Lead generation for financial services is changing. Online is currently the clear leader in generating leads for financial services providers, and the numbers support this. Cold calling and conventional media previously held the top position.
- Between 75% and 90% of financial services searches begin online (LSA Global)
- Before making a decision, B2B consumers peruse ten pieces of internet content on average (Marketing Charts)
It’s safe to conclude that the majority of consumers search online for financial services. However, this change has also brought about fierce rivalry in the financial services sector, particularly in the area of paid promotion
How to Create Leads for the Financial Sector
1. Create a website that serves as a beachhead
A website gives you more control over the experience you can give potential customers. Other channels may have great tools for user engagement, but they frequently fall short when it comes to allowing financial services (FS) brands to provide a tailored experience.
To give leads a more seamless and personalized experience, OTT advises FS providers to rely more on their websites. Options to think about when developing a digital experience for your website include self-service and self-led actions that let prospects finish lead-qualification tasks
Setting up your website as a lead-capture tool gives you the opportunity to direct traffic from other digital channels and perhaps produce more qualified prospects.
2. Ensure Mobile-First Readiness
Using its mobile-first indexing technology, Google has given mobile-friendly websites the top spot in search results as early as 2018. At the same time, there are no signs that the growth of mobile search will slow down.
Financial services companies (FS) must admit that being mobile-first-ready is now a requirement, not an option. A mobile-ready website has a higher chance of converting visitors who access it from their mobile devices.
Additionally, since a mobile-friendly website adheres to Google’s mobile-first indexing algorithm, having one enhances the likelihood of ranking better. A responsive website that adapts to the device screen is one method to become mobile-ready.
3. Locate Your Individual Brand Voice
Lead generation depends on brand voice, also known as tone of voice or brand personality. When consumers hear about your brand, does your message linger in their minds? Are they attracted to and able to relate to your message?
Examining your brand values is the greatest way to develop a distinctive brand voice. Determine your core values and how they distinguish your financial services business. Avoid using tired FS cliches like “trust,” “integrity,” and “value” as you go along.
Look deeper to uncover the distinctive voice that sets your brand apart. In order to make your lead generation activities stand out, you may need to look for new values and brand personality attributes if you can’t think of anything, particularly noteworthy.
4. Embrace Inbound Marketing
The future of lead generation, especially in FS, is bound. The phrase “content is king” still holds true when you take into account the fact that 80% of company decision-makers prefer to obtain information from a series of articles over an advertisement.
To generate more leads in this market environment that are continually changing, financial services companies must embrace the journey to becoming an inbound business.
In order to increase the number of organic leads, it is necessary to invest more in inbound initiatives like blogging, video production, webinars, SEO, and case study publications. This does not imply abandoning outbound strategies like PPC and telemarketing, though.
5. SEO and Landing Pages Still Work
Although paid media continues to dominate the lead generation for financial services, more businesses are experimenting with organic lead generation to reduce the rising costs of paid lead production.
FS brands may continue to employ SEO and landing pages without incurring significant costs as durable organic lead-generating strategies.
To ensure that your brand stays current with organic search trends as an FS brand, it will pay to spend on SEO and landing pages in addition to paid marketing.
6. Publish Educational Content
As it contributes to this narrative, education will emerge as a key tool in FS lead generation over the coming years.
To get more qualified leads, you’ll need to publish unbiased educational content like a case study or white paper because it will position your brand as a leader in the market.
By establishing your business as an expert, authoritative, and trustworthy (EAT) source of knowledge, a well-known Google SERP ranking factor, posting high-quality educational content will also aid in ranking attempts.
7. Adopt a Regional Strategy
National is great, but local is better. That is the mantra many FS brands are adopting regarding lead generation.
This strategy has various advantages –
- It lessens a brand’s exposure to rivalry and enables it to dominate a niche market.
- Because it produces targeted search engine results that can be swiftly pursued, local SEO is incredibly effective at luring new customers.
- It offers a way to take part in regional activities like networking gatherings and trade exhibits, which can increase brand recognition.
Whether your brand is local or national, it will benefit you in the coming years to adopt a localized strategy to lead creation.
8. Offer Free Financial Management Tools
This pattern demonstrates the desire for empowerment among FS customers. Use a landing page to acquire leads and capitalize on this trend by providing downloadable FS management tools like personalized wealth manager spreadsheets.
Additionally, you may integrate B2B financial services management systems on your website to make it more engaging and sticky and raise the probability that visitors will take a step that results in lead generation.
9. Boost your LinkedIn networking efforts
One of the most efficient ways to reach a highly focused audience with only time investment is through LinkedIn networking. If you have a sales staff, teach them how to use LinkedIn’s networking and groups to find sales leads.
On a brand level, you may create a presence for your company as an influencer on the network, attracting followers and potential customers with excellent content and recurrent engagement.
LinkedIn has enormous potential for generating leads and referrals, but doing so requires a strategy that strikes a balance between genuine conversations and proactive lead prospecting.
10. Use technologies for personalization
Personalization in marketing continues to be a key factor in lead generation and nurturing. Giving potential prospects customized or personalized offers, for instance, can aid in raising the conversion rate.
By handling the majority of the labor-intensive tasks like lead gathering and lead segmentation, personalization technologies like CRMs, chatbots, and customer data platforms (CDPs) can aid in accelerating lead generation efforts.
While implementing personalization, it is important to keep in mind that in FS, service providers must respect privacy restrictions. If not, over-personalization—which involves revealing to potential clients that you know too much about them—can frighten them and make them go elsewhere for services.
11. Spend money on community-building projects
Community building can drive lead generation by humanizing a brand and making it more accessible to its target audience.
For instance, creating a community on Facebook or LinkedIn gives users a platform to interact with your company, learn about its principles, pose inquiries, and get knowledge from its insights.
Although creating a community does take time, once it begins to grow naturally, it can be a huge source of organic leads.
Additionally, a community can aid in gathering prospective leads so that lead nurturing initiatives like content marketing can subsequently encourage them to perform a conversion step.
12. Make Your Brand More Visible With Digital Storytelling
Digital storytelling tells a tale using digital tools like video and interactive websites. It offers a way to convey stories to explain concepts, ideas, services, success stories, or products.
As an illustration, an FS brand could produce a whiteboard film detailing the development of cryptocurrencies, capitalizing on curiosity in the subject to raise brand exposure. Digital storytelling can be made into a product or service-focused advertorial that uses a more widely acknowledged narrative or point of view to communicate about the product or service.
When done well, digital storytelling can humanize a business, produce highly shareable content, provide audiences with real value, and produce a huge volume of leads over time.
13. Amplify the digital interaction experience
Customers of FS today desire a seamless, multi-channel digital experience. The majority of the time, this entails making contact, looking at things, buying something, or asking for further information online.
Creating an integrated digital user experience can improve lead generation results by facilitating prospects’ effortless passage through the conversion funnel.
If a potential customer visits your website, for instance, provide them with a variety of digital options to engage with and convert, such as a chatbot, live chat, interactive knowledgebase, contact forms, or landing pages.
How OTT Aids FS Brands in Acquiring More Leads
At OTT, we base our strategy for generating leads for financial services on data, including trends, industry insights, legal and ethical issues, and competition research.
We use this information along with the distinctive personality of your brand to develop targeted lead-generation campaigns for financial services that are effective.
Our marketing firm can assist if your FS brand is having trouble generating leads efficiently and at a reasonable cost. The financial services marketing specialists at OTT are available to assess your brand, target market, and prospects and develop a successful approach for you.
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By SEO
- Dec 12, 2022
By SEO
