Have you had a great idea for a marketing campaign to promote your financial firm?
Like all ideas, some can be brilliant and some can be ill-judged. Yet it is not always clear, from the outset, which is which!
Financial marketing takes time, money and effort. Therefore, you want to be confident that your idea has a realistic chance of success. Is it possible to ascertain this from the beginning? If so, how do you do it?
At MarketingAdviser, we believe that it is mostly possible to evaluate a marketing idea before committing it to action. Below, we explain some of the main criteria that can be used in this process.
We hope these insights are useful to you. Please get in touch if you want to discuss your own financial marketing idea(s) with us.
#1 Idea-Audience Location
When evaluating a marketing idea, one of the best places for a financial firm to start is with its target client(s).
Who are you looking to reach with your campaign? Based on their description (“buyer persona”), does your marketing idea fit with them?
For instance, perhaps you want to try and run a viral TikTok campaign. Generally speaking, this social media platform is most popular with younger generations – i.e. ages 10-19 (25% of users); ages 20-29 (22.4%) and ages 30-39 (21.7%).
As such, if your target client is typically someone in their 50s or 60s, you may want to consider the suitability of Tiktok. There could still be a sizeable audience for you to reach, but you would need to do some strong research.
#2 Idea-Audience Fit
How is your marketing idea likely to be received by your target audience(s) – e.g. based on their preferences, values and habits?
For example, it has become popular in recent years for lots of advertisers to become more overly “political” in their messaging. However, this may not work very well with older generations who are often a key target of financial firms’ marketing.
A good question to ask yourself is: “How will this marketing idea make my audience feel?” If it is likely to stir up feelings of confusion, anger, shame or anxiety, then it may be best to re-think your idea.
However, if your marketing idea is inspiring, funny, heart-warming or intellectually stimulating, then it could be a good idea.
#4 Longevity
How much “staying power” does your marketing idea have?
After all, te longer it lasts, the more potential “return on marketing investment” (ROMI) you could make. Also, it means you can wait longer before needing to come up with a fresh marketing idea!
A good example is SEO (search engine optimisation). Although it can take a while to rank your financial website high in relevant Google search results, it typically takes less work to keep the “top spots” than wrestle them away from competitors.
As long as you keep the search engine position(s), and your target audience continues to use Google, you can keep enjoying the organic website traffic and conversions that are coming in.
By contrast, running a time-limited marketing campaign has a definite expiry date. For instance, if you plan to run a pension seminar in the coming weeks, then you only have a dozen days or so to get the word out and get bookings for seats.
This is not to say that pension seminars (or similar tactics) are a bad idea. However, it is worth considering your “bang for buck” when coming up with marketing ideas – not just with regard to money, but also with regard to time and effort.
#5 Cost
How much will your marketing idea cost (in monetary terms) and can you afford it?
Some marketing ideas are cheaper than others. However, this does not make them necessarily superior. Marketing ideas also need to be judged by the potential results they could achieve.
For instance, posting on your company’s Twitter profile every day is free. Yet how worthwhile is this activity? How long might it take to build up the following required to start getting high-quality leads through a channel like this?
By contrast, a Google Ads campaign could cost hundreds of pounds per month. Yet, if it is targeting the right keywords and has the required marketing infrastructure in place (e.g. effective landing pages), perhaps it could deliver better results, faster.
#6 Management
Who will be responsible for managing the implementation of the marketing idea – monitoring results and making adjustments?
One common mistake made by financial firms is to pass on this responsibility to someone with very little marketing experience or “buy-in” with the financial firm (e.g. a family member who is interning).
Another mistake is that key decision-makers at the firm try to do it themselves. Already very busy with other tasks, this often risks neglecting the marketing idea – not carrying it through to completion, or to full effect.
To minimise these risks, it is important to give responsibility for the marketing idea to someone who has the time, experience, knowledge and interest to execute it properly. This could be a marketing manager at the firm. Or, an external agency.
#7 Measurability
Will you be able to clearly measure the results of your marketing idea? Or, will you be left guessing as to how effective it was?
This is one of the shortcomings of ideas such as TV ads or billboard ads. Although they can be very powerful and prominent, it can be extremely difficult to get reliable data about how many people saw your ad(s) and how they responded.
The advantage of digital marketing is that everything is far more traceable. With pay-per-click advertising, for example, you can measure impressions, clicks and conversions. The same is true for SEO and for email marketing.
This makes it easier to create robust reports and to find out what is/isn’t working – making adjustments where needed.
