Don’t overlook the intentions of your online audiences

Increasingly more financial services marketers are shifting their focus towards increased digital marketing within their tactical marketing mix. Understanding the digital locations of your target audiences is becoming a standard step in the creation of a digital marketing plan, but many are overlooking the intentions of their online audiences, and adapting their tactics accordingly.

Locating both fishers and swimmers

You need to locate and market to both fishers (those actively researching products/services) and swimmers (those not looking and just ‘searching’ online).

Start with your prime objective, for example may be the harvesting of marketable contacts via an offer with a primary call-to-action to signup to receive regular newsletters.

Connecting with your target audience

Next, how are you going to connect with your target audience? This is where the digital ocean analogy is helpful. The ocean represents all the possible online channels and locations (e.g. search, websites, blogs, social communities, ads, articles, email, text …) where your audience could be reached.

Now consider whether you are only trying to reach targets that are actively looking for a product/service/offer like yours (fishers), or those who are not actively looking but may respond to a discussion, or an ad, or blog related to their interest (swimmers), or both.

Appropriate fishing bait

If your audience is fishing, what are some of the digital mechanisms and places they would go to that enables them to research and evaluate? What is the likely journey they would take to select your product/service/offer?

You need to create the appropriate fishing bait comprising content, search results and outbound campaigns to attain consideration. Your content and tactics will be oriented towards that fishing model.

Tactics used to attract swimmers

The tactics used to attract swimmers can be very different, and are more educational rather than promotional in nature. Social media plays a bigger role here, as this is where your target audience ‘searches’ and engages with people/content related to their interest.

Pinpoint profiling and targeting

Creating or engaging in conversations is an obvious tactic, adding value and opinion without overly promoting. Advertising on social and relevant websites is effective, as pinpoint profiling and targeting is usually possible. Search keywords that you should orient towards can also differ whether your targets are fishing or swimming.

Search terms aimed at a product or service

Fishers tend to use more action and competitive oriented search terms aimed at a product or service type (e.g. best performing income funds, cheapest ISA charges), whereas swimmers are usually more interested in education and discovery related to their topic of interest (e.g. mortgage industry best practices, ethical investment income models).

The key is not to create content or invest in inbound or outbound tactics that are not aligned with both the intention and location of your target audience.

By Andy McCartney, CEO, iMCCmarketing.