It’s a new year. You know what that means: Time to review your digital marketing operation and figure out what’s working, what’s definitely not, and what needs to be iterated.
With the global economy in flux and marketing technology seemingly in a state of constant transformation, make 2023 the year you finally build a solid foundation for a comprehensive, responsive digital marketing strategy. The same-old, same-old won’t cut it anymore.
By December, see if you can’t take care of all nine digital marketing “musts” on this list — or come up with a satisfying explanation for why they’re not “musts” after all.
1. Retool Your Company Profile (And Rethink It Entirely If Necessary)
Start by reviewing your company profile — what’s posted on your website’s “About” page and your LinkedIn company description, basically — and make sure it’s still relevant in 2023. Firms of all sizes, but especially smaller ones, often take a “one and done” approach to descriptive content like this, not accounting for the fact that their services, staff, and culture may change over time.
It’s not a bad idea to retool or even scrap your company profile every few years. The amount of work required to create a new, more relevant profile is small in comparison to the opportunity cost of maintaining irrelevant content in a highly visible location. In the end, you want your profile to reflect your current identity and service menu — this company listing for Asiaciti Trust, a family-owned firm that provides fiduciary services and trust management expertise for clients across the world, is a good blueprint.
2. Get Your Name on More High-Quality Domains
Take advantage of the natural “authority” that high-quality domains have with search engines like Google and Bing. Having a strong company website is a great start, but at the outset and probably for a good long while, it’s very unlikely to be the most important piece of your digital presence from an online visibility perspective.
High-quality domains that virtually any financial services firm can take advantage of include:
- Crunchbase
- Job posting sites like Indeed
- Pinterest (yes, Pinterest)
- Medium
- National financial regulators (which typically maintain directories of active financial services firms)
Look for niche or regional opportunities as well, like Hubbis in Asia and Seeking Alpha in North America. You’re limited only by your ability to establish and maintain a presence on these sites and platforms.
3. Start a Tightly Focused Company Newsletter (And Measure Results)
Dry, fact-oriented newsletters from financial services behemoths like HSBC are useful for financial professionals. If you’re focused more on generating client-side demand, however, you’ll want something punchier and more engaging.
Your newsletter can and should be “fact-oriented” still, of course, but you can get creative with formatting, tone, and subject matter. Consider hubbing your presence on a platform like Substack, which has built-in audience management tools, while using an email marketing tool like ConvertKit or Constant Contact to reach more prospects and measure engagement.
4. Launch a Company Podcast (And Stick With It)
This is another increasingly important type of content marketing that, while resource-intensive, can do amazing things for your credibility and visibility in your niche. Podcast distributors reach different and broader audiences than your newsletter is likely to, at least at the outset. If you stick with it and can generate some buzz, you’ll have an entirely new lead stream to work with.
5. Invite Financial Influencers to Contribute to Your Company Blog
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It’s an age-old business strategy and one that’s more flexible than ever in the digital age. As long as they’re properly disclosed, “content exchanges” — where your firm contributes content to another’s website, and vice versa — offer mutual credibility and visibility. Broader content partnerships, perhaps featuring co-hosted podcasts and jointly published white papers, may naturally arise.
6. Utilize LinkedIn’s Creator Tools
Thanks to LinkedIn Creator Tools, LinkedIn is as much a publishing platform as it is a networking platform these days. Take advantage of its active, captive, high-value audience and use it as a springboard for a broader thought leadership campaign that draws in other channels and platforms.
7. Target Competitors’ Long(er)-Tail Keywords in Paid Search Ads
You might notice this treatment from competitors already. It’s an increasingly common strategy in competitive niches where a relative handful of terms command outsize value and long tail keywords offer higher ROI at lower cost. Just be sure to set a firm budget and closely monitor performance to ensure this strategy doesn’t turn into a resource sink.
8. Broaden Your YouTube Presence (And Use It to Cross-Promote Content)
Even if it never amounts to more than a channel for reposted content, establishing and fortifying your YouTube presence will pay dividends. It doesn’t take much to republish videos or train a camera on you and your co-host during your weekly podcasts, after all.
9. Establish a Medium Presence (And Make It Presentable)
Medium is perhaps the best digital platform to share your opinions and expertise (and especially opinions informed by expertise) without limitation. Many smaller financial services firms use Medium as their primary blogging platform, in fact, forgoing a traditional website blog on account of its likely lower visibility.
Here’s to Better Online Visibility in 2023
It feels like the post-pandemic “new normal” is a constant state of economic and technological uncertainty. Even in the best of times, our collective ability to control our surroundings is limited; these days, it might as well be nonexistent.
But we press ahead anyhow.
Financial services firms that take advantage of the current economic lull to strengthen their marketing and business development operations will be well-served when conditions improve. Your own digital marketing to-do list in 2023 might (and perhaps should) include:
- Retooling and maybe rethinking your company profile
- Launching “house media” organs like a newsletter and podcast
- Expanding your presence on high-quality web domains
- Using LinkedIn’s publishing tools
- Eschewing a traditional website blog in favor of more powerful platforms like Medium
2023 is still young. Time to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
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