Marketing Trends for Financial Services Industry

We always talk about the constant change and evolution of marketing trends and strategies that this time, we also want to highlight how equally important it is to keep up with the rising financial marketing strategies this 2020. And in order to keep up with the fast-changing world of marketing, it is absolutely necessary to possess the right tools and incorporate them into your current financial game plan.

Today, let’s take a look at some marketing tips that are transforming the financial sector.

AI: Advanced Chatbots

Everything has to be instant now. The longer it takes for a transaction to go through and finish, the more off-putting it becomes. Customers expect instant results as well as instant answers to their questions. Time wasted is money wasted and a prospect lost. No business would want that to ever happen to them.

The good news is that’s exactly what chatbots have been created for. Chatbots have been around for some time already and with better versions constantly popping up, you can now include conversational banking into your bots to give your customers a personalized experience at every financial stage.

Depending on the service you want to provide, there are two types of bots that you can choose from:

Lead bot

Qualifying a lead for financial services is deemed as the most important function of any Finance Business. It’s all about connecting your prospects to your marketing department for more personalized questions. Say your prospect clicks on one of your ads that you’ve posted on your social platforms. They would have to provide relevant details about their business, needs, interest, etc. If they get qualified based on the information they enter, the bot now can send their details through to the sales team so they can get in touch with the lead and start the purchase journey.

Support bot

Au contraire to the Lead bot, support bots are more of a virtual guide for your customers. They can handle all the financial product-related questions that your customers might have round the clock so you don’t have to worry about queries stocking up unanswered in your chatbox while you sleep at night.

The great thing about chatbots – and why we highly recommend them – is because they empower the users to be self-sufficient by also offering them solutions that are efficient and quick; providing them with all the information they need to understand your product features and their benefits, etc. Chatbots enhance the user’s experience with your brand and that will encourage them to keep coming back.

Hyper Personalized Video

Video marketing could be considered a luxury back in the days since not many companies saw the value in spending a good chunk of their resources for a 30-second to 2-minute video. That is not the case anymore today. The best way that you can enhance your customers’ experience nowadays is by putting out video content, and the Finance industry is not exempted from this. Your customers may not all be fluent in all the ‘how’s’ of your product or services and they may also not have enough time to read through all your websites to find out enough information. So, the best solution here is to use video marketing to capture their attention and provide faster solutions.

It shows that you can get an 80% boost in your conversions by integrating videos into your landing page. You have a greater chance of attracting prospects to your website by combining videos into your marketing as users frequently spend 88% more time on websites with video content than those that don’t.

If you’re stuck with what kind of videos you could post, start off with simple video tutorials or demos on how your product/services work. Aside from just posting them onto your website, you can also opt to send exclusive contents of that sort to your customers’ email.

“How-to” videos are a great avenue to show your investors how they can use their products and/or services or how to use it to create webinars for their consumers.

Live streaming technical analysis on your platforms can engage your audience in real-time of maybe a BTS of something you are working on or for them to tune in into a seminar/conference you are holding.

Lastly, never underestimate the impact of emotional and relatable video testimonials and the power of storytelling. These types of videos can inspire your audience as well as encourage them to engage with you.

Virtual Assistants with voice-enabled search

If our hands are too full, that’s not a problem anymore. You can just talk to your phone, prompting a virtual assistant with your voice.

So, if our virtual assistants on our phones can help us with our groceries and random researches, why not also with financial operations? In fact, many financial companies have already jumped on to this already.

Siri and Alexa are the most famous voice-search enabled virtual assistants that we have today among many others. Now, how is it beneficial for financial institutions to have these VAs? It is to help shift from a product mindset to a customer-centric one by providing them with a ‘voice’ that answers their queries. What’s more, is that your voice-enabled VAs can double as analytical agents and elicit valuable inputs that help you build a stronger business strategy.

AI Analytics

While on the subject of AI, it offers key ‘Audience Insights’ which can transform the way a finance company can communicate and engage with their customers in ways such as learning to understand buyer persona and demographics. AI Insights help you identify certain topics, conversations, and areas that your user is more interested in and help drive your marketing campaigns in the right direction.

As a finance company, it helps if you tweak your marketing accordingly to find out more about your customers’ emotional motivations for their financial transactions.

Try integrating the power of segmenting customers (banking, savings, investments, etc.) so you can tailor bespoke marketing campaigns and reaching your right target audience. Address your key customer concerns so they know you also care about what troubles them. “What are your biggest pain points?’ ‘What are they looking for in a financial product at the moment?’ are good questions you can ask them and then take it off from there.

Overall, AI-enabled real-time audience insights can help lower and even prevent you from wasting valuable advertising and marketing resources for financial companies all while allowing them to engage and interact with your customers in an efficient, proactive, and accurate way.

Omnichannel Marketing

Now, the thing is, people want to be able to even do their banking at just one click of a button from wherever they are, at whatever time of the day. Thankfully, many banks have developed their own user-friendly apps and optimized their websites so that their customers can actively engage without having to physically go to the bank. They can message their queries through the app, schedule appointments, check their deposit balance, etc.

On the other hand, some banking companies have taken several steps more forward and truly thought out of the box. Capita One, for example, has launched an impressive “Banking Reimagined Tour” wherein they established two Capital One Cafes which allowed people to recharge their bank accounts and devices all while managing finances using simple digital tools over – yep! You guessed it! A cup of coffee.

What we can learn from them is that if financial companies want to stay relevant and not fall behind, it’s important for them to keep integrating multiple platforms and facilitate smooth communication and cross-platform support for their customers.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, marketing has emerged and evolved as an indispensable element for stirring the right conversations that are more customer-centric. If Finance Companies start going more and more virtual while still having that human touch and look out for your customer’s financial needs and wants, that’s when innovation starts.