How to launch a digital marketing strategy

Technology is becoming an increasingly critical part of all businesses. In the advice space, where promotion and referrals are key to generating new clients, some firms have grabbed the opportunity to drive a digital offering.

Finnacle founder and financial adviser Prashant Nagarajan has built a practice based on a subscription model. He targets younger Australians that are familiar with paying for services via a monthly subscription like Netflix and gym memberships.

But targeting a younger demographic via digital channels means plenty of pressure to create engaging content.

During the recent ifa Advice Practice of 2020 Roundtable, partnered by Iress, Mr Nagarajan explained that he was eager to learn for himself how digital marketing works.

“There are a lot of buzzwords floating around like ‘SEO’ but no technician like a financial adviser really understands what they mean,” he said.

“I blocked out pretty much one day out of my calendar just to sit and read about these things and understand them.”

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a process used to increase the visibility of your website on a search engine like Google. In other words, if someone searches for “Financial Advice Sydney”, you want your website to be one of the first ones that comes up. That’s where SEO comes in.

Creating content and using key words are a big part of the process. As a result, advisers who wish to create a strong digital presence need to be adept at SEO, or employ someone who is.

“The strategy that we implemented was to have paid campaigns in the first year because we want proof of concepts and we needed answers fast,” Mr Nagarajan said. “The organic method is like delivering a child; it's going to need some time. We can’t wait for that.”

However, after investing in digital marketing and paid campaigns, the team at Finnacle was able to learn enough about the SEO process to build a content-based strategy for 2020.

“Part of that strategy is to have regular content production around video tutorials and written content,” Mr Nagarajan said. “But then the challenge becomes how do you find capacity to do that? This is where we’ve got proof of concept and business growth. Make a better, bigger team, free up your capacity and get the content ready.”

“That’s what we’re doing now and our second adviser is coming on board hopefully in early 2020. That’s going to free up a little bit more of my time to commit to the content strategy.

“It’s definitely a practice level commitment.”