Updated: December 14, 2022
A data-driven marketing strategy is a recipe for B2B success. And it makes sense in the financial industry where decision-makers require real-world business research that’s objective and statistically significant. For this reason, successful financial marketing is supported by data, in-market research, internal and partner expertise and validation.
In the spirit of creating data-backed financial marketing strategies, let’s look at what the numbers say:
Source: Invesp
With these insights, the writing is clearly on the wall: a comprehensive data-driven marketing strategy is crucial to win each moment of the buyer journey. This is particularly true for financial institutions and banking services that must appeal to business-minded decision-makers and buyers in real time across a wide variety of digital channels.
In this article, we explore how data-backed marketing strategies can drive success for financial marketers.
What is a data-driven financial services marketing strategy?
Data-driven marketing strategies leverage sales and marketing data to shape, analyze and improve marketing tactics and campaigns. The information that forms a data-backed marketing plan includes:
- First-person data – Highly accurate individual client information. You own this data, which you collect with consent through your CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
- Second-party data – Highly accurate individual demographics and behaviors that are collected indirectly with consent from clients. This data is owned by business partners (such as your website platform) and shared with you.
- Third-party data – Aggregate customer demographics, behaviors and actions that are shared with other companies. Consent and accuracy are unknown and depend on the business doing the collecting.
- Market research – Data about the marketplace and buyer behavior collected from surveys, studies, interviews and audits.
Financial companies need to align their stacks
One of the first steps that financial services companies should do to implement a data-driven marketing strategy is to make sure your website, CRM and marketing automation platforms are integrated and aligned. This integrated system is your martech (marketing technology) stack. You can then align your martech stack to your sales and marketing plans at key touchpoints along the buyer journey. This database marketing tactic allows you to track ROAS (return on ad spend) and ROI (Return on Investment) and streamline your marketing plan to get the best returns.
Data-driven marketing offers a 360° view of the buyer
Many B2Bs have the unfortunate conviction that their customer relationships provide all the information they need to know about their audience. But the truth is that effective marketing ideas aren’t based on guesswork or assumptions about what goals your customer has and what challenges they face. To gain a 360° view of your buyers and decision-makers, you need measurable, provable and actionable information. Therefore, effective financial services marketing teams use data to understand and predict customer behavior.
Source: Invesp
Every interaction a person has with your financial products or institution produces a wealth of information across every channel and touchpoint. That data can inform all your marketing decisions, including:
- Core values that matter most to your audience, which in turn help form your
- Positioning statement
- Messaging tone and voice
- Colors, fonts and imagery of design elements
- Your audience’s challenges and goals, which inform your messaging
- What channels, networks, and trade publications you use to reach your audience
- Where each prospect and client is in their buying journey
- Opportunities to reach new audiences in different geographies, market sectors, etc.
- Opportunities for marketing financial services or innovating new products
- Which elements of which campaigns are most effective with your audience
Data-backed marketing plans enhance the customer experience
The modern customer expects a seamless experience across every channel. They want to know that if they have questions about your financial services, solutions or products, the answers are available at the touch of a screen, whether that’s a mobile device, laptop, or tablet. Banks without a data-driven marketing system in place may not know how to market effectively across multiple channels. They often find their customer-service channels are suffering from neglect, which negatively impacts the customer experience.
Omnichannel marketing strategies for financial services
Omnichannel marketing is an approach that bank marketing teams use to capture and interpret customer data to effectively communicate with your audience across all channels. A data-driven omnichannel approach improves the customer experience and enhances your marketing efforts for all your financial products. It enables finance companies to tailor and automate messages and campaigns to individual clients and deliver them using the customer’s preferred channel, e.g., email, text, chatbot, etc.
Data-backed financial marketing strategies shorten the sales cycle
B2B organizations in the financial industry have a long and complex sales cycle. Combine that with today’s smaller sales footprint, and marketing must be right on the button to bring in a greater number of high-quality leads. This can make marketing financial products and services a difficult endeavor.
Finance companies can shorten the sales cycle by using data marketing to:
- Keep your brand top of mind by serving up digital ads to your audience
- Expedite and even automate marketing decisions based on the data you receive
- Personalize your ad strategy with customized offers and recommendations
- Strengthen your SEO and content strategies to rank your website higher in search results, thus increasing traffic
When a financial institution provides the exact information prospects are seeking at the exact moment their seeking it on the exact channel they’re using, it guides them further down the funnel.
A data-driven financial services marketing strategy improves conversion rates
There are many tactics to improve conversion rates. But the top three data-driven strategies marketers use to drive conversions:
Source: Invesp
Let’s break these strategies down.
Customer-journey analysis – marketers analyze customer interactions to map each stage in the buyer’s journey – . They can then see how customers engage with the brand at each of these stages. This provides them with actionable insights to create a campaign messaging strategy that guides them to a buying decision.
Segmentation – marketers use customer data from their martech stack to segment their clients. Some ways to segment are by sector, business size, job, search behavior, and stage in the buying journey. This enables marketers to serve up campaign messaging that is personalized to their goals, challenges, needs and values. Segmentation is a strategy banking services can use to reach out to similar audiences.
A/B testing – marketers test digital ads, emails, landing pages, etc. by splitting their audience and providing two different versions. They test one element – a headline, an image, or call to action – over time. They receive data feedback in the form clicks, engagement, conversions, etc. Once they know which version their audience prefers, they can test another element. In this way, fintech businesses can optimize their ads, emails and landing pages to get the best conversions.
Partner with a B2B marketing agency that specializes in data-driven financial marketing
In the end, a data-driven marketing strategy provides incredible value for fintech businesses. Data provides a full view of fintech buyers and decision-makers. It improves the customer experience and shortens the sales cycle. Fintech marketers who realize this and adopt a data-backed marketing plan will lead the industry and win their market.
If you need help developing a data-driven marketing strategy, work with an established B2B financial marketing agency. With over 20 years of financial marketing experience, Elevation uses data to gain a full view of your customer and enhance the customer experience. We can help you sync your sales and marketing across your martech stack. Our data-driven approach can shorten your sales cycle and increase your conversions. Contact us to learn more regarding how our financial marketing services can benefit your company.
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