When someone says social media, what comes to mind? You may be thinking of people sharing pictures of their vacation on Facebook. Maybe all those Instagramers who post pictures of their food is the first thing on your brain.
Social media and inbound marketing have gained global popularity. It keeps everyone socially connected around the world. But, it's also a powerful business tool. Most companies who properly utilize inbound marketing see an increase in ROI. How can the financial services industry use inbound marketing?
Relationship Building
Relationships are the key to building a thriving financial services business. A well-strategized inbound and social media plan helps keep customers in the know about changes, advancements, or accolades your business receives. It allows you to connect easily with customers and prospects to serve their needs. Since everything is visual on social media, you can share video and pictures of events and help customers put names to faces. It makes your business more relatable and helps cultivate necessary relationships.
Show Your Customers You Are An Industry Expert
Creating content explicitly designed to inform and help your target market will set you apart from the competition. A blog helps answer your customer's questions and helps you to earn their trust as an expert. Crafting valuable content for your clients is worth it. Insurance agents who maintained a business blog saw a 30% increase in new clients from the blog itself.
Less Expensive
There are many components to an outbound marketing strategy. People use newspaper advertisements, brochures, direct mail marketing and more. Outbound marketing effectively helps you reach a large audience. You go out and seek new clients through these means. Sales is a numbers games some may be interested in your services but not all. It's an effective marketing approach. It's also expensive.
Inbound marketing is far more cost-effective and uses a different strategy. An outstanding inbound marketing campaign allows interested prospects to find you. Your website or landing page already hooked them. You've already gained their trust. Now they need your help. It allows you to focus on warm prospects instead of filtering out cold leads.
How To Use Inbound Marketing And Social Media Effectively
You've chosen a competitive and rewarding career in the financial services industry. You must stand out from the masses to succeed. Your competition is probably utilizing an inbound marketing strategy too. You need to make sure prospects find your site when they have questions. Search engine optimization is key to getting on the first-page search results.
Know Your Audience
You've optimized your website and blog but how do they translate into more clients? It's all about knowing your audience. JP Morgan Chase and Co. uses data visualization to interact with their clients and prospects. It's not something the competition is doing, so it sets them apart. The interactive maps and fun facts engage their readers far better than a static image. The readers are happy and excited to devour the content. JP Morgan gave customers what they want, and the profits rolled in.
The Kabbage blog is full of testimonials. Testimonials are key to earning new clients. They feel they are going with a trusted company and it feels less risky. Clients are confident doing business with them since so many of their peers are already on board. To make sure these testimonials resonate with your ideal audience members, be sure they are from some of your ideal clients, within your target market, or small businesses, or entrepreneurs.
Solve A Problem And Make Life Easier For Your Prospects
SoFi provides its prospects with online calculators to help them answer important financial questions easily. These calculators are created specifically for the website and their customers. The calculators help you figure out how long it will take to pay off your mortgage, calculate your student loan payments and much more. These tools help the customer figure out what plan is best for them. Readers trust SoFi since they have helped them by answering their financial questions.
Inbound marketing has proven itself effective throughout many different industries. The financial services industry is no exception. An effective campaign has customers coming to you not the other way around.
For more information about inbound marketing tips for financial services, or to schedule your free digital marketing consultation, please call 720.248.8185, e-mail info@friedmansocialmedia.com, or click here.
Please note: The Friedman Group is an inbound marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado, and we work with professionals and business owners across the U.S. Our digital marketing services include: inbound marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and digital marketing strategy and implementation.