Digital Internet Marketing

A Financial Management firm can create a strong web presence by designing and developing a business website on the internet.  However, this step alone is not a digital marketing plan. Just putting up a Financial Management firm website on the internet is similar to establishing a physical business like a shop or an office, and then just sitting back and waiting for the customers to flow in. More than likely, it will not happen and your website will resemble a billboard in the desert.

Financial Management firms must understand that they need to spread the word about their firm, talk to people, inform, engage with potential clients and communicate their services using the internet.

The focus of web searchers looking for accountants has changed, and instead of turning to the yellow pages, people prefer to search the net in order to find an Financial Management firm.  To search for a Financial Management firm in Tunbridge Wells

·         Visitor 1 may type “Tunbridge Wells Financial Managers”

·         Visitor 2 might search for “Financial Management firms Tunbridge Wells”.

·         Visitor 3 might search for “IFA Tunbridge Wells”

Different people search in different ways and it is important to make sure that your Financial Management firm website captures this valuable traffic.

What should Financial Management firms, large and small, do to be found on the web?

Financial Management firms need to invest in a digital marketing strategy that will specialise in Financial Management firm search engine optimisation, Financial Management firm marketing and website design. A professional digital media marketing consultant will have the relevant business expertise and will know how to handle this. Other important factors are:

·         Digital media marketing starts with your Financial Management firm website design. The website must be structured with elements of search engine optimisation, where the meta tags are properly written and executed. The website is designed with SEO in mind. The starting point is keyword research and when this is done properly the right keywords are embedded in the content.  Images and graphics are optimised to make the Financial Management firm’s website search engine friendly.

·         While the above will greatly help in organic search engine rankings, the digital marketing strategy may need some quick traffic through a Pay Per Click campaign. Organic search engine optimisation will take a few months to get going until the web site attains authority in the search engine rankings. During this time, the sponsored listing or paid advertisements will help to project the Financial Management firm and traffic will start to flow to the website.

·         In parallel, the digital marketing strategy will also lead you through other digital media marketing mediums such as announcing your Financial Management firm website presence through press releases and news. Syndication will help that news to reach as many readers as possible

·         While this will draw enough website traffic to start getting web visitors and leads, the digital media marketing strategy will also start building a social network campaign through Video, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to draw the Financial Management firm close to social communities on the internet.

·         The strategy will deploy legal blogging, article writing and submissions.  Through blogs and articles, it is possible to create an air of trust by writing about the Financial Management firm, and educate readers about Financial Management. This will project the Financial Management firm as an authority on the subject and people will tend to trust the firm with their business.

·         We have heard the phrase “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” and this is still very applicable today and even more so in a period of recession.  In this context, the digital marketing plan will use web analytics to collect data from the website to determine which aspects of the site are working towards the defined business objectives for the website. 

Web analytics is a continuous improvement process and a key part of an effective digital marketing plan. It is not enough just to produce reports each month, you need to analyse these reports so you can ensure that the website is always responding to the needs of its visitors. Once you have gathered your data, analysed the results, proposed changes and implemented these changes you repeat the process all over again.

Financial Management firms and who think that digital marketing for their firm is a thing they can do without are severely cutting themselves short. Consider these facts from January 2010:

·         Over 60,500 searches being conducted in the UK for the term “Financial Advisor”

·         Over 33,100 searches for the term “Financial Advisors”

·         40,500 searches conducted for the words “Financial Advisers”

·         18, 500 searches for the term ”Independent Financial Advisors”

·         100s of thousands of more searches for related terms

The question is: Can Financial Management firms and keep themselves away from a focussed digital marketing strategy? 

Learn more about a specialised digital media marketing strategy for your Financial Management firm at http://www.wsionlinebiz.co.uk or give us a call at 01580 819529.

Digital Internet Marketing Systems – Step One is a business website

Business owners and leaders should be carefully examining all items of discretionary spend and evaluate them, line by line, to ensure they have potential to grow the business and can demonstrate unambiguous Return on Investment (ROI).  In some organisations, in times of a downturn marketing and advertising spend gets classed as “discretionary” rather than as an investment necessary to grow the business. The advantage of Digital Internet Marketing over more traditional off-line marketing is that the impact can be more easily measured. An effective internet marketing strategy will enable businesses to increase marketing ROI whilst being able to directly track marketing investments with measurable and incremental results. An innovative business website is at the heart of an effective internet marketing system, regardless of the products and services that a business sells.

In this series of articles we will discuss some of the more important benefits of a business website. The first important benefit is visibility. It is the shop window into products and services and is the online business card. Your company and its products and services need to be visible to your target market. Prospects are actively searching on the Internet for your products and services – especially where the market is local. Recent studies have shown that 80% of buyers rely on Internet search as their primary source of information before making a buying decision. Businesses that rely solely on traditional printed ads in yellow pages, local classified ads and word of mouth are missing a large part of their target market.

As more and more businesses and individuals use the Internet to research products and services before buying, companies must provide online prospects with easy access to company products and service information. Online buyers have now come to expect  24 by 7 access to information. Let’s look at the example of local restaurants where customer behaviour is markedly changing.  It is now critical that local restaurants have a internet marketing system that includes a website to engage and inform customers about opening hours, address, location, driving or walking directions, updated menus, email contact and a phone number so that customers can email or call to make a reservation. More and more customers are planning their restaurant meals online and restaurants without business websites miss out on potential customers.  Trend searches on Google in the UK clearly show a peak in local searches in December and January as customers begin to research restaurant bookings for Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day.

All business websites must have clear goals and that support the business’ objectives. As a minimum, companies going online need a domain name that is relevant to their business and an email address with the same domain name. Free email accounts from Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail should be avoided as they dilute business credibility. Also, email from these domains is often blocked by spam filters due to the large amount of suspect emails that get classed as spam.  It is also important to budget for basic website traffic promotion via search engine optimisation (SE0), and pay per click (PPC) and social media (SM) advertising to ensure that the website is visible to online searches and receives targeted traffic to the website.

For the vast majority of businesses, the objective will be to increase sales and grow margin through an improved marketing ROI effort.  A business focussed website then becomes a necessity and not a “nice to have” accessory.  The good news for businesses today is that in the digital age there are a number of affordable internet marketing systems available where the business website is at the heart. The cost varies depending on the level of initial and ongoing support a specific business requires. Having a Digital Internet Marketing System does not always differentiate a company  from its competition, but it does improve visibility and hence the chance to compete for those online customers  that might otherwise be lost to the competition.

Anthony Burke is an digital internet marketing consultant with experience of business development, marketing and the Internet with many large companies – more recently Hewitt Associates, Xchanging and Axa Insurance and several key London Market Insurers. Anthony now runs his own business which is associated with WSI to provide companies with affordable digital internet marketing solutions to enable profitable growth and increase marketing ROI.  He is also a member of the British Computer Society and a registered Prince2 Practitioner.