Taking a Digital-First Approach to Financial Services Marketing

When you say your company has a digital engagement strategy in place, do you mean marketing efforts and a sleek website? That’s a great start—but there’s value being left on the table.

Toys“R”Us and Blockbuster were common household names in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their eventual decline came with the rise of Amazon, Walmart, Target, Netflix, and other large-scale corporations that we regularly turn to for goods and services that are more convenient or affordable. These companies paved the way with digital strategies that put the modern buyer’s needs and wants first. However, the speed of technological change continues to accelerate, and companies must evolve their digital strategies to engage smarter and win more deals. 

The financing industry is no exception to this rule. Many companies in this space believe they have a digital strategy in place with marketing and a website. While this approach worked in the past, the financial services industry, including asset management firms and wholesale teams, is uniquely positioned for a next-generation digital engagement strategy designed to support how advisors work today. Modern financial advisors want a personalized digital experience to self-direct activities, attain resources and content, and reach out to different teams and subject matter experts to make educated purchasing decisions. 

A Digital-First Approach to Financial Services

Winning at sales isn’t just about showing up more than your competitors. In today’s digital-first world, you could easily be outsold by a company with a more effective digital engagement strategy. With the introduction of digital sales rooms to financial services asset management firms and wholesale teams, you can share a space with existing and potential clients and nurture them with intelligent collaboration, content sharing, education, and more. Digital sales rooms aren’t designed to remove wholesalers from the equation but instead give them the tools needed to enhance contributions and revenue. 

Today, a wholesaler’s territory can include thousands of financial advisors with less than 10% actively engaged. But with the digital resources available now, you should be able to engage with close to 100% of your clients and prospects. Consider the transformative impact that communicating and collaborating with every advisor at the right time and with the right information and people could have on your business. 

Digital sales rooms, also known as digital twins, have become the force multiplier for engaging more financial advisors and tailoring engagement levels to personal preference—without forcing anyone into an established buyer’s journey that may not fit their timelines. Let’s discuss the three tiers of advisors and how you can tap into the audience base:

Tier 1 – Most Active Clients

• Wholesaler Goals: Increase retention and acquisition 
• Client Needs: A combined human and digital engagement strategy
• Digital Solutions: Offer a concierge level of services and personalized action. With a digital sales room, you can dive deep into customer engagement data and analytics on user behavior, tailor new content to popular topics and tactics, and identify formal and informal relationship networks.

Tier 2 – Semi-Active Clients

• Wholesaler Goals: Cross-sell and expand business
• Client Needs: More consideration- and decision-level content 
• Digital Solutions: Most of the cross-sell effort is made with a digital sales room. As a wholesaler, you can analyze digital body language and engage when there’s a clear propensity to buy. You can also determine which users are most active, empower users to self-educate, stay on top of customer engagement activity, and create manual and automated actions. 

Tier 3 – Prospective Clients 

• Wholesaler Goals: Develop new advisor clientele
• Client Needs: A self-guided journey and awareness-level content 
• Digital Solutions: Most of the pitching effort is made with the digital sales room. As a wholesaler, you can monitor activity to determine who’s ready to engage and when. You can also personalize the space to the customer’s branding, invite and welcome key team members, send relevant and timely resources, and chat directly within the digital sales room.

No matter where the advisor is in the buyer’s journey, the key is that they’re driving it while you’re watching and waiting to uncover new ways to optimize their journey and satisfaction levels. In turn, the sales cycle will run itself, and you’ll maximize ROI for your company. 

Client-Focused Digital Strategies 

In the past, business growth and success were determined by territory opportunity, platform exposure, new producers, and gross sales. But it’s no longer just about getting people on board. Digital solutions are critical to providing a better and more effective alternative to traditional sales cycles. 

Smart Rooms by JourneyDXP set the bar high for digital sales rooms, which have changed the game for virtual selling in the financial services sector. Asset management firms and wholesale banks are delivering considerable value to financial advisors through Smart Rooms via personalization, engagement, collaboration, and insights. These companies are being rewarded for their efforts in the form of increased customer satisfaction, which evolves into increased sales and organizational efficiency in due time. 

Don’t fall behind. Are you looking to tune your digital engagement strategy to the modern buyer?

Contact us to get to know our Smart Rooms software and its many benefits to the financial services industry.

About Gateway Partners

Gateway Partners is a digital services company for the financial services industry. Their team has extensive experience in asset management and distribution and partners with JourneyDXP to offer a digital wholesaling solution built on Smart Rooms.