The need for the financial services industry to make the most out of every selling opportunity has never been more important. This is especially true when it comes to their online selling opportunities, as websites often require fewer, if any, human resources to convert genuine leads into customers. Therefore, banks, credit unions, and other financial services companies have to ensure that their websites contain informational and consumer-initiated tools for lead generation, not just listings of products and services.
Unquestionably, todays prospective customers have access to more financial products and services than at any other time in history. They are being marketed to both locally and nationally, by financial product providers directly and their partners. They are touched by these financial service providers on TV, telephone, newspapers, magazines, retail stores, and the Internet to name a few.
Of all the mediums listed above, the Internet is the only one that truly allows a prospective customer to initiate and take full control of his or her financial product purchase. This is why your website must be in a position to generate quality leads and drive sales at every stage of a prospective customers lifetime.
If your prospective customer has just finished college and is returning home or relocating, your banking products may offer the most appeal. Later on, suppose that same college grad is now married and the couple has just had their first child. Its likely that life insurance would be the financial product of choice at that stage in their lives. In either case, does your website offer unbiased financial education topics pertaining to the prospective customers areas of interest? Does your website offer financial calculators and other web tools relevant to each of the financial products and services you sell? Does your website adequately attract and convert prospects into customers?
If you answered no to any of those questions, this white paper will be highly useful to your financial institution, and if implemented, will help you grow your online revenue by 30 percent or more.
This white paper highlights strategies for attracting better quality leads and converting them into buyers of your financial products through the use of common, and some uncommon, website tools such as:
Financial Education Portals with subtle embedded lead generation features
Calculators that pertain to each of your product offerings with call to action options
Interactive Website Widgets with embedded prospect contact info collection methodologies
Implementing these website tools is essential to reaching new customers over the internet, as well as maintaining existing ones.
Financial Education Portals are the latest trend in online lead generation for the financial industry. These portals educate website visitors on financial matters and provide a number of accompanying resources, including core financial education content on essentially every financial milestone and situation a given website visitor may encounter from their teenage years through retirement. Some of the topic areas include: Money Management, Credit & Debt, Key Financial Milestones, Investing and Financial Planning.
These portals often include other resources such as timely articles, E-Newsletters, dynamic news, tips, polling tools, quizzes, calculators and other website widgets. Providing such a vast array of content, tools and resources makes a financial website sticky. This is a key component of online lead generation for several reasons:
1.It keeps your website visitors on your site. The more your visitors are on your site; the less likely they are to purchase products online from your competitors.
2.Allows your website visitors to learn about specific financial areas related to your financial products and subsequently connects website visitors to the appropriate salespeople via embedded call to action forms throughout the portal.
3.Your website becomes the resource of choice for other financial concerns later on. I.e., today the website visitor needs a simple banking account, but tomorrow that same visitor needs life insurance.
In the past, many financial institutions that lacked the in-house resources to build such a portal would simply place links on their websites to other 3rd party financial portals, such as Motley Fool, Bankrate, Yahoo! Finance and others. The problem with doing this is that these 3rd party financial portals are lead generation hubs that allow other financial institutions to advertise to website visitors that you sent there. So you are in effect sending your leads to another provider. This is a surefire way to lose thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue on an annual basis.
Today, customized comprehensive web portals can be styled after your own website and licensed at a mere fraction of what it would cost to build your own. These portals include all of the lead generation tools you need to generate your own leads based upon website visitor-initiated interaction with your financial institutions.
In addition to being a lead generation tool, these portals deliver unique PR benefits. Providing your users with a comprehensive financial education platform is well received by government and consumer advocacy groups. In addition to the positive PR, there is a viral marketing component, as users are likely to tell their friends and family about it. Lastly, these licensable portals are often multilingual, providing you with an opportunity to reach out to new non-English speaking prospects.
Calculators serve as a highly valuable marketing tool for financial companies. In fact, according to Forrester Research, website visitors rate financial calculators as one of the most helpful tools in their decision-making processes of selecting financial products and services.
Beyond just being helpful tools, today calculators can attract genuine online leads and convert them into customers by using real-time qualifying techniques, such as call-to-action via form completions, return phone call options, and cross selling.
As a financial service provider, you are able to make immediate offers to these prospects based on key profile data such as loan type, amount, income level and geographic location. This ultimately helps you to convert leads to sells and at the same time decrease fulfillment costs.
Prospects that use your calculators are usually looking to make a buying decision in the near future. Popular calculators that generate solid leads include:
1.How much will my mortgage payments be?
2.Should I refinance?
3.How much car can I afford?
4.How much do I need to fund my retirement?
5.What will my lease payments be?
Knowing that online calculators generate a significant number of leads, it makes sense for you as a financial service provider to have all calculator category types pertaining to your specific products and services your financial institution offers. However, adding the calculators is just the first step.
Next, you must embed call-to-action methods within each calculator which provide a pathway for your website visitors to find the right solution to them. Present your financial product offerings in an educational and advocacy style format without displaying rates, terms and conditions. This is intimidating to users and sends the message that they are being sold to. Instead, invite your visitors to complete short and concise online applications and give them the option to call into your call centers, branches or advisors.
Keep in mind, your website visitors will buy when they are ready to not when you want them to. Therefore, you simply guide them through the process of making an informed purchase. Additionally, if they are being armed with the knowledge and information about a specific financial product or service through your website calculators and or other tools, then they are more likely to contact you for that product.
Interactive Website Widgets allow you to enhance your financial institutions brand by extending its reach and providing desirable content and tools to your website visitors.
As the web transitions from 2.0 into 3.0, the need for financial institutions to become more creative when communicating to their website visitors has never been more important. For years, large content aggregation sites have been able to steer your banking visitors to their sites, and as a result, your would-be customers were offered products and services from other providers. This no longer has to be the case.
With content syndication in full effect, there are technologies available to bring the same interactive website widgets to your financial institutions website as some of the larger search engines and other informational portals. Providing these tools to your website visitors keeps your site well- visited and your site becomes the source your website visitors turn to for financial-related news, information and ultimately financial products.
Some common interactive website widgets that financial institutions can take advantage of include:
1.Video streaming
2.Investing Tools, including: Stock Tickers, Industry Trends, Market Commentary, Company Highlights
3.Financial Tools including: Budget or Savings Planner, Spending Tracker, Net Worth Calculator, Games etc.
4.Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds of regularly updated financial news wires, articles and other information and advice
When possible, all tools should connect users to your representatives and your products and services. However, as with financial calculators, your offers should be presented in an educational and advocacy style format without displaying rates, terms and conditions. Then invite your visitors to complete short and concise online applications and give them the option to call into your call centers, branches or advisors.
If your online marketing efforts dont include these online lead generation and revenue growth tactics, you should seriously consider them.
Many of these offerings can be implemented on your website at very affordable rates and can yield significant benefits. When instituted correctly, you gain a clear differentiation from your competitors. This is a savvy marketing strategy for several reasons:
First, it grows revenue from your current customer base, a strategy that normally yields the highest return per marketing dollar spent.
Second, it uses online marketing, which provides a higher ROI than any other marketing vehicle you can employ.
Third, for maximum sales efficiency, it targets your customers by area of interest and immediately connects them to the appropriate salesperson for banking, investments, insurance, financial planning, and other financial products.
For more information regarding the online marketing services mentioned in this white paper, please feel free to contact us. We specialize in providing each of these services to the financial services industry.
12138 Central Avenue Suite 963
Mitchellville, MD 20721
Web: www.eFinancialPortals.com
E-mail: [email protected]
/* */
Phone: (301) 362-6555
Fax: (301) 362-6557
A Division of Strativia Software: www.Strativia.com
About the Author:
12138 Central Avenue Suite 963
Mitchellville, MD 20721
Web: www.eFinancialPortals.com
E-mail: [email protected]
/* */
Phone: (301) 362-6555
Fax: (301) 362-6557