Remember the old-times, when availing the financial services was all about visiting banks and financial institutions. To hear on that clunky sound of coins, deposit those monthly paychecks by standing long in the queue, consult with the bank executive regarding the long-term investment plans.
But today, the financial services are all at the fingertips, it’s no longer necessary to visit the bank branches to avail any monetary help or any finance backed services as financial services are all digitized for better user experience and convenience.
But the wave of digitalization is not fully embraced by every financial services firm and the user base out there. Both parties are still struggling hard to connect with each other. While digital customers are still on the verge of great mistrust with the fintech services, you as a financial services firm, on the other hand, are just doing less/nothing to improve your financial services marketing.
Reasons why you need to brand your financial services in time like today:
To create a brand image that is distinct from the contemporary financial services provider.
To win the huge trust of target customers and stand on top of their preferences.
Putting up a hypothetical situation – Imagine you have a fintech website and further cross-platform mobile application products to serve users looking to stabilize their financial aspects. But you are still not reaching masses, your financial tools are not getting utilized, users are switching to competitors because they feel your website doesn’t look secure enough to place trust upon. Do you feel, just having a website is enough to gain the trust of financial services seekers? No, it’s not enough (yes, you thought that right).
Now we know that running a fintech website without focusing on branding and marketing funnel is baseless & just like shooting arrows in the air. In the continuing post, we will discuss the strategies that can help any financial business out there reap ways to get great brand recognition and outperform key competitors.
7 Experts tips on how to brand your financial services better than competitors
Apply these quick tips to add more to the financial services marketing efforts and build a stronger brand image:
1. “Identify how you want your financial services to be perceived as”
Initially, take time to understand how you want your financial services to be identified as in the eyes of the target audience.
Identify what would be your brand personality. And what strongest & distinct value proposition you need to set for your target audience or segments.
Distill your vision, mission, goals statements in a way that the target market finds relevant.
In today’s time, financial services that are more visible and present everywhere on digital landscapes are considered as reputable and trustworthy. Find out how your brand can multiply on that visibility to call for reputable brand value.
Suppose if you are offering loan services online — Dissect on:
What kind of loan provider you are?
Who would be your target audience? What end message your user should take away from your services?
What better value you are capable to deliver than the close competitors?
What are your ultimate goals or missions from running such services?
And on and on and on…
2. “Optimize your web and marketing copies”
Optimize your web and marketing copies to a level where normal user or reader finds it relatable and understandable.
The financial industry is fluffed with perplexed content & copies and by adding the same, you won’t create any difference.
Don’t presume that any rational or regular financial services seeker must be familiar with the financial products & their usability already. Common readers generally lack exposure and which is the reason why they end up not taking any financial service or product (since most of all, don’t sit and tell them what is the meaning of this financial product and why you may need to have it).
They say, only 24% of young audiences (between 17-34 age) have a basic understanding of finances.
This means many are still struggling to understand the areas of finance because of the vague marketing copies (which are hard to understand) put up by the financial services brands.
The solution is to:
Optimize the web copies minding the basic to extreme queries of the audiences.
Promote and display marketing copies in a way that any user base would easily resonate with.
Put the tone of every platform’s copy as non-complex.
Explain your financial products/services simply.
Chalk out why using your products is going to be a fruitful deed. And what long term gains your products/services/tools can add to the user’s financial aspects.
3. “Don’t forget to optimize your digital UX”
The key to creating a renowned brand building lies in being on an omnichannel digital platform that serves frictionless and resourceful user experience.
To gain better reach, financial services should emphasize on delivering messages via a delightful and compelling UI design.
Some steps to build a powerful and persuasive financial services website designs:
Simple & minimal design is a thing to a wow UX, even in the fintech space. To make user stay & perceive you as a positive brand, reduce the cluttered outbound links, non-required information, and illogically placed call-to-action buttons.
Replace the tone of a stiff and authoritative old-school marketer in Finance on web & other copies with the tone that’s easy & conversational. It should look like users are talking to their old-times physically located bank executives only.
Sprinkle your website with warm colors and rich icon or infographics to let people know you are actionable.
Redefine user experience on your website in a way your audience finds you trustworthy and won’t resist utilizing your products & services.
4. “Be transparent in your services”
Users generally are afraid to utilize any random financial services because they fear about scary latent charges or fees.
To brand your financial services right, vouch on transparent and fair practices at all times.
Be clear and vocal about what exact amount you charge to render certain service. Even if there are any additional charges you consume from your users’ pocket – mention it.
Be clear in telling what all you extract from users’ end (data or information) to deliver your services.
Going upfront about your charges or requirements will help you stand out as a better brand and win the trust of the desired audience.
5. “Turn every data into insightful personalized user-experience”
“Don’t sell what you have best, sell what your audience is needful of”
There is nothing like a “one-size-fits-all” approach while planning on financial marketing strategies.
Modern financial assistance seeking customers require services that relate to their queries and makes sense to their specific needs.
Financial services providers on having a bulk of customer big data can make the most out it to become a concerned brand amongst their audience.
In the following ways, you can use the customers’ big data to turn it into the personalized experience (that each user is separately looking for):
With data, you can analyze and introspect the customers’ financial stability or background and thus could suggest certain products suiting to each of their situations. Forex- if you know your first target segment is young college students, you will know what product will fit best to treat students’ cash crunch issues.
On accessing the users’ spending patterns, you will know where these users are shelling their money. By using this data, you can aware these users on how they can limit their spending via your tools or products.
Timely gather the feedbacks & reviews. By gathering such data, you will be able to gauge your audience’s behavior and sentiments. And on knowing these sentiments, you will be better & effortless at creating personalized marketing copies.
With user centric-data, you can divide your customers into the different profiles and types and aim at offering better to each divided profiles.
When you will use your customer data to serve personalized experiences —- you won’t have to play hard to position yourself as a trusted brand.
6. “Don’t forget to integrate storytelling videos into your virtual landscapes”
While everyone is embracing the art of storytelling via video content, staying just on keyword-optimized written marketing collateral won’t add what’s required to brand recognition.
Videos are more appealing than texts, as we tend to process video-based content faster than the written ones. Thus, a combination of both (text+video) should be placed to make any fintech services come out as a high-end brand.
Ways to integrate video-based content into online presence:
Put animated or real-life based videos describing your business products in detail for the audience – either at the website or on other video streaming applications.
Put a video on defining how your products can resolve the users’ query or would help in bringing gains to them.
You can cast influencers, celebrities or models in the video shoot to make it look more impactful or astute.
Don’t shoot outdated industry knowledge (because users are not interested in knowing that). Create a meaningful, educatory storytelling script that is relatable, and reasonable enough to create an impact over their minds.
Also, you can put a video documentary from the beneficiaries of your services. It could be your customers, employees or any third-party source.
7. “Put more self-service at play by turning towards automated approaches”
The earlier generation had enough patience to sit, wait, talk on financial matters. Today, the scenario is completely changed. As nowadays, audiences lose out on patience & prefer more of a self-service approach, where they get access to information in less than nanoseconds.
Remember the old-times, when availing the financial services was all about visiting banks and financial institutions. To hear on that clunky sound of coins, deposit those monthly paychecks by standing long in the queue, consult with the bank executive regarding the long-term investment plans.
But today, the financial services are all at the fingertips, it’s no longer necessary to visit the bank branches to avail any monetary help or any finance backed services as financial services are all digitized for better user experience and convenience.
But the wave of digitalization is not fully embraced by every financial services firm and the user base out there. Both parties are still struggling hard to connect with each other. While digital customers are still on the verge of great mistrust with the fintech services, you as a financial services firm, on the other hand, are just doing less/nothing to improve your financial services marketing.
Reasons why you need to brand your financial services in time like today:
To create a brand image that is distinct from the contemporary financial services provider.
To win the huge trust of target customers and stand on top of their preferences.
Putting up a hypothetical situation – Imagine you have a fintech website and further cross-platform mobile application products to serve users looking to stabilize their financial aspects. But you are still not reaching masses, your financial tools are not getting utilized, users are switching to competitors because they feel your website doesn’t look secure enough to place trust upon. Do you feel, just having a website is enough to gain the trust of financial services seekers? No, it’s not enough (yes, you thought that right).
Now we know that running a fintech website without focusing on branding and marketing funnel is baseless & just like shooting arrows in the air. In the continuing post, we will discuss the strategies that can help any financial business out there reap ways to get great brand recognition and outperform key competitors.
7 Experts tips on how to brand your financial services better than competitors
Apply these quick tips to add more to the financial services marketing efforts and build a stronger brand image:
1. “Identify how you want your financial services to be perceived as”
Initially, take time to understand how you want your financial services to be identified as in the eyes of the target audience.
Identify what would be your brand personality. And what strongest & distinct value proposition you need to set for your target audience or segments.
Distill your vision, mission, goals statements in a way that the target market finds relevant.
In today’s time, financial services that are more visible and present everywhere on digital landscapes are considered as reputable and trustworthy. Find out how your brand can multiply on that visibility to call for reputable brand value.
Suppose if you are offering loan services online — Dissect on:
What kind of loan provider you are?
Who would be your target audience? What end message your user should take away from your services?
What better value you are capable to deliver than the close competitors?
What are your ultimate goals or missions from running such services?
And on and on and on…
2. “Optimize your web and marketing copies”
Optimize your web and marketing copies to a level where normal user or reader finds it relatable and understandable.
The financial industry is fluffed with perplexed content & copies and by adding the same, you won’t create any difference.
Don’t presume that any rational or regular financial services seeker must be familiar with the financial products & their usability already. Common readers generally lack exposure and which is the reason why they end up not taking any financial service or product (since most of all, don’t sit and tell them what is the meaning of this financial product and why you may need to have it).
They say, only 24% of young audiences (between 17-34 age) have a basic understanding of finances.
This means many are still struggling to understand the areas of finance because of the vague marketing copies (which are hard to understand) put up by the financial services brands.
The solution is to:
Optimize the web copies minding the basic to extreme queries of the audiences.
Promote and display marketing copies in a way that any user base would easily resonate with.
Put the tone of every platform’s copy as non-complex.
Explain your financial products/services simply.
Chalk out why using your products is going to be a fruitful deed. And what long term gains your products/services/tools can add to the user’s financial aspects.
3. “Don’t forget to optimize your digital UX”
The key to creating a renowned brand building lies in being on an omnichannel digital platform that serves frictionless and resourceful user experience.
To gain better reach, financial services should emphasize on delivering messages via a delightful and compelling UI design.
Some steps to build a powerful and persuasive financial services website designs:
Simple & minimal design is a thing to a wow UX, even in the fintech space. To make user stay & perceive you as a positive brand, reduce the cluttered outbound links, non-required information, and illogically placed call-to-action buttons.
Replace the tone of a stiff and authoritative old-school marketer in Finance on web & other copies with the tone that’s easy & conversational. It should look like users are talking to their old-times physically located bank executives only.
Sprinkle your website with warm colors and rich icon or infographics to let people know you are actionable.
Redefine user experience on your website in a way your audience finds you trustworthy and won’t resist utilizing your products & services.
4. “Be transparent in your services”
Users generally are afraid to utilize any random financial services because they fear about scary latent charges or fees.
To brand your financial services right, vouch on transparent and fair practices at all times.
Be clear and vocal about what exact amount you charge to render certain service. Even if there are any additional charges you consume from your users’ pocket – mention it.
Be clear in telling what all you extract from users’ end (data or information) to deliver your services.
Going upfront about your charges or requirements will help you stand out as a better brand and win the trust of the desired audience.
5. “Turn every data into insightful personalized user-experience”
“Don’t sell what you have best, sell what your audience is needful of”
There is nothing like a “one-size-fits-all” approach while planning on financial marketing strategies.
Modern financial assistance seeking customers require services that relate to their queries and makes sense to their specific needs.
Financial services providers on having a bulk of customer big data can make the most out it to become a concerned brand amongst their audience.
In the following ways, you can use the customers’ big data to turn it into the personalized experience (that each user is separately looking for):
With data, you can analyze and introspect the customers’ financial stability or background and thus could suggest certain products suiting to each of their situations. Forex- if you know your first target segment is young college students, you will know what product will fit best to treat students’ cash crunch issues.
On accessing the users’ spending patterns, you will know where these users are shelling their money. By using this data, you can aware these users on how they can limit their spending via your tools or products.
Timely gather the feedbacks & reviews. By gathering such data, you will be able to gauge your audience’s behavior and sentiments. And on knowing these sentiments, you will be better & effortless at creating personalized marketing copies.
With user centric-data, you can divide your customers into the different profiles and types and aim at offering better to each divided profiles.
When you will use your customer data to serve personalized experiences —- you won’t have to play hard to position yourself as a trusted brand.
6. “Don’t forget to integrate storytelling videos into your virtual landscapes”
While everyone is embracing the art of storytelling via video content, staying just on keyword-optimized written marketing collateral won’t add what’s required to brand recognition.
Videos are more appealing than texts, as we tend to process video-based content faster than the written ones. Thus, a combination of both (text+video) should be placed to make any fintech services come out as a high-end brand.
Ways to integrate video-based content into online presence:
Put animated or real-life based videos describing your business products in detail for the audience – either at the website or on other video streaming applications.
Put a video on defining how your products can resolve the users’ query or would help in bringing gains to them.
You can cast influencers, celebrities or models in the video shoot to make it look more impactful or astute.
Don’t shoot outdated industry knowledge (because users are not interested in knowing that). Create a meaningful, educatory storytelling script that is relatable, and reasonable enough to create an impact over their minds.
Also, you can put a video documentary from the beneficiaries of your services. It could be your customers, employees or any third-party source.
7. “Put more self-service at play by turning towards automated approaches”
The earlier generation had enough patience to sit, wait, talk on financial matters. Today, the scenario is completely changed. As nowadays, audiences lose out on patience & prefer more of a self-service approach, where they get access to information in less than nanoseconds.
Especially, when the act of money is involved, they can’t go waiting for hours or even minutes to have their queries fulfilled. Or can’t wait for the customer support executives to show up to relieve their problems.
They need fast, simple and clear approaches to mitigate their problems related to financial matters.
To become a high-end brand, you need to imply methods that wipe out users queries in lightning speed. For doing so, you can integrate:
Chatbots application that’s AI-powered and releases quick answers on users’ possible queries.
Chatbots that are astute in pulling one-on-one conversation with the audience more creatively and compellingly are most liked.
“Chabot that pulls out more accurate answers to users’ questions with a punch of sarcasm, memes, and GIFs are more helpful in gaining traction with required brand identity”.
8. “Relate with your target audience”
Relate with your audience & find out what exactly do they want to extract from your services.
Your audience generally wants three great things from your services – exemplary digital experiences, convenience while navigating and rewards on availing your service.
Relate with your audience tone and put the same tone throughout your marketing efforts.
Research the social media channels your user-base is generally active on & then weave the experiences based on those platforms.
Speak the language your target audience or segment is speaking or clearly understands. If your audience is college students, you will know, you need to put more young, vocal and slang language to lock their interest. While if your audience is senior citizens, you will know, you need to put up more empathetic and wise communication at play.
Conclusion!
The role of marketing the financial business is never easy. When the need is to transition into a high-end brand and reap huge audience attention, going with just a website presence won’t be sufficient.
Fintech websites as well need to take their marketing efforts more seriously to sustain on a long-thriving brand identity journey.
With the above, we have cleared out the jargon on how to create a successful roadmap to win the right brand positioning. While we learned the following points to keep in mind:
Always relate to your target audience
Find out how you want to be perceived as
Get along with storytelling led video-based content as well
Turn towards automated approaches that are effective & efficient to use
Take the help of customers big data to weave our personalized experience for them
Optimize on web and marketing copy in a way that the user finds understandable
Optimize the visual experiences UX in users’ centric way
By mixing these points in your marketing pipeline, you can expect the best to happen – more customer-base and huge brand recognition out in the crowd. Have financial products/services website that’s struggling to keep up with good market reach and recognition? BigBang offers financial services marketing with quick audit and implementation of SEO and content marketing strategies that have helped many competent fintech businesses pull out their brand image.
Interested in a tour of our services? Request for a callback!
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