Precision targeting for affluent audiences

Effective audience segmentation is the key to any high-performing digital advertising campaign especially when the goal is targeting affluent audiences. For your finance brand, this involves identifying and targeting high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) with tailored messaging that resonates with their unique financial needs and preferences.

Speaking with Josh Frith the founder of finance marketing specialists The Dubs Agency said “if you’re chasing campaign engagement and conversions it’s important to set clear goals and KPIs.”

“Use data and analytics tools to gather audience insights and monitor this regularly,” Frith said. ” Research your audience and segment it by key criteria so you deliver personalised and relevant content.” he said. “Experiment with your campaign by A/B testing various elements to hone in on what works for your audience.”

“But don’t lose sight of your brand. Be consistent and aligned with brand messaging and values” Frith said.

Advanced tactics:

• Behavioural and psychographic data analysis: Utilise data analytics tools to segment audiences based on behaviours and psychographic profiles, including investment patterns, financial goals, and lifestyle choices. According to a report, 76% of companies see a major boost in business and customer satisfaction after implementing marketing analytics. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager can help create detailed audience personas.
• Lookalike and predictive audiences: Deploy lookalike audience models using platforms like Facebook and Instagram. On LinkedIn, you can utilise a similar approach by using their Predictive audience features. These models expand your reach by targeting users who exhibit similar characteristics to your best existing clients, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.

Re-engaging high-potential prospects

Retargeting is crucial if you want to nurture leads through a lengthy and complex buying cycle. By re-engaging clients who have previously interacted with your finance brand, you can guide them down the marketing funnel more effectively.

Advanced tactics:

• Sequential retargeting: Implement a sequential retargeting strategy where ads are served in a specific order, progressively educating and engaging the audience. This method ensures potential clients get relevant information at each stage of their decision-making process.
• Cross-device retargeting: Use tracking to retarget users across multiple devices to give a consistent and seamless experience. Platforms like Google Display Network and AdRoll offer robust cross-device retargeting capabilities.

Personalised and adaptive messaging

Dynamic ad creative optimisation allows your finance brand to deliver personalised and adaptive ads, enhancing relevance and engagement ultimately targeting affluent audiences.

Advanced tactics:

• Dynamic creative optimisation (DCO): Use DCO to automatically generate and test multiple ad variations based on audience data. This approach ensures each user sees the most relevant version of your ad, tailored to their preferences and behaviour.
• Real-time personalisation: Implement real-time personalisation strategies to adjust ad content based on user interactions and contextual data. This can be done through platforms like Dynamic Yield and Adobe Target.

First-party data integration for targeting affluent audiences

First-party data integration is key to successful campaign optimisation. Leveraging data directly collected from your clients ultimately allows for more accurate targeting and personalisation. By integrating first-party data from CRM systems, website analytics, and customer feedback, you can create more precise audience segments and deliver highly relevant ad content.

Ongoing cohort analysis and custom audience optimisation

Regularly performing cohort analysis and optimising custom audiences are crucial for maintaining campaign effectiveness. Ongoing analysis of how different customer cohorts behave over time provides valuable insights that can inform future marketing strategies. Custom audience optimisation, on the other hand, involves continuously refining and segmenting audiences based on the latest data to ensure ads remain relevant and effective.

Testing AI-based campaigns vs. manual optimisation strategies

As AI continues to evolve, it’s essential to test AI-based campaigns against manual optimisation strategies to ensure you’re campaign is successful. AI can automate and enhance various aspects of campaign management, from targeting to creative adjustments. However, manual optimisation allows for a more nuanced and strategic approach. By comparing the performance of AI-driven campaigns with manually optimised ones, you can determine the most effective methods for your brand.

Optimising digital advertising campaigns targeting affluent audiences requires a nuanced and data-driven approach. With a recent Forrester poll revealing that 65% of marketing professionals are concerned about data quality, put the time and effort into improving this. Embracing sophisticated campaign optimisation tactics positions your finance brand to better engage high-net-worth clients and achieve sustained growth in a competitive market.

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1. Mobile-friendly web design is a must for finance brands

With 52.16% of businesses’ rankings altering on mobile devices by three places, and 29.16% changing by 10 places, a responsive finance website is no longer a nice-to-have.

2. SEO is more important than ever for financial marketing

51% of accounting, 81% of loans and mortgage, and 33% of banking consumers did not have one company in mind while searching.

3. Gain a higher ROI through content marketing

Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates more than 3x as many leads per dollar spent.

4. Generate leads through a strong SEO strategy

The average click-through rate for a financial services search ad is 5.1%, compared to the average online display ad generating a 1.19% CTR.

5. Amp up content to generate leads

64% of calls to financial services providers come from organic searches and 36% come from paid searches.

6. Set goals you can measure against

More than 50% of banks don’t measure ROI for their marketing campaigns, meaning they have no understanding of whether they’re successfully hitting the mark with their target audience.

7. Get discovered with backlinks

Pages ranking in the top position have 168% more backlinks than pages ranking fifth, SEO must become a part of a finance brand’s marketing strategy.

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We look at how to make the most of your finance content marketing budget, regardless of whether you’re a financial marketer for a big bank or a marketing head at a boutique asset management firm. 

Finance content marketing budget tip #1: Remember everything is content

The first step in making the most of your finance content marketing budget is looking within. Every finance brand, simply through daily business functions, generates a wealth of content—from data analytics and research reports, to expert commentary and in-house events. Most of which has the potential to be transformed into customer-friendly finance content. 

For inspiration, study US-based business valuation consultancy firm Brand Finance’s Global 500 whitepaper, which turns existing data into a narrative-driven piece of content that ranks the most powerful brands in the world. 

Also worth a look are Deutsche Bank’s case studies, which turn the bank’s achievements into engaging blog posts, and Australian fintech Up Bank’s app release notes, which are, surprisingly, among its most popular content.

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Finance content marketing budget tip #2: Transform blockbuster and long-form content

To get the most out of blockbuster and long-form finance content, slice it, dice it and re-use it. A single, well-written, well-researched feature can be transformed into a myriad of blog posts, listicles, localised content, videos, social media posts and data visualisation. As LinkedIn’s Jon Lombardo told the Financial Marketer podcast, when used wisely, one trend report can provide enough content for 365 days of the year. 

Take, for example, venture capitalist Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report, which is a smash hit every year. It’s packed with hundreds of slides containing facts, insights and trends, any of which is meaty enough to form the basis of a financial content marketing piece—or several. 

Finance content marketing budget tip #3: Make the most of your people

Customers and clients are one of the most untapped resources in finance content marketing. User-generated content is not only extremely budget-friendly, it can also lend authenticity, credibility and spontaneity to your finance content marketing campaigns. Plus, inviting customers to share content gives you an opportunity to find out how they are thinking, feeling and communicating.

There are plenty of ways to gather user-generated content—from running contests, such as American financial planning app Mint’s #mymintmoment photo competition, to hosting interactive webinars that invite questions, to meeting customers at real-life events, just as the UK’s Scottish Widows life insurance and pension fund did on its Taking on Your Future Together tour.

And don’t forget your staff. Staff-generated content is a cost-effective way of celebrating achievements, demonstrating advocacy, sharing thought leadership and sharing company culture and values with your audience. There are even tools that can help make employee advocacy a simple and compliant-friendly exercise. 

As experts in finance content marketing, The Dubs can help make sure your finance content marketing budget achieves the greatest impact, get in touch. 

The post How to maximise your finance content marketing budget appeared first on Financial Marketer.

1. Atomise your content

This means creating one core piece of content based around multiple themes – an Industry Trends Report, for example – then slicing and dicing it to create a number of smaller content pieces that can populate your marketing channels ongoing. You could share key insights as graphical social posts, cut the copy into short-form blogs or use the original piece of content as a launching pad for an op-ed. This type of content marketing is often known as ‘Blockbuster’ and it’s a model on which Disney and finance brands alike can thrive.

2. Take advantage of your expertise

Your organisation is full of experts, so make sure you’re tapping into your own valuable resources before you go searching elsewhere for inspiration. CEO interviews, podcasts and well-curated social media profiles can win your finance brand credibility as well as provide additional avenues to extend your content’s reach. See our feature on the top 10 finance CEO LinkedIn profiles to see how it’s done.

3. Audit and reuse

In countless finance organisations content is created and shared once, never again to see the light of day. Why make another video when you already have one? Why write a blog if there’s one sitting dormant in the archives of your content hub. If a piece of content was valuable to your business when first created, it’s likely that value remains – it may just need to be tweaked here and there. To use your content effectively, first decide on the themes that are important to your business, then perform a full audit and reorganise your content under these themes, repurposing the great content you’ve already created to keep these themes in the spotlight ongoing.

If a piece of content was valuable to your business when first created, it’s likely that value remains – it may just need to be tweaked here and there.

4. Set measureable objectives

Before you start producing more content, it’s important to set objectives and calculate your anticipated ROI. This will help you when planning future content marketing campaigns, and means you can identify the content initiatives that are bringing home the bacon and avoid wasting time and money on the rest.

5. Explore partnerships

It is surprising how few brands have switched on to content syndication. Put simply, syndication means having your owned content published across other, partner, marketing channels. Used effectively, syndication can increase the reach and cut-through of your content dramatically. Read our guide to syndication to get started.

6. Optimise your copy for SEO

There’s no point in creating content if you’re not going to optimise it for search. Decide on what your keywords are before you start production to make sure your content gets found.

Finally, look at your marketing budget as a whole and decide where the true ROI lies for you and your business. Maybe content marketing is an area that is worth investing a little more in. Test, learn and optimise as you go.  For help executing a content marketing strategy that will deliver ROI, get in touch.

Related articles

• ROI and the case for content marketing
• Why Mary Meeker’s yearly report is a blockbuster hit
• Marketing budgets part 1: how to stay in the driver’s seat

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As a finance marketer, you create content to communicate with your audience and provide value in an effort to achieve conversion and content ROI. However, with so much content available, it can be difficult to differentiate what your financial company produces from the pack. When 48% of consumers say content is too long and boring, you have to find a way to stand out, because if your content isn’t consumed, there’s no conversion. Certainly not a case of steering clear of long-form content, content ROI comes down to whether you’re creating content that is relevant and relatable to our audience’s interests and needs.

You have to find a way to stand out, because if your content isn’t consumed, there’s no conversion.

We look at three tactics finance marketers should be using to make sure their content stands out and gets consumed.

Create Video Content

This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last time you hear about the power of creating video content in your financial content marketing efforts. It tops other content types in terms of what consumers prefer and will continue to rise in popularity. A study found that 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.

WealthSimple is an investment technology company with offices in Canada, the United States, and London. They create video content for their Youtube channel that has garnered almost 27 million total views. Not just a case of capturing attention, a strong content marketing strategy needs to map out how each piece of content leads customers down the funnel and ultimately to conversion and content ROI.

Collaborate With Micro-Influencers for content ROI

Another way to make your financial content marketing stand out is to use micro-influencers. Large companies do it all the time when they hire celebrities to promote their products on social media and star in their commercials. As a financial services company, you can do the same. Who are the influencers that relate to your audience? Are there popular financial bloggers or thought leaders you can collaborate with to create content your audience will find interesting?

American Express did a great job with this by collaborating with Instagram travel influencer @MyEpiphany. With over 64,000 Instagram followers, she created sponsored posts to share her experiences with the company. This collaboration connected the brand with tens of thousands of people who might not have previously considered using them. Not convinced that travel and finance go hand-in-hand, we spoke to Taryn Williams, founder and CEO of TheRight.fit about how to use influencers in finance marketing.

Incorporate Breaking Financial News

You want to be the first port of call for your customers which means you need to stay abreast of what’s new in the financial markets and the industry more broadly. While you don’t want to chase down stories like a reporter, you can find ways to incorporate financial news that’s relevant to your audience.

Visa created a X account specifically for reporting financial news. They regularly tweet information that their audience will find useful. You don’t have to create a separate social media account to incorporate news. Just add it to the platforms you’re already using.

Achieve content ROI

Countless financial content marketing strategies are dull and fail to hit the mark. But if you stray from the pack and discover how to stand out, yours doesn’t have to.

If you need support in developing a financial content strategy that will captivate and convert, that’s our specialty. Learn more about our financial content marketing services and how we can help.

Related articles

• 3 financial content marketing trends to master by 2020
• ROI and the case for content marketing
• How much video content is needed to make a splash on YouTube?

The post Finance marketer’s guide to achieving content ROI appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The amount of big data available to financial institutions has grown exponentially in the past 15 years, with the average person leaving a staggering trail of digital data daily. To put this into perspective, the four biggest online storage services are estimated to warehouse a combined one million terabytes.  If you aren’t clear on exactly what Big Data is, start here. 

Using data to market more accurately

Mathematical modelling has long been used as a tool for defining and growing customer market share. For example, local consumer preferences can be predictive of usage, to the extent that in the US, companies such as StreetLight deploy mobile and GPS-based data to help banks choose retail branch locations. Equally, by drawing on data collected via commercial loans, merchant services, brokering and insurance, banks can build pools of information to inform their future marketing decisions. Every finance product or service enables a detailed dip into each individual customer’s personal or business life, opening up opportunities for more targeted consumer engagement ‒ and also to connect audiences to additional services or potential partners.

Insurance companies also are visibly harnessing big data analysis to not only personalise products and services according to drivers’ records and habits but also to influence R&D, pricing, distribution and claims processing. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance Company in the US lowered its fraud rate by 20% by adopting a security system that applies predictive modelling to detect risks in customer claims.

Chase Bank in the US tailors offers based on what it knows about customers’ wealth, family size, recent spending and borrowing patterns. This takes the form of just-in-time marketing messages designed to be of specific interest to the customer. “If someone is buying a lot of things at the home-improvement store… maybe we should call them up and ask if they need a home-equity line,” says Bob Hedges, a partner at consulting firm A. T. Kearney.

According to an A. T. Kearney report, China CITIC Bank increased the volume of transactions in some areas by as much as 300% after tracking customer comments on social media and then using this data to provide tailored recommendations and special offers via the same platforms.

In addition to facilitating more informed decision-making, partnerships with information-rich service providers such as telcos enable precision. For example, the report says, Japan’s largest non-mutual private insurance group Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co teamed up with mobile communications company NTT DOCOMO to launch a novel joint insurance product: as the telco’s users arrive at a golf course they receive a message offering injury and damages cover on the day’s game, along with a sweetener ‒ for an additional 300 yen (AUD3.35) payment, if they hit a hole in one they receive JPY300,000 for entertaining their match mates.

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Where to draw the line with data

Does this degree of scrutiny smack of Big Brother? “There’s that balance,” says Melissa Stevens, US bank Fifth Third’s chief digital officer. “You want to show that you’re utilising and embracing new technologies, but you also don’t want to freak people out.”

You want to show that you’re utilising and embracing new technologies, but you also don’t want to freak people out.

In addition to traditional finance brands employing innovative uses of big data technology, new players are using its potential to enter the finance sector. Internet company Ali Finance has leveraged its parent sales giant Alibaba’s e-commerce platform to forge inroads into areas such as third-party mobile and online payments, online banking and lending, money market trading and cloud transactions for major online traders in China, including Tmall, Taobao stores and their service providers. As its operations expand, the flow of information from one function to another increases with the customer base, along with predictability, precision and ‒ apparently ‒ customer stickiness.

In the same way that finance brands are using data analysis to tailor their products, so too should they be using this data to deliver content tailored to the customers’ needs and designed to support customers at each stage of their purchase journey.

Big data analysis is proving such an effective tool for customer engagement that if finance brands don’t move decisively to harness its business growth potential, other operators ‒ like Alibaba ‒ certainly will.

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It’s been here all along

Finance companies, particularly those with quant teams and a heavy investment focus, have long been data pioneers whether they realise it or not. The analytics involved in day-to-day assessment and strategy already drive content efforts. Companies now increasingly employ data scientists to take that raw traditional data, discern patterns and draw further insights to predict what content will work best in a particular scenario.

Heads or tails?

The best definition of data science is from GE Digital: “Data science is the art of looking at data and applying scientific principles to figure out how to make heads or tails of that data.” And data is in overabundance. Geolocation technology tells you where customers live and purchase history can predict future shopping. A data scientist will take this information and tease out insights to engage and entice customers.

Brands use data science to develop new products and services. Consider LinkedIn’s ‘People You May Know’ feature, iTunes’ suggestions that predict what films or songs you’d like based on your buying history. Facebook is brilliant at analysing what you’ve liked, shared, and responded to – and giving you more of it (at the possible peril of users living an online echo chamber). Of course, Wall Street, and political prognosticators, through advanced algorithmic trading and polling, rely on data science for their very existence.

Companies now increasingly employ data scientists to take that raw traditional data, discern patterns and draw further insights to predict what content will work best in a particular scenario

Data science in finance

The onslaught of big data in the financial sector promises consistent new avenues to break down and benefit from. New insights and corresponding application can revolutionise user experience: from mobile app interactions to social media shares, market feeds, mock-ups, livestream simulations, and much more.

Streaming analytics is a key development the financial industry should leverage. This lets you manage and monitor performance and customer experience inside of streaming data by way of real-time query alerts. For example, setting an alert each time users spend more than two minutes on a transaction or receiving an alert if an IP address tries to sign in incorrectly more than five times. In this way, financial institutions are able to track and exploit opportunities, while targeting trust concerns such as possible fraud or malfeasance. Streaming analytics is the future of data science.

The crystal ball

By cannily ascertaining what content will work for (and expand) their client base, strategies become more targeted. Predictive analytics combine content data with powerful statistical models. Finance companies can work out the factors that best help sales or engagement. For example, what age demographic most responds to a marketing post; what is the most used (or most avoided) tool on an app; what exactly has people clicking to sign up most of the time? Data science streamlines the experience – and can make assumptions and adjustments without the need for a costly, old school focus group or customer questionnaire.

Watch this space.

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Ask any content marketer and they’ll tell you content has great potential to attract, convert and retain customers. While more organisations than ever are adopting content as part of their overall marketing strategy, many traditional marketing executives are still wondering if it’s worth the investment. And, to be fair, someone has to front up and answer for where the money goes and if was worth it.

Understanding ROI

In the past, traditional marketers used media circulation and reach to justify their budgets. As technology has become more sophisticated, marketers have been offered new opportunities that drive a more complex way of looking at user engagement and conversions. As Darren Woolley, Global CEO at TrinityP3 Marketing Management Consultants, explains, “Digital technology allowed us to have greater insights into consumer behaviour and therefore be better able to engage with them to achieve the desired results.”

“With well-defined goals, brands can better measure the real value of content”

The problem with content marketing and one of the reasons content fails to deliver ROI, Woolley says, is that, “People are often measuring the wrong things. They’re not going deep enough to measure the metrics that count and instead settle for the ones that may look good but are largely meaningless.”

Too often, he adds, marketers are looking at metrics such as social media likes or unique page views, which are increasingly considered superficial and not a true indicator of success. Instead, Woolley believes, “The starting point is the strategy. A good strategy is based on achieving specific and measurable objectives. “With well-defined goals, brands can better measure the real value of content and whether or not it generates leads and eventually conversions.”

Building a case

To make a strong business case for content marketing, author Michael Brenner suggests finding out the cost of producing content, how it will be utilised and how it is expected to perform. Brands should then compare these components against the company’s average marketing ROI to determine if their efforts are worthwhile. “To answer the content marketing ROI question for your business,” he says, “you need to build a solid case based on a deep understanding of your business,” Brenner says in a Content Marketing Institute article.

Improving ROI

Data collected during the building of a business case is extremely valuable for marketers, who can then use it to implement changes to create better quality content that engages the right audience. An easy way to do so is to experiment with calls to action or content types. Perhaps your customers are more inclined to follow through to a product page on your website from a blog post. Or maybe more are subscribing to your email list after watching a video. Whatever you choose to do, it should be delivered against the objectives you set in your initial strategy so as to not lose sight of what you are trying to achieve as a brand.

Admittedly, content marketing ROI is a hot topic right now. Amid the sea of content, it’s unlikely all brands will deliver the viral campaigns so many executives are desperately hoping for. But content marketing can pay if assessed against the right metrics. Or as Woolley puts it, “It’s what people do with content that counts.”

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