Case studies
the Shape of Money - financial services
How could the Shape of Money, a boutique, Wellington-based, financial planning company, market its services nationally?
Build a website. While the answer to this first question was relatively easy, the answer to the next was much more problematic.
How would you inform New Zealanders about the website? The problem with marketing financial planning is that it is a broad discipline covering everything from budgeting and debt planning, to investments and insurance, and everything in between. The competition for the web visitor is not just from other financial planning companies, but also from the big banks, even bigger insurance companies, and government organisations such as Sorted which have several millions each year to throw at the problem.
So the answer to this question was to implement a three-point internet marketing plan developed by Optimum Results.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is always going to be very difficult for a small business up against a large number of big businesses with big budgets. A further disadvantage was that, because of its diverse content, it's difficult for a financial planning website to focus (and thus rank well) on a specialist topic.
However, the strategy used by Optimum Results was to turn this second disadvantage into an advantage. Search engines love fresh, original content. So Optimum Results recommended that the Shape of Money use its technical knowledge to provide substantial content across the full financial planning discipline. Together with the creation of 300 unique pages pf content, the Shape of Money also developed an impressive range of calculators.
In addition to the new content, Optimum Results also implemented a search engine optimisation plan which covered a review of the site's architecture, as well as the development of an external linking strategy.
The end result is that the Shape of Money now ranks well for financial planning topics across the spectrum from, income protection insurance and reverse annuity mortgages to residential property investments and consumer debt reduction.
While the Shape of Money is able to rank well across a number of topics, there were some very competitive topics, vital to the business, such as life insurance, for which top rankings were always going to be very difficult to achieve.
Optimum Results developed a search engine marketing strategy which involved joining Google's pay-per-click (CPC) programme.
Using this programme, if a searcher used Google to look for information on a topic such as life insurance, a sponsored link (or advertisement) from the Shape of Money would appear alongside the search results. the Shape of Money only paid for the advertisements when a searcher clicked on the advertisement through to the designated landing page.
Using this search engine marketing strategy, the Shape of Money could control its daily costs and, more importantly, carefully track the success of the CPC programme and its return on investment.
Optimum Results provides an ongoing analysis of new keywords and pricing recommendations, to continually enhance the overall success of the programme.
Permission Based Email Campaigns
Having attracted visitors to your website through effective search engine optimisation and search engine marketing strategies, how do you get them to return?
Optimum Results recommended a permission based email programme. the Shape of Money regularly adds new content to the website, so why not ask visitors if they would like to be notified of new content on the website?
Over time, the Shape of Money has built up a database of subscribers who receive a monthly newsletter outlining any new content and/or information about newsworthy financial planning topics.