As the end of the financial year approaches it’s time to look ahead to what 2023/24 can do for your business. Have you set your goals for the business year ahead yet, and do you have a smart marketing strategy in place that’s going to help you get there?

First things first make sure you have defined your business goals clearly. What do you want to achieve as a business this year? This might look like financial growth, increased client retention, better brand awareness or even a sustainability goal. Then how are these different from the previous year; do you have a new focus or are you building on last year’s success? It’s a great time to really review what worked well and where you can improve in order to align with your wider business strategy.

To help you get started, here’s some KPIs you can use to review last year’s performance and help you identify where you want to see the most growth for the coming financial year:

• Conversion rate - how many leads did you close?
• Retention rate - how many clients stayed with your business?
• ROI - how did your profits stack up against your business costs?
• Cost of client acquisition - did you use your resources cost-effectively?
• Client satisfaction - have you reviewed client feedback and data to see if there are any areas for improvement?

Like any strategy, having an established marketing plan in place is important to help support and drive your goals throughout the business year. Not only does your marketing strategy help you stay organised with campaigns, content and promotions but it’s fundamental to helping you grow your audience, understand client journeys, invest resources effectively, and stay aligned with your overall business goals. With that being said, continue reading for our 4 easy ways to enhance your marketing strategy for 2023.

4 ways you can easily enhance your 2023 financial services marketing strategy

1. Embrace digitalisation

If you’re not already embracing digitalisation as a strategy to add value to your business then 2023 is your now or never time to do it. Integrating digital into your marketing strategy can help you to open up new channels, increase opportunities, reduce costs and reach new clients. You might be thinking that traditionally your client base and long-standing, existing clients might struggle with engaging with you in this way, but it's also important to look to the future and adopt the tools and processes that your future, and likely digital native, clients will be expecting as a given.

You don’t have to completely ditch your traditional marketing methods either, instead think about an omnichannel approach - one that cohesively creates an experience for your clients across all marketing channels. For example, digital channels like social media, email marketing and content creation can work with your print ads, events and networking to create a much richer, more informative and seamless experience.

The great thing about enhancing your marketing strategy with digital is that it can support so many of your business goals as well. Switching to predominantly email marketing over printed materials reduces costs, resources and waste while social media marketing can help you reach completely new demographics.

2. Plan ahead

Much like you’ll plan your business strategy and goals ahead for the year, part of your marketing strategy should consist of planning ahead with your content. Having a coherent content plan gives you the opportunity to map out your marketing content in line with your business goals and enable you to orchestrate promotions, events and campaigns more effectively.

You can create a content plan for the year with an overview of your content marketing activity, and then each quarter you will probably want to update it with more specific details such as the type of content you want to create, what channel you want to use and when or how often you’re going to share it with your clients and audience. Working in this way also gives you the time and foresight to produce and hone content that is going to best engage with your clients. It also ensures you keep content relevant and consistent to your brand and messaging, as well as with industry and social trends.

It can be really easy to implement as well, there are many free resources available online, such as content calendar templates and productivity platforms. These are really great team tools that empower your team to plan and collaborate together, which in turn helps to unify your brand messaging and client servicing as well.

3. Keep consistent

Consistency is key when it comes to your brand. How you present yourself to your clients will say a lot about you as a business, from your values to professionalism, to personality even. As such, maintaining a level of consistency in your branding and messaging will help you to communicate what you want to say. It’s important to remember that your clients and potential leads will get an impression of you across all your channels and platforms - so keep things consistent.

Think about your visual branding - are you using the same logo across your website and social media? Do you have brand colours and fonts that are used consistently? These may seem like trivial things at first but are key to presenting your brand professionally and helping you stand out and be identifiable amongst your competitors

Another element of consistency that can enhance your marketing strategy is how you communicate with your clients. Regular, but relevant communications ensure you are maintaining touchpoints with your clients in a way that keeps your brand front of mind while being useful and informative to your client. Incorporate elements of your branding into your comms as well to further unify all your messaging and improve the client experience at every step of their journey.

4. Put a face to your name

Similarly to the previous point, this is an element of your marketing strategy that will really help to develop your brand’s personality, but in addition will add a level of personability to your business that will help you to connect more authentically with your clients.

But what exactly do we mean by ‘put a face to your name’? It can be anything from using your social media to share team updates and successes, or fun office anecdotes that will engage your clients and followers. Another example that’s simple to execute is adding a ‘meet the team’ section to your website - this is great to help potential clients get a sense of your team and makes initial calls and meetings much more personable, as they will feel like they have already been introduced to you.

Showing off your personality as a business can also help to promote your brand values and interests. Find opportunities to share how you support your local community, charity work and other interests that build out your brand and connect with clients more personally. Ultimately it’s all about promoting that relationship building and trust that is so crucial to financial services success, but often hard to quantify. Adding this element to your marketing strategy enables you to more strategically, yet still organically, build it into your business.