A term that is of late creating a buzz in the market is FinTech. Well, if you are a financial services provider using technology to make your services more efficient, then you are a FinTech company. If not, it is time for you to start using digital marketing at your disposal to market your financial services to your target audience most efficiently and effectively.
While digital marketing is changing the way different industries market their products and services, it is yet to transform the finance industry. However, with the advancing internet technology and the evolving digital world, digital marketing has been taking over traditional marketing in a big way. Financial marketers must realise that it is time to exploit this marketing technique and optimally utilise it to market their products and services to their target audience.
With financial marketers worldwide talking about the various techniques they can use to market their products and services digitally, they also need to know about the multiple challenges faced and how to overcome them.
1. Gaining and retaining customer trust
Our customers are whom we are working for. Therefore, it is vital to keep customers at the centre of all your digital marketing practices and strategies. Customer satisfaction is of primary importance when it comes to digital marketing because if you are not able to, your competitors will take over your customers in no time. The finance industry has been facing a lot of competition due to the evolution of the digital landscape and internet has made it easy to access information anytime and anywhere. Therefore, financial services providers must focus on reaching out to the consumers where they are readily available.
2. Rise of digital wallets
The rising use of online wallets like Paytm, MobiKwik, FreeCharge and alike, consumers are shifting from using the offline and online services provided by banks to using these mobile wallet applications for making payments or any financial transactions. It is because of the easy usability and data security that is provided by these apps that the consumers prefer using them over the net banking facilities offered by banking institutions. Therefore, banking institutions must work towards improving their consumers' digital experiences by providing more user-friendly and enhanced versions of net banking and mobile application services in order to compete with these online wallet services.
3. Build the ‘best-fit' strategy
Going digital is not an easy task for any financial marketer. It requires a lot of planning, strategising and proper implementation of the digital marketing plans. Marketers need to experiment with the different strategies to derive the best one to meet their business requirements and attract their target audience to generate qualified leads and increase the customer conversion rate. Investing time in devising the best marketing strategy for your business will surely be time-consuming, but the results produced will leave you soaring profits higher than ever.
4. Online competition
The digital world, as we all know, is the virtual world that works on the power of the internet and is infinite, making it a perfectly competitive marketplace. Brands worldwide are facing online competition and striving to attract the consumers' attention to buy their products and services. The online market provides the users with a number of options implying that your website must be responsive and attractive enough to engage the customer and not let them bounce over to the competitor website.
The challenges faced by marketers in the digital world can be converted into opportunities if the devised strategies and marketing plans are implemented correctly. If executed efficiently and effectively, digital marketing is not only cost-effective but also yields higher returns thereby increasing ROI and driving revenue and growth.
The question is how to overcome these challenges and convert them into opportunities. Let us see how.
5. Responsive design
Your website design should not only be responsive to desktops or personal computers but should also be mobile responsive. This is owing to the technology becoming readily available to the consumer and easy access to everything that is available online. Therefore, your website should be mobile responsive as well given the fact that more than 50% of the consumers access information online and a bad or time-consuming experience will leave them with no other option than to jump to the competitor website.
6. Customer segmentation
With marketing automation software like HubSpot, it has become relatively easier for marketers to segment customer data based on their age, gender, demographics, interests, needs and other such information. The large amounts of data that brands collect regarding their prospects and customers must be utilised to provide them with customised information. Data segmentation and personalised communications with consumers will not only benefit the marketers by generating quality leads and increasing customer conversion but, will also keep your customers retained and build trust in them.
7. Intuitive navigation
It is true that if your website is not easily navigable and your customer is not able to easily search through your website, they are bound to move to your competitors. Therefore, when you consider revamping your website, you should add a ‘Search Box' to enable easy search options for your customers. Moreover, you should make your website navigation intuitive to provide enhanced user experiences.
8. Create awareness and educate customers
It is imperative for financial services providers to create awareness by providing detailed product information amongst the consumers since finance is a field that requires knowledge and guidance every time a consumer wants to avail financial products or services. Additionally, marketers must include more content on educating the consumers with information on general topics and trends in the finance industry that can help them in managing their funds and earning returns on their savings and investments.
9. Engaging content
Your website must not contain content only in the form of blogs or textual product information, but it should be a mix of multimedia content like images, graphics, infographics, videos and others, to keep the users engaged. When information displayed is visually appealing, consumers tend to surf more on the same platform than shift to the others. Additionally, all your content should be backed by SEO techniques and should be filled with potential keywords that can help you rank on the Google SERPs.
10. Measure and analyse
Your efforts will be in vain if you are not able to measure the results of your performance and analyse them to improve and perform better. Therefore, it is essential to measure your performance regularly and analyse it to advance and grow constantly.
Financial marketers are faced with many challenges, but by using the right tools and techniques to convert these challenges into opportunities, they can take advantage of the constant technological advancements. Also, with the rise in consumers using technology and smart devices to search and access information, it is imperative for financial institutions to go digital and use the platform to its maximum potential.
