How to Market a Financial Services Business

Without the proper online marketing, you could find your financial services business falling behind its competitors. If you’re new to online marketing or want to explore new avenues, this post will help you understand how to market a financial services business through multiple online channels. You’ll also learn how to optimize your website and content to improve your search engine optimization (SEO), so you can rank higher when potential customers are looking for financial services in your area. Ready? Let’s get started!

Importance of SEO

Ranking on search engines like Google or Bing is an important part of any financial services marketing plan. Why? Because users are using search engines every day to enquire about loans, mortgages, tax returns, and all sorts of other topics related to finance. Here are a few statistics proving the significance of SEO when it comes to ranking well for financial services.

Percentage of Consumers That Ran a Search Before Converting

Accounting

72%

Banking

61%

Check Cashing

85%

Loans & Mortgages

90%

Tax Return Prep

76%

The financial services data shown above comes from Invoca.

These statistics show that if you’re a financial services business without SEO, you might as well be invisible. Plugging a few keywords into your home page or embedding a Google map into your footer most likely won’t be enough to help you compete for placement on page one. The bottom line is that SEO needs to be built into every step of your marketing plan for it to really pay off in terms of ROI; it’s too important not to dedicate resources on a regular basis.

Advertising on Facebook

If you’re marketing a financial services business, Facebook is a great place to start. If your business is particularly well-suited for Facebook (it lends itself naturally to discussion and engagement), consider joining an industry-specific group on Facebook.

Make sure to create a page specific to your company. This page should link back to your website and other social media accounts, which should also be linked to your Facebook page. Sharing content regularly allows you to show up in people’s newsfeeds every day. This is essential for maintaining organic reach on Facebook.

Something a lot of businesses fail to realize about Facebook is the organic reach potential is pretty low. Only around 2% of your followers will see your posts, so unless you have a lot of followers, you will need to run ads. This doesn’t mean making regular posts isn’t important, you still need to have an organic presence. If you are hoping to reach a lot of people, you will have to run paid ads. Fortunately, Facebook ads are one of the most affordable ways to advertise your business.

Need Help With Online Marketing For Your Financial Services Business?

Vivid Insights & Marketing has worked with many businesses in the financial industry including CPAs, insurance companies, and others to help with online marketing. We can help drive more customers to your doors.

Content Marketing

Content marketing allows you to get more bang for your buck by investing in content that helps potential customers discover, learn about and buy from you. With the increasing influence and ease of use of smartphones, people are doing research online before making most of their buying decisions. Screen time is off the charts in 2022, and people are consuming a lot of content about things they like, want, and need. Developing informational content that puts your product or service on display and shows your expertise adds credibility and promotes trust needed for you to convert potential customers who come across your service when they are surfing the web.

Content marketing is not just about customer acquisition however, it can be an invaluable tool for retaining existing clients. Nurturing your clients with useful content such as answers to frequently asked questions will make it convenient to choose you again in the future.

Many B2B companies are including LinkedIn in their online marketing strategy, especially in financial services. LinkedIn has over 300 million members, with 60% of users logging on daily. If you use social media for marketing your business in any way, you need to get involved with LinkedIn. It’s easy to set up your profile, and you can build connections by contacting those you know personally first and following them if they accept you for connection.

One of the reasons LinkedIn has been so good for online marketing in recent years is that organic reach is so much higher than any other social media platform. Your posts can be seen anywhere from 5% to 10% of your connections, whereas other channels have been lowering their percentages each year to encourage more paid advertising. Since financial services can be B2B, LinkedIn is a great option to include in your online marketing strategy.

Online Referrals

While you might not think of word-of-mouth as online marketing, it can be depending on the method, and work just well for online financial services. One of the easiest ways to get leads for your financial business is through referrals from existing customers. Whether you’re a tax accountant or an estate planner, asking current clients for referrals can be as simple as sending them an email after they pay their bill, letting them know you’d love to help their friends with any tax or estate planning needs they have. Word will spread quickly through your network and soon enough, you’ll be able to market your financial business much more efficiently online.

Tracking Website Analytics

One of your most important marketing tools is likely buried in your site—at least if you have a website. One thing that’s often overlooked by many financial services firms is tracking their analytics and monitoring how much traffic they get, how people find them, and which methods are proving effective. If you’re not tracking your web stats, then you’re missing out on opportunities to fine-tune your marketing strategy and get a better ROI. You need to know which methods work best so that you can put more money into strategies that pay off. You should be able to see who’s visiting (and what they’re looking at), where they’re coming from, and what pages they visit after leaving yours. If you know all these things you can make the necessary adjustments to increase your conversion rate.

Best of Luck To You!

If you have any further questions about how to market a financial services business, we are happy to help! Additionally, if marketing your business seems like too much work, and you would rather have someone take care of it for you, we have you covered. Feel free to give us a call or send us an email with any questions.