As we move into the new year, it is important to know where digital marketing is headed for 2018, and which tactics you need to look out for. Here are four digital marketing trends that financial advisors should implement into their marketing strategy this year:
LinkedIn Networking
LinkedIn is rapidly becoming the social media channel of choice for financial advisors. LinkedIn has made drastic improvements in their advertising platform in 2017, and they created a refreshed user interface that is both straightforward and simple to use. We all have basic LinkedIn profiles, but it is important to ensure that your LinkedIn profile is fully optimized. There are many opportunities and benefits for financial advisors who choose to incorporate LinkedIn into their digital marketing strategy. First of all, having a strong LinkedIn marketing strategy will expand your network and attract more people to connect with you. It will also help you to generate more prospects through increased web traffic. Secondly, you will be able to stay top of mind and establish yourself as a thought leader by sharing valuable content with your LinkedIn network. And lastly, since Google shows preferential treatment to the strongest LinkedIn profiles, having a solid LinkedIn profile will help with your Google rankings.
Conversational User Interfaces
Conversational or voice interactions such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and online chatbots are quickly becoming a part of the average person’s daily routine. People are no longer satisfied with sending an email or filling out a form and waiting hours for a reply. They want the answers to their questions instantly. Making use of online chatbots is also a great way for financial advisors to gain new insights on leads. Different tools such as Intercom or Drift use artificial-intelligence-powered live-chat tools to communicate with a financial firm’s prospects. These chatbots are then able to qualify the leads on their own, so the sales team can spend time going after only the best and most qualified leads. This year at Midstream Marketing we created an entire sales funnel for one of our clients using Intercom, and we have seen great success already.
Content Personalization
Impersonal email blasts and generalized advertisements are becoming increasingly less and less effective as time goes on. When implementing any digital marketing strategy, it is crucial that financial advisors target very specific segments and focus on creating personalized content with every interaction they have with a prospect. ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp have the capability to segment your email list in a fairly simple manner. By establishing this personal relationship, it validates the prospect’s needs, motivates them to choose your services rather than the services of your competition, and cultivates customer loyalty for your financial firm. At Midstream Marketing, we have found that content that is customized and personalized tends to perform better than if it were impersonal or generalized.
Video Marketing
Gone are the days when content marketing consisted simply of writing a new blog post each week or creating an educational ebook. Content marketing is evolving very quickly, and we are seeing more and more how crucial it is to incorporate high-quality videos into your digital marketing strategy. Quality video content converts at a better rate, creates higher engagement, and will produce more leads for your financial firm. Here at Midstream Marketing, we have found that many people now prefer to learn and be engaged through something more visual as opposed to something that is simply text-based, like a blog post. Software such as Promo has good stock video footage that you can customize and add banners and your logo to make the videos your own. We have recently started using videos in our Facebook advertising campaigns, and we have seen first-hand a great amount of engagement and conversion by using videos.
Do you want to know how to implement these marketing trends and more in 2018? Sign up for a free 15-minute digital marketing consultation today!
