Digital marketing for financial advisers.
Success starts with a plan.
“For many small businesses, financial advisers included, digital marketing is a topic that doesn’t create hope but fear. Fear that is often driven by the unknown.”
Of a world that they think they don’t understand. It’ not hard to figure out why, just like financial services, digital can, at times, seem an impenetrable world of complex terms and definitions. It can seem like a web of acronyms. SEP, SEM, PPC, ABM (and the list goes on, even if the understanding doesn’t follow). But digital isn’t going away, it is only going to get more important as advisers look to engage with clients and prospects in new, different ways. So, for those who want to attract and keep their clients of tomorrow.
Getting digitally savvy is no longer a choice,
it’s a necessity.
Finding a start point
As with all successful business strategies, the best digital activity begins with a plan. As many digital tools, such as email and social channels are free to use, it can be tempting to get going without going through this discipline – but it is crucial to resist that temptation.
The best digital activity across businesses both big and small are built on robust plans. Plans which should take in at least the following topics.
Defining objectives
Any activity that is worth time and investment, whether that investment is financial or time, needs to have a clear set of defined goals. These goals define and set aspiration; they provide a benchmark for what success looks like.
These goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound) and could take in many areas. It could be as simple as several leads created (so long as their source is trackable), or it could be increasing traffic through a website. The key with these goals is to initially keep them simple and to understand that the first goal may be to create a baseline to measure success against in the future. In addition to making goals SMART, you may find it helpful to break them down into 3 categories.
1. Strategic
What are your long-term objectives for digital marketing? For example, how important a role will it play in your success in 3 years’ time?
2. Tactical
More short-term focused and often easier to measure. For example, how many leads do you want to create from a specific activity or campaign?
3. Operational
These goals detail the practical steps you need to deliver your strategy. For example, onboarding a new marketing automation platform.
Who to target?
A key component of your plan should be a detailed target market – the groups of prospects and customers you want to target with your digital activity.
When considering who you want to target, both need and value should be front of your mind. Which sectors of the population have a real, compelling need for your advice, and which can you deliver the most value to. It helps to be as granular and detailed as possible. Effective targeting helps you align to a sector and speak to them directly.
For mortgage and protection advisers, it may be that your target markets include:
Unprotected mortgage holders
Mortgage customers who declined protection or protection advice first time around. They can be an opportunity for cross sell and to deliver more advice value.
Self-employed
A large proportion of the self employed are woefully under prepared in terms of financial protection. To target them directly, think about how your advice can access the right products, service and speak to them about the problems they face.
Families
This broad term doesn’t go far enough. Think about the stages that families go through, buying a home, having children, working into retirement. Also consider sociodemographic and whether they aid effective understanding and positioning.
