An A-Z Guide to Asset Management Marketing: Part One

By
Paul Milnes

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The task of transforming complex financial products into targeted marketing messages isn’t an easy one, but it’s one that financial marketers face every day. Add to that the need for strict regulatory compliance, and the fact that the target audience in question has been left with serious doubts surrounding the banking and financial system of late, and you begin to see just how tricky a task financial marketing can be.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. The rise of the internet and social media has transformed the world of marketing, and brought an arsenal of new and exciting financial marketing tools with it. Web analytics, data software, and social media platforms have give today’s asset management marketers the ability to hone their craft. Their marketing messages can be distributed more quickly, be better targeted and far more engaging as a result.

So, despite the daily issues, the latest marketing innovations mean that asset management marketing is now more effective than ever, provided marketers utilize these new tools correctly. We’re going to take a look at the latest innovations here, in our A-Z guide, which will help you get your head around what’s making asset management marketing tick.

Turn up the Amplification

We all know what amplification is in the traditional sense. Amplification helps us pump up the volume. Turn your amps up on stage, and your band will reach a bigger audience. This is what the amplification marketing process seeks to do in the online sphere. Amplification is the rate at which your brand’s followers share your content with their own network.

In essence, your followers are your amplifiers, spreading your message far and wide. On your blog, that means the number of shares any of your posts achieves through any other social channel, while on Twitter it’s a simple case of how many retweets one of your posts gets. Making a big noise about your brand is one thing, but it’s the size of the audience that really counts.

Watch that Bounce Rate

One of the major tasks of any financial marketer is to attract visitors to the brand’s website or social media channel. But it doesn’t stop there. Once you’ve succeeded in drawing visitors to your content, you want them to engage with it, not browse elsewhere after viewing only one page. The bounce rate is the term we use to describe exactly this phenomenon, so you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible.

Whatever your site’s bounce rate, it’s a hugely valuable indictor as to just how engaging, or otherwise, your site and its content is. Your bounce rate will tell you how effectively you’re communicating, and which areas of your site need a little work. Making changes to content and measuring the results can help you learn, optimize your website, and direct users towards important pages where ads are running.

Get more from your audience with Call-to-Action

When you’re looking to interact with your audience call-to-actions are essential. Want more feedback or responses from your website’s users and viewers? A simple CTA can work wonders – ‘sign up!’, ‘share’, ‘download’, ‘contact us’ is all it takes. CTAs can encourage sharing, downloading and more. So CTAs may appeal to your own target audience than others, so it pays to test a few out and monitor results.

Ditch the dodgy Data

Nobody likes data errors. Your customers certainly won’t, as dodgy data only wastes their time – and your money. Before you start any campaign, make sure your database is up to spec, error-free, without any duplicate records, and that it’s segmented by customer too.

Engage, engage, engage!

One of the key marketing buzzwords of the social media age, engagement is what asset management marketing is all about. Think about it. What use is your content unless your audience engages with it. You don’t want content that can simply be ignored. By creating content that is engaging, practical, interesting and truly focuses on your audience needs, you’ll attract more customers. By encouraging them to engage with your content, by asking them for their feedback for example, you help to establish a relationship between you and your audience. Not only does this build trust, it also allows you both to learn more about each other – it’s mutually beneficial.

Always Follow Rules

The financial service industry is tightly regulated, and rightly so. While regulation requirements can change on what seem like an almost daily basis, and as tiresome as this can be to keep up with, it really is essential that all regulatory requirements are met. The cost of failing to comply is simply too high, so a little legwork in the planning stages needn’t be seen as a chore. Make use of automated tools, and ensure that communication is smooth between marketing and compliance departments for an easier process.

Boost your profile with Google Authorship

When you write something that’s published on the web, it can seem like your small voice is lost out there among millions o others. That’s why Google launched Google Authorship. It’s an online tool that connects content with the person who wrote it. It’s great for content authors, but also makes it easy for readers to find all of your content at once, accessing relevant information and following a voice that they trust more easily. Linked to your Google Plus profile, it’s a must for anyone publishing financial marketing content online, adding credibility and boosting your online presence instantly.

Use Hashtags to give your tweets more power

If you’re unfamiliar with the Twitter hashtags (#) phenomenon, then you need to catch up, and fast. Hashtags work by turning any word or phrase into a searchable link that helps users find all of the content on Twitter related to a topic. You’ll often find hastagged words and phrases on the trending list, and by using a hashtag you can actually boost retweets by up to 16%. It’s a great way to promote your own content or opinion, but also a fantastic way for you to join the conversation and have your voice heard on trending topics too – and you just might start a hashtag trend of your own.

Constantly increasing your Inbound Links

Heard about inbound links? These happen when any other website online links to content on your own site. Consider them the internet’s version of a hat tip. As well as providing you with a little ego boost and a nice bit of acknowledgement, they’re also what search engines use to rate just how valuable your content is on the web. Inbound links from high-ranking, reputable websites can improve your search engine ranking in a big way, so they’re vitally important and something that any company should strive for. The higher up those rankings you climb the more web traffic is driven your way via organic search.

Follow your clients’ Journeys

Not just a word that you hear constantly on reality shows, but also a word that’s used within the marketing sphere to describe the integration of several marketing processes into one. Asset management customers are savvy buyers, and their sophistication means that it’s vital to track their buyer ‘journey’. Evaluating each stage of their journey, from their initial consideration through to closure, and on into post-purchase loyalty is now a vital part of the asset management marketing agenda. Marketing, engagement and sales functions are streamlined into a single process rather than a series of operational functions.

Keep and eye on Keywords

Keyword rankings are key for several reasons. First of all, in terms of search engine performance. Editing your content to include certain keywords that your audience is most likely to search for will boost your site’s performance, but it’s also important to remember that you’re writing to attract and appeal to human clients, not a search engine algorithm. Research which words clients Google for. It’ll also help you to keep the right tone and connect better with your potential client base if you’re speaking their language and communicating in keywords and terms they use regularly.

There’s no escaping the lure of LinkedIn

Want to know how many US asset managers have a LinkedIn profile? 94 per cent of them. Three quarters of US asset managers also claim that when it comes to choosing their preferred social marketing channel, it’s LinkedIn every time. These numbers speak for themselves, so its vital to set up a company profile, get linked-up with LinkedIn users, join groups, create your own, and share your blog posts via LinkedIn too. It’s a great way to boost your profile in the right place, with LinkedIn providing a business setting and business audience from the outset, as opposed to catch-all platforms like Facebook.

Let the software do the legwork with Marketing Automation

You’ll now find a whole host of marketing software tools that can help take the sting out of those repetitive marketing tasks. Who isn’t searching for a quicker and more effective way to carry out automated marketing processes? The tech geeks have come to the rescue here, with solutions like Act-On, Marketo, Pardot and Hubspot, which can help you track content and carry out ‘drip’ email campaigns, for example. They’re all valuable ways to keep the automated aspect of marketing within easy, cost-effective control, giving you time to devote more time and resources to your more promising prospects.

Get involved from the start with New Product Development

When it comes to developing new products, you can’t underestimate the beneficial role that marketing can play. Involving marketers early throughout the whole product positioning process, from design, through branding and finally on to the marketing of a product, is the only way to ensure that you’re creating products that are truly in sync with your clients. Marketers can use their skills throughout the development process to simplify, refine and focus a product to better suit the target audience.

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