Digital Marketing for Financial Services

Financial service marketing uses various marketing strategies and techniques to create and drive awareness of financial products. The process goes further to capture leads and convert them into loyal customers through a series of ongoing marketing campaigns.

Marketing of financial services utilizes two primary methods:

• Digital marketing: including inbound channels like blogs and outbound channels like PPC ads
• Traditional marketing: including TV, radio, print, and signage

Most financial service providers will use a mix of digital and traditional marketing. However, due to legacy practices, most rely more on traditional marketing channels. This is changing as digital marketing campaigns in the financial sector are being shown to be effective means of reaching customers. It’s important to know what these new marketing efforts are achieving to implement them yourself successfully.

Effective marketing of financial services drives awareness, reduces customer acquisition costs, drives down churn, and bolsters revenues.

The financial services industry is one of the oldest in the world. Moreover, everyone needs financial services at some point in their life. These two factors may make it seem that financial organizations have the unique luxury of sitting back and having customers come to them. While this used to be the case, several factors have rendered this stance ineffective and dangerous.

They include:

• Commoditization: Standardization of financial products has made it harder to differentiate from the competition.
• Disruptive FinTechs: Aggressive FinTechs (Financial Technologies) challenge the status quo and completely upend the established order.
• Lack of trust: The financial industry has suffered a loss of confidence in the eyes of customers; trust it must painstakingly win back.
• Regulatory barriers: Tighter regulations are making it harder to market aggressively.
• Digital transformation: Advances like marketing automation are rendering traditional marketing methods ineffective.
• Digitization: Digital-first customers expect enhanced and personalized digital experiences.

With these barriers to success, financial service providers must create and implement innovative financial service marketing strategies that lead to new business.

Financial services marketing can benefit entities involved in selling any financial service.

Some of these entities include:

• Retail and commercial banks
• Investment banks and companies
• Brokerages
• Insurance companies
• Credit unions
• Credit card companies
• Mortgage providers
• Accounting and tax advisory firms
• Asset-based lending and equipment financing
• Factoring

It is important to note that these entities often fall under different laws and regulations. As such, and depending on the type of entity, marketing activities must consider the appropriate requirements.

Unlike other industries (except perhaps the medical sector), the financial services industry must adhere to a raft of marketing requirements and regulations.

While these rules are in place to ensure the protection of customer interests, they act as a significant barrier to marketing financial services.

Here are some examples:

• Affiliations: All marketing must indicate appropriate affiliations, such as “Member FDIC.”
• Truth in Advertising Act: States that “no advertisement may be misleading or deceptive, should be based on scientific evidence whenever possible and cannot be unfair.”
• Truth in Savings Act: Prevents financial institutions from withholding information from business owners or individuals related to checking, saving, and investment accounts.
• Fair Lending Laws: Prohibits discrimination by demographic or any other trait when providing credit.

These are but the tip of the iceberg. From a marketing perspective, these laws represent a complex marketing landscape that can lead to a hefty fine if any of these rules are breached.