Digital Marketing For Local Financial Services Companies

Reaching potential customers in your area is difficult enough. Convincing them to trust you with their money is even harder.

But it’s not impossible!

With the right marketing strategies, you can do both. 

This article is an introduction to digital marketing for financial services. You’ll learn the basics of digital marketing, how to build trust with local customers, and strategies you can apply to connect with customers at all stages of their journey.

Whether you’re an account, financial advisor, or investor, you’ll learn how to win over customers searching for financial services “near me.”

How do you promote financial services?

Connecting with local customers that are in need of financial services requires a complete digital marketing strategy. Let’s talk about best practices when it comes to SEO, paid ads, web design, and email marketing.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the number one strategy to drive organic traffic to your website. It helps improve the visibility of your website by improving its ranking in search engine results. 

Even if the majority of your clientele prefer offline services, there’s a good chance they’re still doing their research online first. For example, more than half of offline investors perform research online before making a phone call or visiting a branch in person.

The best way to optimize your website for SEO is including relevant keywords and creating high-quality content – valuable information or media designed to engage and inform your audience.

This requires an intimate understanding of your target audience. What kinds of topics are they researching online before making financial decisions? How can you inform them, provide value, and build trust with content? 

Achieving good visibility in search engine rankings takes time and maintaining it is a never-ending process. You’ll need to keep your content updated, consistently post new content, and refine your strategies. 

It’s hard work but it’ll pay off in the long run by helping you attract new clients.

Local SEO

To reach local customers, you’ll also want to focus your efforts on local SEO more specifically. 

This means including keywords for your location in SEO strategy, optimizing your Google Business profile, and encouraging your customers to leave you positive reviews in directories. 

Learn more: How To Rank High In Local SEO

Paid Ads

Whereas SEO is a long-term strategy, paid ads, or pay-per-click advertising, can drive immediate results. 

You can target clients that are actively searching for financial services in your area by bidding on location-based keywords. Like SEO, you’ll need to conduct thorough keyword research to make sure you’re attracting the right audience. 

With a 6% conversion rate, paid ads have the second best conversion rate in the financial services industry after referrals. It’s important to note, however, that financial services keywords can be very expensive due to how competitive they are. 

If you do decide to implement a paid strategy make sure to keep a close eye on your metrics so  you’re not throwing your budget away on a strategy that isn’t working. 

Paid media campaigns are highly trackable, which means you can monitor their performance and your ROI. Analyze your metrics to look for ways to optimize your campaigns and boost their performance. 

Web Design

Whether potential customers find you organically through search results or by clicking on an ad, it’s your website that will play an outsized role in converting them. 

To effectively convert leads, your website needs to:

• Provide a great user experience so website visitors can easily find what they’re looking for and perform the actions they want to take. If not, chances are visitors won’t return. In fact, 88% of users are less likely to return to a website if they have a bad experience. 
• Be well-designed. Your website needs a clean and professional design, otherwise your visitors will likely perceive your business as less credible. 
• Be optimized for mobile as more and more users are conducting their financial services research from mobile devices. Google data has shown that mobile searches containing “bank near me” have experienced 60% year-over-year growth. 
• Build trust. Display security badges and SSL certificates, along with any certifications your company has. 

Email Marketing

Email is a direct line of communication with your customers and leads. Used properly it can build trust, educate customers, and move leads down the sales funnel. 

63% of consumers find generic emails to be very annoying, so to be effective, you’ll need to segment your audience and deliver personalized messages.

Segmenting your email campaigns between current customers and potential customers is a great place to start as these emails will have different goals. 

It’s cheaper to keep your current customers than convert new ones. To that end, emails to your current customers should be focused on nurturing loyalty. Email them company updates, keep them in the loop about new products and services that might interest them, and share valuable content. 

For leads, financial services email marketing should only have a single goal: converting them into customers. Consumers usually go through a much longer decision-making process when it comes to financial services. Emails are a viable way to serve them valuable information during that process and keep them engaged until they’re ready to commit. 

Building Trust For Local Financial Services

Trust is important in any industry but even more so when you’re dealing with people’s money. 

Being fully transparent with your customers will help build long-term trust. Consider running a paid media campaign that highlights your company’s security and data protection measures. Similarly, make sure your company website includes the same information.  

To nurture trust with content, share content that relates to market insights, financial advice, and financial news. This content should be not aimed at conversions or trying to sell your customers on anything. People can see right through that. Create truly valuable content that your audience will find useful and want to share with others.

Positive reviews and ratings on your Google Business profile or other directories where your business is listed also help position you as a trustworthy service provider. So remember to always ask satisfied customers to leave you a review!

Leveraging Digital Marketing Throughout Your Customer Journey

Customers will engage with different touchpoints throughout their journey. Now that you have an understanding of digital marketing for financial services, let’s look at which strategies to apply for each stage of the customer journey. 

Awareness

As with most products and services, customers start their research online or by asking friends and family for referrals. 

SEO and paid ads are the most effective ways to be found online during this stage. 

The key to success is conducting thorough research. Whether it’s a blog post or an ad on Instagram, your messaging needs to speak directly to potential customers. And for that you’ll need a deep understanding of their demographics, pain points, and what they’re looking for. 

Once you have the right messaging, target keywords that will ensure users find you during their research. Here are some examples:

• “financial advisors in [city]”
• “local investment firms”
• “personal loan providers”
• “best banks in [state]”

And, if you don’t already have one, consider implementing a referral program to help generate leads. Giving satisfied customers a little extra incentive to recommend your services can go a long way.

Consideration

Once potential customers have found your company, they’ll read reviews, watch videos, and compare their options.

Most importantly, they’ll take a deeper dive on your website. So make sure it’s optimized for this stage. That means it should be easy to navigate so visitors can find all the information they’re looking for. 

Create educational content to help consumers with their research during this stage. Don’t be afraid to compare your company with your competitors.

But be honest in your comparison! 

You’ll build a lot of trust with potential customers when they see that you truly want to help them make the best decision. 

Wise is a company that creates a lot of this kind of content.  For example, take a look at this image taken from a Wise blog post comparing the 6 best multi-currency cards in Singapore:

By highlighting their own cons, they make it clear to consumers that they want to help them make the best decision. And that does wonders to position themselves as a transparent and trustworthy company.

Decision

The user experience of your website comes into play during the decision phase as well. 

Keep things simple. Whether website visitors want to open an account online or schedule an in-person visit, those actions shouldn’t take more than a few clicks. Use clear calls to action and short contact forms to encourage conversions.

Since this will be customers first experience truly engaging with your company and it should be representative of the smooth experience they can expect from there on out. 

Retaining Your Customers

Retaining customers in the financial services industry is no easy task. 

Companies in the industry have a reputation of poorly understanding the customer experience – which could explain why in a recent survey 37% of American respondents said they would likely switch banks in the coming year.  

The service and customer experience you provide are ultimately what will retain your customers. 

But you can use email marketing to keep them engaged.

Use automated emails to ask customers for feedback and send customer satisfaction surveys. Analyze their responses to better understand their preferences and find ways to improve your services. 

This lets your customers know you value their business, want to hear from them, and are looking for ways to give them a better experience. 

Increase Market Share With Financial Services Marketing 

As you know the financial services industry is very competitive. Applying the right marketing strategies can help you win over more customers but it takes time and patience. 

If your marketing team is stretched thin or you need a little outside help, Intuitive Digital is here to support you! With decades of combined experience and a team of SEO, paid, and web professionals, we can grow your financial services company. 

Give us a call at (503) 206-4988 or send us a message!