It’s a familiar, yet painful story. You decided to launch a financial marketing campaign. You’ve set up a shiny new landing page with an Ebook download, and you’re excited to see how many people download it in exchange for their contact details.
After 7 days or so, you’ve seen some engagement. Perhaps one or two people have visited the ebook download page, but they haven’t actually entered their email to get hold of it. But you don’t panic just yet. It’s only been a week, after all. You really need more time for the campaign to “bed in”, and for more data to come back.
At the 30-day mark, the stats aren’t looking fantastic. You start to panic. However, how do you know you’ve left your campaign long enough to know it is working effectively?
Heck, what does “working effectively” even mean – and how long is “long enough” anyway?
Is Your Financial Marketing Campaign The Same As Mine?
We could jump straight into assessing how to optimise your campaign, or how to measure its performance.
However, we need to be sure, first of all, that we’re comparing like for like. Is your idea of a “financial marketing campaign” the same as what I have in my mind?
So let’s start there. What actually is a financial marketing campaign? Here’s a definition I like to use:
A digital infrastructure with multiple touch-points, synchronised with the buyer’s journey, which assists financial companies in attaining lead data, qualifying and cultivating leads, and allows the leads and the business representative to engage in meaningful sales dialogue.
Bit of a mouthful, I’ll admit. Here is a quick breakdown:
Multiple Touch-Points
Your financial marketing should not just be confined to one channel or online space.
Your buyer personas spend time on multiple channels, including social media, Google search and online publications. So this is where your campaign should also live.
It’s not enough to just create a landing page. You need to consider the wide range of channels available to you, in order to drive traffic to it. Pay per click, social media, SEO and more.
Digital Infrastructure
All elements of your financial marketing campaign should work together and communicate regularly to each other. Preferably, you need a marketing-technology stack in order to ensure optimal strategic management of these different pieces.
Synchronised With The Buyer’s Journey
Your financial marketing shouldn’t just speak to the people who are ready to make a transaction right now.
It also needs to also speak to people who are at the beginning of the sales process. Perhaps they are thinking about perhaps getting financial advice, and just want to see what’s out there.
Attaining Lead Data
Usually, a lead will exchange their contact information for something of value on your website. This could be a report, a whitepaper or Ebook download.
Qualifying And Cultivating Leads
Remember this golden rule in financial marketing:
Just because someone downloaded your Ebook, it doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy from you.
Financial advisers and companies would do well to heed this. The key starting point is good conversations between the potential client and the financial representative in question.
Once a good relationship has been established, from there you can nurture the lead along the buyer’s journey. Having a good CRM system (customer relationship management) will help you keep track of these conversations, and set reminders for you to encourage them towards a transaction.
The Bottom Line: How This Affects Your Financial Marketing Campaign
If your marketing campaign doesn’t speak to leads where they are in the buyer’s journey, then you’re going to be frustrated with the results.
Things are different now, when it comes to making any sort of transaction. Just think about the way you buy things. Do you purchase things the same way you did 10 years ago?
The landscape has shifted. This is mainly due to the democratisation of access to information. The balance of power in this realm has moved. Whilst before it was in favour of the seller, it is now in favour of the buyer.
This means buyers, in general, spend more time researching a product or service – and it’s providers – before making a purchase.
This is particularly the case in financial services, where people are understandably concerned about getting the right financial adviser. These are their life savings, after all.
Financial marketing campaigns often fail because they fail to account for this human behaviour. An IFA will launch a landing page with an Ebook download, and expect the lead floodgates to open. But that’s now how it works.
By utilising and synchronising the appropriate marketing channels, and tailoring them to each stage of your target market’s buyer journey, you should start to see more success.
Phil Teale is the Sales & Marketing Manager at MarketingAdviser, an agency specialising in marketing for financial services – and especially for financial advisers. Along with our sister company, CreativeAdviser, we also provide bespoke website design, branding, graphic design and video production services to financial clients.
Contact us on 01923 232840 or email me: phil@creativeadviser.co.uk
