This helps boost your search engine optimization efforts as well. This is because you will be using and adding keywords to your website blog content, to the blog titles, and even meta descriptions.
This way you can try to rank for your blog keywords. Now, what you can do with these blogs is interlink your every piece of content to another relevant piece of content. You will be able to take your users through your website while adding value to their lives.
The more time they spend on your content, the better it will be for you. This helps beat the Google algorithm, triggering that it’s being preferred by your users. As a result, you will be able to see your website rank better.
Social media is also a major part of content marketing. Let’s discuss more on it below.
-
Social Media Marketing
Social media has changed the way we live. It has also changed the way businesses advertise.
Today, social media has entwined itself within our lives in such a way that it has now become impossible to survive in the industry without it. The first thing that a majority of prospects do when they wake up in the morning is scroll through their social media.
It is, thus, only obvious to leverage this for your financial advisory firm.
You can use social media to engage in a two-way conversation; make your social accounts your consumer engagement bible.
There are plenty of platforms for you to choose from when it comes to social media marketing. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among many others.
One thing you should avoid is using all these platforms. Many believe that the more platforms you use, the more business you’ll get. That’s a myth. The more platforms you use, the more effort you’ll be required to put in.
For your financial advisory firm, you must start by using LinkedIn and Facebook. Of course, you can always add more platforms eventually. But initially, keep it limited to just two.
You can use these platforms to establish yourself as an authority.
Create Facebook groups and a business page. Share content that is relevant for your audience and adds value to their lives. Also, use these platforms to share your knowledge without asking for anything in return.
This will help your prospects understand that you truly care about them and that you have the required knowledge.
You can also use Facebook Ads for a more aggressive approach. Facebook Ads allow you to expand your reach and even narrow down your target audience. You can also retarget your customers who visited your website or searched for your keyword even once. It’s pretty fascinating.
-
Email Marketing
Emails have been a part of our lives for more years than we can remember.
Just like social media platforms, emails are also a few of those things that are opened by the prospects the first thing in the morning. After all, it is considered among the best ways to communicate within the corporate world.
Thus, it only makes sense for you to leverage email marketing to the fullest.
With email marketing, you can try to build personal relationships with your audience and your prospects. You can also directly use email marketing to sell your services to your prospects.
The best strategy is to send 5 emails. The first one should be a little bit about yourself, you can address the pain points, and how you can resolve those pain points.
The rest should be follow-up emails. You can send a certain type of follow-up email to different categories of your audience. You can categorize them as those that opened your email and replied, those that opened your email but didn’t reply, or those that didn’t open your email at all. These are a few of the many permutations that are possible.
When you do email marketing, make A/B testing your best friend. This means you must test various variables before sticking to a particular type of text of your email.
A few variables that you must test include the subject lines, time, preview text, and CTA. You must play around with your subject line as much as possible. Your subject line can make or break your email marketing campaign.
Also, you must ensure your emails are mobile-optimized. This means that if and when your prospects try to go through your email via mobile phone, they should be able to do that easily. Otherwise, your email can be left out in the email graveyard in your prospects’ inbox.
You can also use emails as a way to offer special offers and discounts to your prospects. For instance, suppose it’s tax rebate season. You can use this time to offer your services at special rates.
Another way to use emails is by nurturing your audience and prospects by sharing newsletters. These help build your recall value without you being too sales-y and also give you a platform to share more valuable and helpful content with your audience.
Conclusion
To sum it up, there are plenty of digital marketing strategies that a financial advisory firm can use to promote their services as well as add value to the lives of the consumer.
What one must understand is that planning is essential for these strategies. All of them. If you try to perform all at once without any plan in place, it can easily get daunting and can spiral out of control. Thus, you need to strategize well and only then, perform these marketing tactics.
Whether it’s SEO or content marketing, social media or email marketing, understand that each of them requires your time and your efforts. Give them what they need and you’ll be home.