To say that the evolution of marketing has rapidly developed within the last two years is an understatement. While marketing trends have been moving along at breakneck speeds, the strategies that financial advisors previously implemented may no longer be the most successful.
So, hoping that 2022 will be echoing in a less chaotic year, it’s time to observe how future and current clients have shifted their behaviour and how they absorb media.
Let’s start by considering how people perceive you or your brand.
Audit Your Brand Image
Before adopting any new marketing strategies for 2022, you must know how your brand is doing against your competition.
With a brand audit, you’re taking an analytical strategy that will investigate certain areas within your brand to determine your brand quality and loyalty.
These elements include:
- A clearly outlined target market.
- A review of overall strategy and goals.
- An assessment of how well your content and messaging is being absorbed.
- What user experience your clients are having with your online presence.
- Any design elements that may need to be updated.
When conducting a brand audit, you’re trying to discover if any hidden hurdles are hampering your brand from growing and progressing forward. It should also identify internal and external strengths and weaknesses.
This analysis will also assist with locating which channels of communication aren’t working and whether you’re getting the optimal return on investment.
As a financial advisor, you’ll want to know, for example, if your website converts enough potential clients into returning customers or whether your newsletters direct consumers to your website.
Conducting a brand audit is a significant undertaking but worth it as the digital marketing landscape continuously changes. It’s in your best interest to know if your brand needs to turn over a new leaf or if your brand is ready to take its lion share of the market.
After you’ve completed a deep dive, it’s time to consider personalizing your content.
It’s hard to ignore just how well clients respond to communication developed just for them. Personalization at scale can be achieved in today’s world, whether it’s by using automations, applying personalization tokens in emails or by segmenting email lists.
It’s not something to be ignored, as personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10% to 30%.
You can also ensure that personalization is achieved by tailoring your social media channel’s tone based on the target audience active there and by training consumer-facing employees (or yourself) in the best methods of creating a tailored experience for clients.
Creating content that you know will appeal to your core demographic is also a form of personalization. If your primary target market likes to listen to podcasts, maybe it is time to create one.
While podcasts can attract new potential clients and retain older ones, one form of media is still rocketing.
Use More Video Assets
According to Wyzowl’s Video Survey, 88% of people said they’d been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. In the same survey, people watch an average of 19 hours of online videos per week.
People are keen to digest video assets. We recommend including video in any marketing strategy moving into the future. It’s a channel of communication that is easy to present your unique personality and services in a way that builds trust with potential clientele.
However, there’s still a concern that generally speaking, video content is more expensive and time consuming to generate, and this is why, in many cases, certain brands haven’t taken the plunge.
It doesn’t have to be though, you can start small and practice recording simple videos on your own or even utilize platforms like TikTok or Instagram Reels to create punchy content.
But we understand that it is still new territory for most. If you’re planning on harnessing video content but are worried about the learning curve of editing, maybe try outsourcing it to a professional to start.
Participate In Virtual Events
Hosting and attending virtual events is an excellent way of cutting through the digital marketing clutter and hard-sells that people have grown tired of.
While there isn’t an official number, it is estimated that the average person will encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. Instead of adding to the influx of ads, your marketing strategy should instead provide value to get your brand on the radar of your target market.
Webinars are not the only form of virtual events you can try, you could also experiment with live panels, Q&A sessions, live interviews, or even provide an interactive training session.
Hosting your own virtual event establishes you as the expert in your field. Being an educator means that you can earn trust and recognition: two key elements that every company needs to convert potential clients into returning consumers.
We recommend giving this a try, even as a guest appearance to get started. However, if you’re not interested in events, even digital ones, you will need to focus your efforts on implementing a search engine optimization strategy (SEO).
Implement an SEO Strategy
If you haven’t started to roll out an SEO strategy, you’re late to the party. 1 in 3 people search on their smartphone before visiting a store and if your offering is optimized for SEO, 80% of local searches convert.
This means that if you implement an SEO strategy, you can almost expect to see results and for financial advisors, it’s especially important to get ahead of your competitors in the surrounding area.
Rolling out an SEO strategy will mean optimizing your copy on your website and creating more monthly content with targeted keywords that will help your business rank on Google’s search page results.
Another element is to claim your Google My Business account and generate a real digital footprint. You can include your address, images and opening times to further solidify your online presence. In addition, getting happy clients to review your business on Google will also help set up your business as a reliable resource..
When all these elements are combined, potential clients will be won over by the search results they see, thanks to implementing an effective SEO strategy.
Key Takeaways
While none of these marketing ideas are completely brand new, we know that they are worthwhile to implement in order to maximize reach, especially when combined together. The best marketing ideas involve embracing the fact that everything consumers want to know can be Google searched, and that power is quite literally in the palm of their hand.
Rolling out a comprehensive marketing strategy is a multi-faceted process that may not always be easy, however, it can be done. Experiment with each marketing idea, take each suggestion step by step, and remember that you can always reach out to professionals for an extra hand.
