The world of marketing can present a lot of unfamiliar terms to financial advisers. CRO, SEO, PPC and CPC and so on. It’s little wonder financial marketers often get confused!

In this guide, we’re going to briefly outline some of the most common digital marketing terms you are likely to encounter as you seek to promote your financial firm.

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop us an email for a free marketing consultation!

#1 Cost per click (CPC)

When you run a Google AdWords campaign, you generate traffic to your website by displaying adverts to users across the web and by getting them to click on them. When they click, Google charges you for it. The cost you pay for each click is known as CPC.

#2 Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

A “conversion” is a meaningful action which someone takes on your financial website, such as filling out your contact form. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) refers to the process of improving the quality and quantity of these conversions (e.g. by making a more prominent / effective call to action).

#3 Editorial / content calendar

Many financial advisers take a scatter-gun approach to their blogging and other content marketing. That’s better than doing nothing, but the best results usually come when you plan out your content and topics ahead of time. You can do this through an editorial (or content) calendar.

#4 Evergreen content

When you write a blog about the 2019 Autumn budget, this will be highly relevant at the time of publication. Over time, however, the content will become less useful to clients. Evergreen content, on the other hand, focuses on topics which are more enduring and which will provide value for years to come.

#5 Hashtag

You might have seen hashtags on Twitter and other social media platforms. Essentially, you put a # sign in front of a word or phrase to make your post easier to find by your target market.

For instance, if you have written a blog on Brexit and investment planning, you might want to use a hashtag like #brexit.

#6 Infographic

An infographic is an image which often acts in place of a blog post. For instance, instead of writing an article on how a pension transfer works you could create an infographic to represent this visually.

#7 Keyword

Financial advisers sometimes get confused between “keywords” and “search terms”. Essentially, the latter refers to the phrases your target audience types into search engines in order to find your services. A keyword is a specific search term – or part of a search term – which you want to target with your financial marketing strategy.

#8 Landing page

A homepage is the main page on your financial website, and your “web pages” usually comprise the inner pages (services, about us etc.) which your users can reach via the website navigation. A landing page, however, is a page used primarily for the purpose of lead generation. It might even sit on a completely different URL from your main website.

#9 Lead nurturing

A “lead” might refer to a number of things in financial marketing such as enquiries from online forms, eBook downloads, newsletter subscribers or phone calls from interested potential clients. Lead nurturing is the process of moving your leads along their journey from potential interest to purchase.

#10 Marketing Automation

Anything you can more or less “set and forget” in financial marketing can often think of as “automated”. For instance, when someone subscribes to your newsletter you might put them into an automated email “drip feed”, which serves them a set of pre-made emails over the course of a few weeks or months.

#11 Microsite

This is a financial website which sits somewhere in-between a typical website and a landing page. These are typically smaller websites which offer something different from your main website.

For instance, one client of ours has their main financial planning website and a smaller, separate microsite to promote their wills and probate service.

#12 Mobile marketing

Mobile internet searches now outnumber user searches on desktop devices. Financial advisers would, therefore, do well to optimise their website for mobile devices. Mobile marketing is the process of promoting your financial website on smartphones and tablets and encouraging conversions from them.

#13 Mobile optimisation

This is slightly different from mobile marketing. Mobile optimisation is the process of making your financial website more easy for your users to access, navigate and use whilst on a mobile device.

#14 Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This is a rating system, using a scale of -10, which ascertains the likelihood of your clients or customers recommending your brand, product or service to other people.

#15 No-follow link

When another website links to your own (say, to a blog you have written), this is called a “backlink”. Of these, there are basically two types: do-follow and no-follow. The former pass on direct SEO benefits to your website, whilst the latter do not (although they do often provide a valuable source of traffic).

#16 On-page optimisation

When you optimise your financial website for search engines (called “SEO”), you can do this in a number of ways. One important approach is to alter aspects of your website to make it more attractive to search engines, such as adding alt tags and meta descriptions. This is called “on-site optimisation”.

#17 Off-page optimisation

Whilst on-page optimisation improves your SEO by tailoring your own financial website, off-site optimisation refers to tactics used outside of your financial website in order to improve its search engine rankings – such as building backlinks.

#18 Pay Per Click (PPC)

This is a form of digital advertising where you display adverts in search engines (e.g. Google Search) and across the internet (e.g. the Google Display Network). When a user clicks on your ad, you get charged.

#19 Search engine optimisation (SEO)

This is the process of making your web page or financial website appear higher up in search engine results. There are a number of moving parts to SEO which need to be balanced at the same time in order to do this successfully.

Three of the most important ranking signals for Google include high-quality content, great user experience on your financial website and good quality backlinks.

#20 URL

This is a technical way of referring to your financial website’s online address, or domain name. For instance, https://www.creativeadviser.co.uk is our URL.

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