Understanding the local search landscape

Local search optimisation involves enhancing your visibility in search engine results for geographically related queries. This is crucial for wealth management firms as potential clients often seek personalised, face-to-face financial guidance within their locality. The aim is to ensure you appear prominently when someone searches for “wealth management firms near me” or “financial advisors in [city]”.

Speaking to Andrew Frith, Media Strategist at finance marketing specialists The Dubs Agency, he shares, “As a wealth management business, understanding and leveraging local SEO is crucial for enhancing an online presence and connecting with potential clients in the local community.”

“By implementing targeted strategies and focusing on local search optimisation, we can ensure that the business stands out in search results, driving both traffic and trust.” Frith said.

Best practice for local search

At the top of the marketing funnel, the awareness stage, your potential clients are beginning their search for financial advice and wealth management services. Therefore, it’s critical to establish a solid foundation with comprehensive on-page SEO:

• Keyword research and optimisation: Identify and include relevant local keywords in your website content. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help pinpoint terms such as “wealth management [city]” or “financial advisors [city].”
• Google My Business (GMB) profile: Claim and optimise your GMB listing. Ensure all information—address, phone number, website, and hours of operation—is accurate and consistent. Regularly update your GMB profile with posts about events, blog articles, or market insights.
• Local citations: Ensure your firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistently listed across all local directories and citation sites. Discrepancies can undermine search engine trust in your business location.

As prospects move to the consideration stage, they evaluate different firms based on credibility and the depth of engagement. Content and reviews play a critical role at this point:

• Content marketing: Publish high-quality, locally relevant content on your blog or resource centre. Topics could include regional economic forecasts, investment opportunities, or case studies of successful client strategies within your locality. Local information accounts for 46% of all Google searches.
• Google reviews: Encourage satisfied clients to leave positive reviews on your GMB profile. Reviews significantly influence local search rankings and client trust. Respond to all reviews—positive and negative—to demonstrate your firm’s commitment to client satisfaction and engagement. According to SEO platform BrightLocal, its Local Consumer Review found 91% of consumers say local branch reviews affect their views on brands.
• Local backlinks: Build backlinks from reputable local websites. Collaborate with local business groups or contribute articles to local news outlets. High-quality backlinks signal to search engines that your business is an authoritative source in your area.

In the decision stage, potential clients are ready to choose a wealth management firm. Here, the focus shifts to turning leads into clients through optimised conversion paths and trust-building measures:

• Conversion rate optimisation (CRO): Ensure your website is optimised for conversions. Include clear calls-to-action (CTAs). Use localised landing pages to cater to specific geographic segments, improving relevancy and engagement.
• Client testimonials and case studies: Showcase detailed testimonials and case studies from local clients. These serve as powerful social proof, reassuring prospects of your firm’s effectiveness and reliability.
• Localised ad campaigns: Run targeted local ad campaigns using Google Ads and social media platforms. Geotargeting allows you to reach users in specific locations, enhancing the relevancy and impact of your advertising efforts.

The role of analytics and continuous improvement

As optimisation is an ongoing process, use analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor your local search performance. Track metrics like organic traffic, click-through rates (CTRs), and conversion rates. Analyse which keywords and content pieces are driving traffic and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Optimising local search presence for wealth management firms is a sophisticated, multi-faceted endeavour that integrates various elements of digital marketing. By focusing on each stage of the marketing funnel—awareness, consideration, and decision—you can enhance your firm’s visibility, credibility, and conversion rates.

The post How to optimise local search for wealth managers appeared first on Financial Marketer.

It’s no secret creating content with experts is valuable for financial brands. But too often, the SEO advantage is missed.

A Backlinko study found expert-led content tends to rank higher in search results. Google is increasingly placing importance on credible and relevant content sources when ranking search results.

The search giant’s addition of ‘Experience’ to its ‘E-A-T’ search quality guidelines, plus a number of other author-first introductions last year, are further proof points of the value of incorporating expertise into content.

Building an author’s reputation, authority and credibility may not be a direct ranking factor, but it has an important role to play in SEO best practice.

Competition heats up amid AI

The need for finance marketers to be responsive to changes in SEO is arguably more important than ever. Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report found brands have suffered slumps in website traffic and engagement across the board.

55% of all sites saw lower traffic, while 58% saw session engagement fall in 2023. Reading through the numbers: there’s fewer eyeballs amid fiercer competition, largely due to search generative AI.

Analysing the impact of your drive to showcase expertise isn’t easy. But the efforts behind it need to become commonplace: it’s an important cornerstone of an always-on SEO strategy, alongside relevant backlinks, high-quality research, and more.

Make author profiles stand out

Speak with your webmaster or agency about creating an author landing page for your internal experts – complete with concise biographies. Each author’s social media presence should be up-to-date, and linked to from their author profiles.

If you already have author pages, look to fill any gaps in existing biographies.

Finder’s author page does this effectively. The same goes for its individual experts.

Audit your experts’ professional social media profiles. It’s okay if your top asset manager isn’t yet active on LinkedIn, X, Link.Tree or other relevant platforms.

But their experience or qualifications need to be up-to-date.

Add profile-building to your strategy

When looking at your overall marketing strategy, build expert-led content into your planning.

Marketing expert Olaf Kopp has identified the SEO wins behind “co-occurrences” of experts (or “authors”) across a range of content formats – such as podcasts, videos and on blogs.

Your content mix should include touch points that underpin your goal of building an expert’s profile.

Expertise can be shared through:

• Thought leadership statements on whitepapers
• Expert quotes in blog posts
• Ghostwritten op-eds
• First-person articles.

Social posts can also be used – carve up longer interviews with bite-sized insights. These would naturally have a home as reels on Tiktok or Instagram. But they could also be shared in a regular newsletter.

Bigger picture, have experts present webinars, masterclasses and other speaking events.

The way experts contribute to compelling content is important too. Make sure they address the real pain points and interests of your audiences.

Support your experts

There are likely barriers to entry when it comes to promoting your in-house experts.

Of course, not everyone will want to be featured, but there are ways around this – be it through training or having the marketing team take ownership of a C-suite’s profile.

The wider goal is to drive greater confidence in your experts, and even simple activities can help support this and ensure quality of content.

This could include:

• Guide to capturing images and tweeting at an event
• Templates to help authors expert articles
• Exercises to help build confidence presenting to camera
• Best practice guidelines for building a top LinkedIn profile
• Guidelines for filming opinion pieces via Zoom or a phone to create a lower-pressure environment.

In addition to the SEO benefits, you can score wider benefits of positive brand perception and more trust from your customers.

Given the increasing impacts of generative AI, a human touch, through the showcasing of experts, is an essential component of your wider digital marketing strategy to drive success.

The post The SEO benefits of showcasing your in-house experts appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Learn why it’s something financial marketers need to be across, including the risks and opportunities.

What is Google’s Search Generative Experience?

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is a tool that uses generative AI to give users quick and clear overviews of search topics, without having to click through to individual website pages.

With SGE, Google offers a list of suggestions at the top of SERP results drawn from multiple sources.

SGE has been rolling out in America. A recent study looked at exactly what SGE will show searchers.

It found AI-generated answers didn’t match any links from the top 10 Google organic search results 93.8% of the time.

SGE is expected to “reduce organic traffic significantly” to websites for many keywords, according to Search Engine Land.  Searchers could get their answers directly from AI-driven responses.

Should financial marketers be concerned?

The recent study was based on commercial keywords. So, understandably, it piqued the interest (and worries) of financial marketers who may be over-leveraged in search marketing.

A lot goes on behind the scenes in an SEO strategy. The analysis required can be very time-consuming. This may not deliver a strong ROI if the top organic listings in search get pushed down the SERP in favour of AI-led results.

That said, there’s an opportunity for websites outside the top 10 of Google’s organic results to appear as links within SGE.

What steps can be taken?

SEOs have dealt with lots of challenges in the past. Not least staying ahead of – or just getting their heads around – the ever-changing beast of Google’s search algorithm.

Here are three steps to take to shore up your marketing strategy in light of SGE:

1. Keep up with industry trends

Stay across the latest happenings in search marketing. Search Engine Land, Semrush’s blog and SEO influencers like Lily Ray are worth following.

Also, sign up to any relevant industry newsletters including Financial Marketer.

Understand ‘Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)’. Essentially, AEO aims to directly answer user queries, making it easily crawlable by AI assistants. New research shows prioritising long-tail keyword content may be valuable.

Practically, this could mean amending the Q&A content on your website.

2. Review your content strategy

The question of which content types finance marketers should aim for in the brave new world of AI is ongoing.

For our money, as users continue to look for snappier answers to their searches, bite-sized content – such as short, animation-led videos and explainers – is an area to explore.

Take a broader look at the balance of your overall content types. Diversification is a good thing. Marketers should still consider longer-from articles where appropriate.

3. Increase your brand’s strength

Brands who put effort into staying close to their key audiences will always be well-placed to drive organic growth.

By positioning your brand strategically on social media, you can increase trust and have a new way to get reach. Paid search also needs to be considered in this mix.

The good news with SGE? Marketers have some breathing space (for now). SGE has to be enabled by a user for it to influence their search results.

But much like someone who’s considering SGE, now’s the time to get switched on.

The post Are you ready for Google’s Search Generative Experience? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The power of video marketing

According to marketing guru Neil Patel, “Video has become the go-to format for audiences seeking quick, informative, and visually appealing content. For financial brands, leveraging video marketing is not just an option, it’s a necessity.”

The stats are compelling. Research shows that 88% of consumers have been influenced by video to click on a purchase, with video preferred by 80% over written text. To misquote Madonna, we are living in a video world—and video’s reach is growing every day.

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn and TikTok further highlight the sheer power of video marketing. TikTok is the main destination for financial literacy for the under 24s (FinTok, as it’s known, is a growth bomb). The hashtag #Stocktok bagged 1.4bn views whilst #PersonalFinance reached more than 5.7bn.

The benefits of video

Video involves story and story has the ability to hook people in on an emotional or subconscious level. Hence, why well-crafted videos connect you with your people without sounding salesy. As marketing pro, Bill McKendry, once said (quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery): “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood or assign them tasks. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

On an analytics level, video is the smart kid in the class. It provides in-depth digital marketing analytics and data that helps define what users seek. The Dubs social media director Andrew Frith is adamant about the rich opportunities at play here. “The effectiveness of video content on the website can be measured by capturing video completion rates whilst also looking at partial completion times,” he says.

Video creation doesn’t need to cost a bomb, either. If you’re unfamiliar with video production and lack the budget for a professional, check out the relatively new MagicBrief (www.magicbrief.com) an innovative platform revolutionising the video creation process. Using generative AI, MagicBrief allows anyone to swiftly transform written content into video narratives, saving time and money. There is also Synthesia, which swiftly creates webinars and short videos with AI actors.

LinkedIn

For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is the best social platform for video, fostering solid connections in a professional setting where pockets are deep. It’s a place for trusted advice, with a rich thought leadership aspect to the content. Boasting over 850 million users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is excellent for generating new leads. 62% of financial advisors claimed to have scored new clients through the site.

According to Megan Anderle, Senior Marketing Consultant at LinkedIn, “Finance as a whole continues to be in the top five for most-read topics on the platform, and interestingly, 75% of engagement comes from members who do not work in finance, according to our data.”

Chris Nichols, Chief Strategy Officer at CenterState Bank, has been a fan of LinkedIn for years, doubling down during the pandemic when it was impossible to call on prospects or attend conferences. Many of Nichols’s relationship managers generate most of their leads through LinkedIn networking. “If you are in B2B sales you have to be on LinkedIn. It’s raised the profile of our business bankers.”

This is exactly why we harness the potential of video shorts for finance brands on LinkedIn. Concise, impactful video shorts—pulled from longer videos—not only capture attention and highlight critical statistics and key statements but also serve as a gateway to deeper content. This means attention can be captured whilst refreshing a steadily growing retargeting pool. It’s a beautiful way to nurture—or nudge—potential leads.

SEO

So you’ve made a video and put it online. Optimising videos for SEO is crucial, or nobody will find your Oscar-worthy work.

• Firstly, crafting a compelling video title with relevant keywords will significantly enhance the video’s discoverability.
• Secondly, write a thorough video description that outlines the content and includes relevant keywords that further contribute to SEO success.
• Additionally, make sure you use accurate tags and categorizations to help search engines understand the context of the video.
• Remember: don’t embed the same video on multiple pages or else you’re essentially competing against yourself. Wistia’s video SEO expert, Phil Nottingham, agrees. “If your page and video are both relevant to each other, and you’re hoping to ensure that page and video get ranked, then there’s no sense in embedding the video elsewhere on your public-facing website,” says Phil.

Essentially, video marketing is not just a trend; it’s a strategic imperative. It’s about telling your brand’s story in a way that resonates with your audience. Since the evolving landscape of financial marketing demands innovative strategies that cut through the noise, video is vital. Whether through groundbreaking platforms like MagicBrief or innovative use of video shorts on LinkedIn, video is king.

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The importance of SEO

In today’s fast-paced digital world, SEO is more than just a trendy buzzword—it’s a critical component for any finance brand looking to stand out in the competitive online landscape. According to research by First Page Sage the number one SEO agency in the USA, after 3 years of effective SEO, financial services can expect to see a 1031% ROI.

So, why is SEO crucial for financial marketers? Let’s explain.

• Enhancing visibility – By incorporating relevant keywords, excellent content, and solid backlinks into your SEO plan, you raise your chances of ranking well in search engine results. You can draw potential customers’ attention by increasing your visibility to people looking for financial services.
  Build trust and credibility – An effective SEO strategy can help you establish and enhance clients’ trust by improving your online reputation. Potential customers view your finance brand as credible and reliable when your website consistently ranks in the top search results.
• Improve traffic and leads – SEO acts as a magnet, attracting visitors who are actively seeking financial information or solutions. By strengthening your SEO strategy you can draw in a targeted audience more likely to convert into clients or leads.
• Expand market reach – SEO opens doors to a wider audience, allowing your finance brand to expand its reach beyond geographical limitations. By targeting specific keywords and incorporating local SEO techniques, you can tap into regional markets and reach potential clients who are searching for financial solutions in their area.
• Increase brand awareness – By staying up-to-date with the latest SEO best practices, algorithm updates, and user preferences, you can adapt your online presence to meet evolving client expectations. This agility ensures your finance brand remains relevant, competitive, and visible amidst the ever-changing tides of the digital world.

What not to do

Not repurposing content

Your finance brand’s overall marketing strategy may suffer if you ignore the importance of content repurposing in the world of search engine optimisation. In addition to limiting your audience, failing to reuse content reduces your chances of achieving higher search engine ranks.

By transforming current content into new formats, such as infographics, videos, or podcasts, you can give it new life while taking into account the preferences and platforms of a variety of audiences. By repurposing material, you raise awareness of it, draw in new audiences, and promote engagement across media. Repurposing material can also result in beneficial backlinks, social media shares, and an increase in website traffic, all of which help to establish a stronger SEO presence.

Over-optimising your keyword strategy

Despite the fact that keywords are essential to a successful SEO strategy for finance brands, it’s necessary to prevent over-optimisation. It might be detrimental to your search engine optimisation strategy to overstuff your website with keywords or to target the same ones repeatedly.

The ability of search engines to identify genuine and valuable material has grown, and they now penalise websites that use keyword stuffing or other unnatural keyword usages. Instead, concentrate on producing engaging and informative content with important keywords woven throughout. Finding the appropriate mix will help you increase website visibility, boost user experience, and achieve long-term SEO success.

Not creating a mobile-friendly website

In an increasingly mobile-oriented world (in 2021, there were 7.1 billion mobile users), failing to optimise your finance brand’s website for mobile devices is a grave oversight. In fact, Adobe’s 2021 Digital Trends: Financial Services & Insurance in Focus report found 54% of financial services and insurance firms surveyed had reported unusual growth in mobile visitors in the six months prior to the survey. At the end of the day, search engines penalise websites that provide a poor mobile experience.

To ensure a smooth user experience across all devices, your finance brand must prioritise responsive design, fast loading times, and intuitive navigation. By embracing mobile optimisation, brands can maintain their relevance and navigate the SEO landscape more effectively.

Improving your SEO strategy

To thrive in the competitive digital landscape, your finance brand must learn from common mistakes and implement effective SEO strategies. By avoiding these pitfalls, your brand can enhance its search engine rankings, increase online visibility, and strengthen its digital presence.

Your financial brand may maximise the effectiveness of its online marketing initiatives and find lasting success in connecting with its target market by using a strategic approach to SEO.

The post The SEO strategies holding your finance brand back appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The nuts and bolts of SEO for finance brands

Put simply, search engine optimisation, or SEO, is about getting your finance brand to appear at the top of search engine results. Ranking on the first page is critical to generating meaningful leads, with the first five results of searches accounting for 67.06% of all clicks.

While paid advertising has a time limit, SEO doesn’t. Improving your search engine optimisation strategy can ensure your finance brand continues to generate leads, build brand awareness and strengthen your credibility for years to come. This strategy is known as evergreen content, as it’s timeless and will capture the attention of interested consumers even once your paid advertising is over.

Improving your SEO strategy is simple

Improving your SEO strategy may seem daunting, but it can be as easy as:

• Repurposing old content to maintain the top spot in search engine rankings, by updating the information to keep it fresh and relevant
• Producing high-quality and informative research
• Gaining backlinks
• Creating an always-on content marketing strategy that aligns to target audience search queries

By applying these four key strategies, combined with utilising keywords and phrases, your search engine optimisation strategy can be improved significantly.

Still don’t believe the importance of search engine optimisation? Here are some key statistics to highlight just how game-changing SEO can be for your finance brand.

The post Benefits of SEO for finance brands appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The ins and outs of SEO for asset managers

At the core of it search engine optimisation or SEO is the process of getting your website higher in the rankings. To do this, you first need to understand what your clients are searching for so you can optimise your content to reflect these terms and keywords. Recognising the questions and information your potential clients are seeking, and then addressing them through relevant and useful content is the foundation of best practice SEO. If you’re uncertain how your website’s SEO performs, check out our SEO website audit tool.

Unlike paid advertising, if you continue to invest in and strengthen your SEO content strategy it can benefit you for far longer. While paid advertising has a time limit, SEO can continue to help generate leads, build brand awareness and strengthen your credibility for years afterwards. This is known as evergreen content as it’s timeless and will continue to capture the attention of interested investors long after your paid advertising strategies have run their course.

Finding the right keywords and phrases

SEO for asset managers can be improved by simply understanding what your target audience is searching for. Asset managers need to have a deep understanding of what clients and potential clients are searching for, which comes down to their interests and needs. Creating SEO optimised content that aligns with what investors are after gives your asset management firm a prime opportunity to capture the attention of a wider market segment. However, in our research with Dianomi, there is a large information gap between what investors are searching for and what asset managers are providing.

By filling this information gap with SEO optimised content asset managers can capture investors based on the queries and concerns they’re actually searching for/interested in. Some of the most under-supplied areas asset managers must fill in order to capture the interests of their target audience include:

• ETFs
• Cryptocurrency
• Equities
• Commodities

Understanding the keywords your target audience are searching for is the first and most critical step of strengthening your overall SEO content strategy. A great starting point would be to identify key research, like our study with Dianomi, or your personal web analytics which identifies areas that investors are interested in. Further, looking to Google Trends will enable you to identify the search popularity of keywords and phrases, helping to inform your content and SEO strategy. There are also a number of SEO tools every finance marketer should have in their arsenal.

How asset managers can maximise their SEO strategy

SEO should be a priority but it can be hard to know how to strengthen your strategy. Other than ensuring your asset management firm is utilising the same keywords and phrases your target audience is, there are a couple of other strategies that can help:

• Repurposing old content
• Publishing authoritative data and content
• Gaining backlinks

Repurposing old content

Search engines favour fresh and relevant content placing them at the top of the search engine rankings. As years go on, your old blogs and content can become outdated and therefore not worthy to be displayed on the first page of results. Simply going back through your old content, updating it and ensuring the right keywords and phrases are being used can ensure you remain at the top of search engine rankings.

Become an authority

Ensuring the content you produce is high-quality, informative, and filled with important information that interested investors want is key to ensuring you rank high in searches. While you could have the most keyword heavy content, this is useless if you’re not a valuable resource for users. Focusing on creating content that’s useful and important for interested investors will improve not only your search engine rankings, but help you to generate meaningful leads, build credibility, and form trust with clients. In fact, high-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search.

Gain backlinks

Put simply, gaining backlinks to your website is one of the best ways to improve your SEO strategy. This is because search engines notice that other webpages are referencing your content, improving the authoritative nature of it. Producing high-quality and valuable content will enable your website to gain backlinks and improve your overall credibility. In fact, the top results on Google’s first SERP have 3.8x more backlinks than those below them.

SEO should be a priority

At the heart of it, SEO is one of the most important ways to ensure your asset management firm can be discovered organically. Not only that, it can help build credibility with clients as you’re seen as one of the first options for potential clients looking for your services. SEO should be a core part of your overall marketing strategy as it needs consistent attention to remain strong and effective. If your asset management firm is looking to capture the attention of interested investors then look to your SEO strategy as one area for improvement.

The post Why SEO Should Be A Priority For Asset Managers appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The hub and spoke model

Like the name suggests, if you take a look at the diagram below a hub and spoke model looks similar to a bike wheel. On your website, you will have the main page (the hub) with branching sections that relate to sub-topics (the spokes). This method can help you rank higher in the search engine results as you aren’t trying to rank individual pages with keywords. Instead, you have a central hub that can improve your relevance and authority on a variety of different financial topics.

At the core of it, a hub and spoke content model targets an entire topic rather than just individual keywords. This not only benefits your SEO strategy but also your target audience as they gain more enriching content helping to strengthen customer and brand relationships and brand perception. Here are three more ways a hub and spoke model can benefit your finance brand:

• It offers a better site structure and UX design that’s intuitive and easy to use
• It ensures you cover a topic extensively enabling your finance brand to be seen as an authority
• It can enable your brand to generate more backlinks and nurture meaningful leads

How to approach a hub and spoke SEO model

You don’t need to redo all of your content on your website to create a hub and spoke model strategy. Instead, you need to create pathways that diverge from your hub page. This will look different for every finance brand.

Once you decide what your hub topic will be, let’s say investing, for example, you then need to plan out your spokes. If your main topic has less than 10 sub-topics it’s recommended you find a more comprehensive content idea.

So, your main page is about investing. Here you will explain investing generally and within your page have links to other content on your site which explains sub-topics such as asset classes, responsible investing and asset allocation.

In this example, your page on investing will live at the domain level, so it may read similar to this www.thefinancialmarketer.com/investing. Your sub-topics will branch off of this, helping with SEO, and may read like, www.thefinancialmarketer.com/investing/ETFs.

Structuring your SEO around a clear goal

To decide how to scope out your hub and spoke model it’s important you decide what the aim of your website is. Ask yourself:

• Am I looking to collate new leads? – If this is your finance brand you may instead give the important information about a topic before redirecting them to purchasing.
• Am I aiming to become an authoritative voice in this area? – If this is your finance brand then creating more dense and sophisticated content will benefit you.
• Am I aiming to improve brand awareness and image? – If this is your finance brand then you may look to inform your audience about what they need to know while proving how you can help them.

NerdWallet nailing the hub and spoke model

A hub and spoke model can sometimes be tricky to visualise. To demonstrate just how significant the SEO benefits are, we take a look at NerdWallet.

NerdWallet utilises subfolders as a part of their site architecture which helps create keyword rich URLs and web pages. This strengthens their SEO strategy and sees them rank number 1 across a range of finance topics. As an example, NerdWallet’s credit card hub is split into a variety of spokes such as ‘best credit cards for 2021’ which they rank on the first page of google for.

Their UX design aids their site architecture as it’s easy to use, offers a basic summary at the forefront for users, and creates meaningful lead pathways to purchase products. While it’s important your finance brand is on the first page of Google if your website then doesn’t support the user and direct them to purchase it becomes futile.

NerdWallet’s engagement speaks for how successful a hub and spoke model is for SEO and ranking on the first page, achieving 22.03 million visitors a month, 86.81% of which came from search engine results.

What you can do to strengthen your SEO

While your finance brand web design may not look the exact same as NerdWallet, what you need to identify are key topics you can become an authority on. These should align with your target audience and reflect your content marketing goals. While the content you produce may be high quality and keyword dense, you still may not be maximising it through a traditional web page structure. A hub and spoke model can amplify your SEO marketing strategy and ensure you generate meaningful leads that can be nurtured into loyal and trusting customers.

The post NerdWallet: Nailing SEO for finance brands appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Harnessing the power of micro moments

Micro moments are opportunities for engagement not distraction and can provide a prime opportunity for finance brands to gain a new customer, increase brand awareness or generate greater trust and loyalty.

Micro moments can be divided into four different categories and when finance brands tailor their marketing strategy to them, they can capture a vast array of new customers. These categories include:

• I-want-to-know-something – Finance brands should provide important information about particular finance topics to satisfy this need.
• I-want-to-go-somewhere – Finance brands should provide their location to harness the moment when consumers are searching for a company or store to visit (this is particularly important for financial services such as banks).
• I-want-to do-something – To satisfy this need, finance brands should look to provide informative ‘How To’ content such as videos and podcasts to teach consumers about how to perform certain tasks, such as invest or open a bank account.
• I-want-to-buy-something – This ones a little more obvious, but finance brands should look at creating content that funnels consumers into purchasing a product or service.

To ensure finance brands are able to harness these micro moments, they must understand their customer’s needs and identify where these micro moments are occurring. Finance brands should focus on producing content that targets these moments and provide useful information that engages consumers at specific points in time. By demonstrating that a finance brand can help in a customer’s moment of need, this will create greater trust and loyalty and change a consumer’s moment of a want-to-buy to a must-buy.

Strengthen your content to strengthen your profits

Finance brands should aim to provide high-quality and relevant information to customers’ queries as they happen, to not only inform customers but funnel them into buying a product. Strengthening a finance brands’ SEO and web content to align with the relevant micro moments in their target customer’s consumer journey will enable them to gain the attention of users. In fact, 69% of customers agree that the quality, timing and relevance of a business’s information influences their perception of the brand.

Mobile-friendly marketing is king

It pays to be speedy

Micro moments are short-lived, meaning customers aren’t patient. By ensuring a finance brands’ website is not only fast but also accessible, it’ll ensure users stay on the site and remain engaged. With one in four people abandoning a site if it takes over four seconds to load, finance brands should look to eliminate any blocks to their customers’ ability to access the information they need.

Micro moments make big impacts

Micro moments are fought by finance brands in those brief periods of procrastination. To ensure finance brands win the battle and harness the power of micro moments they must understand their customer’s journey and create a targeted content plan that aligns with it. Finance brands that capitalise on these moments and make sure they aren’t going to waste by aligning their customers’ in-the-moment needs with valuable and accessible content can gain a competitive edge.

The post How micro moments make major impacts appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Since the 1930s marketing has had the ‘Rule of seven’ which suggests consumers need to see or hear a message seven times before they’ll consider taking action.

Since then marketer’s have differed in their opinions. Some believe individuals need to be exposed to messaging three times, while others think it’s closer to 14 or 20 times before a consumer will respond and take action. What’s universal is the understanding that you can’t expect one well-placed brand message or piece of content to lead to customer acquisition.

Whatever the number, without an always-on content program you can’t expect to capture and hold your target audiences’ attention over time, nurturing them to a point where they’re informed and engaged enough to take meaningful action.

What is an always-on content strategy?

Unlike advertising campaigns which are usually short, sharp bursts of targeted communications promoting a specific timely event, campaign, or product message, always-on content marketing has no end date. And when incorporating evergreen content and organic distribution, unlike advertising it doesn’t rely on continual ongoing spend.

Taking the form of short and long-form articles, infographics, videos, podcasts (and any other content that’s the right fit for your audience), an always-on content program gives finance brands an ongoing presence across multiple distribution channels. In essence, an always-on content program is not dissimilar to producing a periodic publication that publishes a specific number of times per week or month according to a pre-planned publishing calendar.

Best planned to align to the three phases of the sales funnel – awareness, consideration and conversion – always-on content is a mix of content that inspires and captures attention, informs and educates, and ultimately helps potential customers overcome challenges and questions needed for them to take action. Produced with the audience’s needs and interests front of mind, an always-on content program is a way to build trust and interest in your finance brand by providing high-quality, useful content on a regular basis.

It’s through this regular cadence of publishing that finance brands become visible enough to hit that coveted three, seven or 14 times seen that’s needed to trigger potential customers to take action be it watching a video, reading an article, visiting a webpage or filling in a request form.

Launching an always-on content program

In the same way you can’t expect a customer to act on a single brand message, you also can’t expect a new content program to deliver wide-reaching brand awareness instantly. A brand that’s new to content marketing should expect to build their brand recognition and credibility over a number of key horizons as shown below.

In the same way, any new publication will take time to build up a readership and a loyal fanbase, a fresh always-on content marketing program will take time to build its credibility with the target audience and shouldn’t be expected to drive sales from day one. When launching an always-on content program consider these key stages:

• Establish a content strategy and framework for content production that includes clear pillars to produce against. These pillars should align to the needs of your audience while also fulfilling brand objectives.
• With a strategic framework in place, determine a publishing frequency that you know you can commit to consistently. Look to other areas of the business and existing content you can draw on to fulfill your chosen publishing cadence.
• Produce and distribute relevant content consistently across the social channels best suited to your target audience.
• Monitor the performance of your content on-site and across your social channels, learning and optimising both your content, targeting and user journey as you go.
• Review whether your content is delivering on its objective at each stage of the funnel and don’t be afraid to test and learn.

Maintaining a consistent content program is an ongoing commitment that requires planning and preparation. For it to be a truly always-on content program, and a successful one at that, it can’t be run in isolation but rather become a part of the BAU of business workflow as part of marketing, PR, brand, digital, and compliance day-to-day activities.

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