For this episode, we will answer the following question:
Why should financial service firms use a marketing software (and how do you find the right one)?
If we liken your marketing strategy to that of a car, a marketing software would be the engine needed for your car to perform and working at its most optimal performance. A marketing software is your one-stop shop to hosting all your marketing and sales initiatives, but it’s important to pick the right one. There are many marketing softwares available out there, but the one that will work best for your firm will provide you with the following benefits:
1. Runs digital marketing campaigns under one software
In your marketing strategy, you have probably planned and are running blog articles, email marketing tactics, and other multimedia activities. Now think about if your firm had a separate software for each tactic/activity -a software just for writing and publishing blog articles, one for tracking emails you send out, and another for let’s say posting podcasts and videos. As you can imagine, this would not only become an inconvenience moving back and forth between all the different softwares to get content out, but the “picture” you would have of each contact would be all over the place.
This is why choosing an all-inclusive software transforms your marketing and sales strategy completely. If your software can incorporate all of your blogging, email, and marketing activities under one hub/home base, you can take all the information you receive about your contact, whether it be by the blog articles they read, the email links they click on, or whether they prefer receiving information via podcasts, and piece it all together under one platform to have a much clearer, more complete picture of your contact and what their needs are.
2. Provides the sales team the ability to keep track of their contacts
Arguably, one of the most useful applications/benefits in using a good marketing software is that it helps organize and keep track of all your different contacts across the buyer’s journey, whether it be prospects, leads, customers, or upcoming deals. Each of these individuals will require varying communications and resources directed their way to move them along the sales process, and having a platform to categorize and keep track of their activity/engagement and your advisors’ communications with them will help you do just that.
3. Provides reports and tracking
Running lots of marketing activities is great, but you can’t effectively connect with leads and close deals without knowing the performance and results of your initiatives. This is why using a platform that can compile marketing reports on for example, how much traffic your website is receiving or your email open and click-through rates, will help you learn what you’re doing right and wrong, and how you can revise and improve how you execute your marketing tactics in the future.
4. Collaboration tool for Sales and Marketing
A good marketing software includes a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to integrate both marketing and sales activities under one platform. Because marketing and your advisors work closely together with the same contacts, a CRM will enable both teams to track the history of their contacts’ behaviour across your firm’s multiple online channels. You will need a software that includes features allowing for collaboration between both marketing and sales, such as being able to create tasks and upcoming deals, updating a contact’s profile, leaving notes, and any other work that needs to be done.
5. Available Training to be top-performing sales and marketing people
With the fast and constant changes in online technology comes the absolute need to keep your advisors continually educated on best practices of the different facets of digital marketing and sales. There is always room for each person in your marketing and sales teams to improve and grow in learning how to most effectively connect with leads and customers online, and finding a software that provides courses, training, and certifications on how to do so will elevate your firm’s capability in selling your investment solutions.
That is all for this episode. If you have any marketing questions that you would like us to answer related to the financial service world, please send them to podcast@bethinkmarketing.com
