SAN FRANCISCO — How can wealth management and fintech marketers best adapt to the digital age?
Start by taking advantage of analytics, which have evolved to the point where every keyboard touch is tracked, according to marketing experts who spoke at Financial Planning’s In|Vest West conference.
Marketers can now measure the effectiveness of words and phrases using tools such as Google Analytics and Data Studio, said Tyler Resh, director of marketing and strategy for First Foundation.
For example, the phrase “wealth planning” was sought after in searches, but underutilized by financial advisory firms, First Foundation found. One financial services firm it was advising subsequently “optimized” the phrase in its digital communications and was able to substantially boost visits to its website, according to Resh.
After identifying words and phrases that are valuable to a firm’s business, marketers should seek high volume in searches not highly used by other firms, said Joe Steuter, vice president of marketing communications for Carson Group.
Thanks to these advances in data analytics, content can now be converted to sales leads, said Jack Sharry, chief marketing officer for LifeYield.
“Our website has evolved from a sales tool to lead generation,” he said. “We track every touch.”
Measuring click-through rates, views and reach are now table stakes for firms, according to Steuter. The challenge for marketers, he said, is to learn even more and determine “how long it will take to convert a prospect into a client.”
The marketers also stressed the importance of personalizing a firm’s message, making it more frequent and more bite-sized.
“The worst kind of marketing you can do now is try to be all things to all people,” said Megan Carpenter, CEO of FiComm Partners. “You need to be very careful about what you can and can’t do.”
Ten years ago, marketers were obsessing about their firm’s elevator pitch, Resh noted. Today, digital technology can help marketers personalize the firm’s message for a specific target market.
Steuter stressed the growing importance of frequency in the digital age.
“We’ve gone from monthly newsletters to much more frequent communication with or clients,” Steuter said. “Marketers can communicate immediately if they need to and they should take advantage of that when they have to.”
It’s easy for content and message to be broken up into bite-sized pieces, said Sharry, and marketers should take advantage of that.
“We’ve gone from producing lengthy white papers to posting small blog posts,” he said.
Carson Group is also striving to communicate with clients via “micro-moments,” according to Steuter.
For all the benefits and iterations new analytics technology has to offer, he also urged marketers to make sure they “don’t confuse compelling with complicated.”
