Between inhibitive technology and rigid organizational structure, marketing financial services has been a challenge for decades. In order to succeed in today’s fast-paced, digital world, marketing for financial services needs to be unique and customer-centric.
Here are five mistakes that many financial service organizations make when trying to market to future and current clients.
1. Lack of Personalization
Did you know that 41% of consumers switched companies last year over a lack of trust and poor personalization, costing businesses $756 billion?
Many financial services marketers are aware of this growing demand, and according to a survey conducted by Adobe, targeting, personalization, and customer journey management are the highest priorities for financial services marketers in 2017—55% of respondents planned to increase investment in personalization in 2017.
Paying attention to a user’s experience, retargeting advertising, and using predictive analytics are ways to connect with a consumer and customize product offerings. Personalization helps customers feel valued and strengthens the company-customer bond.
And by building this relationship through marketing financial services, not only will clients seek your help for other financial services; they may also start to refer friends and family to you.
2. Taking a Digital-Second Approach
Outdated technology and rigid compliance have always made it more difficult to keep up with other sectors when it comes to digital marketing for financial services. In fact, only 9% of financial service organizations identify themselves as “digital-first,” compared with 11% across all sectors, according to Adobe.
Those within financial services who can become digital-first have an edge on the competition.
Digital-first companies are willing to acknowledge that a customer’s expectations will always be changing and the only way to stay relevant is to embrace modern technologies. This may be why digital-first organizations are nearly twice as likely to rank data-driven marketing as a top strategic priority.
3. Not Leveraging Marketing Analytics
By combining CRM data with marketing analytics, financial service marketing can leverage automation to find intelligent ways to add new products, upsell or cross-sell and nurture leads and clients. When financial services marketers ignore analytics, they miss opportunities to connect with their customers.
In order to make this pipe dream a reality, financial services marketers need to rethink their strategy.
And many are.
About 53% of financial services marketers said they were going to increase their investment in marketing analytics in 2017.
4. Skipping Social Media
Social Media is an integral part of daily life. Still, many financial service organizations have been slow to adopt social media marketing.
But there is still incredible value on the platforms.
In fact, according to Marketo, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and accounts for 50% of internet traffic, and 46% of consumers are more likely to investigate a product after seeing an online video.
Understanding the current social media trends and playing to them can help you earn leads, prospects and eventually close deals.
5. Decreasing Customer Lifetime Value
Are you missing out on new clients because you’re catering to leads incorrectly?
You may be able to open your service offerings to extend your customer’s lifetime value.
For instance, let’s say you’re a financial advisor and you have a lead that may not be in a position to start saving for retirement or stashing cash away for their children’s education because they first need to repair their credit. By adding a new service to your portfolio, like credit repair you can turn the “wrong audience” into the "right audience."
78% of financial service marketers said that optimizing the customer journey is their top priority over the next few years.
You can do it too.
Learn how client repair can increase your customer’s lifetime value by 200 or 300%.
