Full disclosure. We here at Palmer are an end-to-end digital marketing agency, so not surprisingly, you'll find the following blog post, which looks at why financial services firms need an inbound marketing agency, to be slightly biased. What isn't arguable, however, is the emergence of inbound marketing and how it represents an innovative and ever-growing way for financial brands to reach new customers.
The Content Imperative. Inbound marketing is predicated on the creation and marketing of compelling financial content that will resonate with buyer personas and attract them to your brand. If you were in the microwave business this wouldn't be a big deal. But the financial services industry is an entirely different beast. Your arsenal of financial content—the content that will fuel your financial inbound marketing tactics—includes a financial blog, white papers, ebooks, videos, customer testimonials, and webinars. Some firms prefer to write these materials in-house. Others, however, outsource it and opt to focus on their core competencies like customer relationship management.
Inbound Marketing Tactics. Content alone won't help your firm attract new customers. This content needs to be marketed with precision across a host of channels including email, web, and social media. Furthermore, different delivery tactics should be employed depending on the content, the target audience, and the lead's position in the purchasing funnel. These tactics include Forms, Calls-to-Action, and Landing Pages. Again, some financial brands prefer to create and manage these tactics in-house. Others outsource it.
Ongoing Retention Techniques. The lead may have converted, but the work is far from over. Inbound marketing calls for surveys, targeted content, and social monitoring to help keep customers happy and ensure long-term retention. Some financial service firms also manage this in-house, while others—actually, you probably get the point by now. No sense in repeating ourselves, right?
If you're a marketing manager with a full plate, outsourcing some or all of these inbound marketing activities may be an intelligent and cost-effective idea. But that's just our opinion. What do you think? What financial inbound tactics have proven to be the most effective? What roles are outsourced to a third party? How do you measure the effectiveness of this relationship?
