Financial marketers are realising that to remain relevant in a crowded sector they must invest and innovate.

Industry professionals need to work across multiple departments, including UX and data analytics, to achieve success.

In a recent CMO survey, over half of the respondents from financial industries increased their marketing investment in 2017.

Here are some top tips for creating successful marketing strategies in the financial service industries.

The future is now

According to Marketo, the financial service industries must prioritise modernising its marketing practices, as companies in the sector often have concerns around compliance in relation to digital marketing.

Businesses can reduce their consumers’ concerns about privacy and compliance by introducing automated marketing tools which conform to regulations. Automation streamlines and measures tasks and workflows in one simple interface. Such systems can track the success rate of campaigns, which helps improve response rates when under-performing content is filtered out.

Financial service industries have also struggled to cope with the recent explosion of data from website behaviour, social media interactions and other digital channels, finding it hard to consolidate all this information to deliver content to the right person, at the right time.

Using data management platforms such as single customer view (SCV) can be beneficial, as they allow marketers to identify and understand individual customers. They can track across multiple channels and devices ultimately delivering more targeted and engaging messages.

Personality injection

Findings show content marketing personalisation leads to tangible ROI. Marketers must be more specific and engage consumers through customer experience and professional insights.

For example, if your customer data is telling you people who commute into London from Essex are your most common customer, marketing can then consider focusing on mobile devices by using geo-targeting ads, as one of your main commercial solutions.

Social media can provide an abundance of useful data on customer sentiment, interests and location, which will help to optimise campaign results and keep FSI companies informed on where to invest marketing spend.

Investing in relevant social listening tools will help marketing professionals become more customer-centric, which, in turn, will increase loyalty, trust and business revenue.

Keep it clear

It’s important to be clear from the onset how your marketing strategy can and should be used in your business. A content marketing strategy is only as strong as its execution, so be realistic with capacity and expectations. Outline exactly who will be responsible for what within the team so everyone understands their responsibilities from the offset.

Risk assessments are key when establishing a new strategy as financial industries are highly regulated and often under the spotlight. Once you’ve established a campaign idea, sit down with your team and discuss any possible ways the campaign could be misinterpreted.

Determine whether the risks outweigh the benefits of the campaign. It’s important to work towards removing any preventable risks and developing a contingency plan in case of any potential issues which may arise.

Content is key

Targeting is only part of the solution. A substantial 66 per cent of millennials say investing in the stock market is scary or intimidating. Once you get in front of the right people, you need to ensure your content is compelling, trustworthy and prompts action.

The types of content you choose should also differ, depending on your target audience. Demonstrate the expertise and knowledge in your business through interesting and informative content, such as case studies, social media or online resources.

For instance, younger demographics might be more responsive to a social post, whereas older customers might benefit from an advisory ‘how-to’ article on your website.

Well-researched and thoughtfully written content should help your target audience, at no cost to them. Make sure you create content that is of interest to experts too. If you’re targeting analysts and entrepreneurs in the financial space, they will already have researched the basics and perhaps want some more complex articles to sink their teeth into.

It’s also crucial you have specific calls to action. Urge your target audience to visit your website or subscribe to your newsletter. These options open the doors to building a relationship and acquiring a customer.

“Once you get in front of the right people, you need to ensure your content is compelling, trustworthy and prompts action.”

Find your niche

A little less then half (45 percent) of financial services report their marketing is conducted on an ‘ad hoc’ basis, so there’s room for improvement if businesses want to create strong marketing strategies that outperform competitors.

Complete a competitor analysis to discover what others are doing and find a gap in the market where you can stand out. Differentiation can mean everything, and nearly 90 per cent of marketers say interactive content distinguishes them from their competitors.

By understanding this principle, more marketers are stepping up their static content to create offerings customers can truly engage with, like interactive maps or animated charts.

After all, marketers get the best results when their audience not only consumes and enjoys content but interacts with it too.

Nandik Barbhaiya is global head of marketing at FXTM.