How to focus your financial marketing and make sales easier

Financial services marketing can implement inbound strategies to reach out to new audiences, investors and clients. A creative, transparent and bespoke campaign can target a huge volume of high net worth leads, at a high quality that won’t waste your sales team’s time. For more information on how you can create a high performing investment campaign read our guide to financial marketing strategies.

Financial marketing can be tricky to master, particularly when it comes to lead generation. This is an industry chock full of regulations and professional standards, for obvious reasons.

As a result, your sales team needs qualified and competent leads, not just Mr Joe Bloggs off the street. So what does this mean for you?

The balance of power

‘Sales and marketing alignment’ is a bit of a dull term, and it often struggles to create any dramatic response. A tired eye roll is usually about the limit. However, this should be the beginning and end of all your efforts as marketing mogul and potential employee of the century (that’s you, isn’t it?)

Like it or not, sales departments have power. I know, it hurts a bit to admit. However, as some sales people won’t hesitate to tell you, they bring the money over the line by turning your hard-won leads into paying customers.

Safe to say though, it’s pretty hard for them to do this if their marketing department doesn’t provide with a steady stream of relevant, interested and accessible leads. And herein lies your own superpowers. Nail your financial marketing efforts to earn the respect of your sales team and improve company profits.

Aligning your chakras/lead values

Sales and marketing alignment refers to a shared set of beliefs held by both departments. If each team is searching for a different set of lead values, they’ll never be happy with their combined results.

Marketing blames sales for not progressing leads, sales blames marketing for giving them weak leads in the first place. Accounting races around on their office chairs for a bit due to the lack of deals. All in all, not the best situation.

So what’s a poor lowly marketing manager to do? Well, it might help to sit down and talk to your sales team. No, seriously. You need to know what makes them tick, and what they look for in a lead. Once you have this information, you can better position your marketing efforts to appeal to your ideal audience.

How to bridge the great divide?

Here are some simple questions which can help to lead the discussion…

1. What do leads actually know about your products or services prior to the call?
2. What are the most common objections that leads present?
3. What do the sales team waste the most time explaining?
4. What are the most common issues in a lead’s viability?
5. What makes a lead become a customer?

There are also some questions which relate specifically to financial marketing…

1. Do leads need to self-qualify? What does this involve?
2. Do leads already understand any financial risks associated with your product?
3. Do ideal leads already have certain financial products? (ISAs, pension, mortgage etc.)
4. Should leads be confident in using online banking services and financial apps?

Once you address these points with your sales team, you’ll soon face a flood of information regarding lead quality. This can then help you to tailor future lead generation campaigns and avoid your old pitfalls.

Need some help with your financial marketing?

Don’t panic if this all seems a bit overwhelming. Getting your sales and marketing alignment right is a big task, and you don’t need to face it by yourself. If you need some help, why not consider working with an agency that has experience in the financial marketing sector.

Here at Six & Flow we have several clients in the finance and investment sector, and a couple of awards for our work for them too! If you fancy a chat to find out more, just get in touch.

Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can’t provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation, take a look at our blog'Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation.'