Marketing for Finance Companies: Five Tips

Marketing financial services can be tricky. The industry is heavily regulated and you need to be aware of the do’s and don’ts. It’s also an extremely competitive industry. If you are a small finance company, approaching your marketing can be quite daunting as you will be aware that amongst your competition are high street banks. Here are five tips to get your finance company’s marketing off to a great start.

1: Is your finance company B2B or B2C?

Does your finance company offer products to businesses or consumers? Or both? You will need to be aware of who you are marketing to and the regulations surrounding them. B2B marketing as a finance company is very different to marketing to consumers, and the way can use data in the B2C sector is much more tightly regulated. Identify who you are marketing to, and find out what you can and can’t do.

2: Build a robust website and drive traffic

Most sectors within the finance industry are highly competitive. When it comes to marketing your finance business, you are entering a tightly packed pool that’s filled with some pretty heavy hitters. Make sure your website performs well and includes lots of calls to action or data capture elements. Your site should very quickly deliver the key message of what finance products you are offering and who to. Try and keep this information ‘above the fold’ so visitors to your finance company’s website see it straight away. PPC is a great way to drive traffic to your website, but pick your campaigns carefully- the suggested bids for some keywords within the industry are extremely high because of the quantity and quality of your competition.

3: Offer an online quoting tool

Offering a quoting tool or eligibility checker on your finance company’s website is a great way to keep visitors on your site for longer and get them engaging with it. It’s also an incredibly effective method of capturing data. A simple form can be used on your website for visitors to input their information but do keep the form simple. If visitors think that it’s going to take them more than a minute or two to complete the form, they are less likely to engage with it. There are a few ways to develop forms that are spread across multiple pages, and it’s advisable to do this if you require lots of input.

4: Digital or offline marketing?

We generally suggest that companies offering financial services use a mixture of both digital and offline marketing strategies. Direct mail is used heavily by almost every finance company in the UK and for good reason. The opening rates of direct mail shadow that of email campaigns. The problem with using direct mail to market your finance company is that it is difficult to measure it’s success. Email marketing on the other hand is highly measurable and you can gather detailed reports from every campaign. Using email marketing in conjunction with your direct mail campaigns is usually the best course of action. Add to the mix a high converting website that is also collecting data and building up your custom social media audiences and you are in the best possible position.

5: Buy data and collect data

If you are a new start finance company, you are most likely going to need to buy some data. There are a number of suppliers of data, but it’s usually worth going with one of the more familiar companies. Experian and CreditSafe both offer prospecting data and you can specify what you would like the data to include. If you already have your own data, use it wisely. It’s advisable to segment the data so you can try different campaigns on different data sets then compare the results. Develop a plan on how you will market your services to the data you have and stick to it. One of the main conversion goals should be to collect data and this will make driving traffic to your site through PPC more worthwhile.