Format To Functionality: 4 Tricks to Supercharge Website Engagement
It may sound like a broken record, but a website really is the most valuable direct marketing tool on the market. It’s evergreen and works around the clock to showcase a brand’s values, display fund information and gated research papers, gain email subscribers, direct visitors to socials, the music plays on…
All that, without any work from the fund marketer. Right? Not exactly. Today’s digital investors are web-based investigators heavily researching offerings that will appeal to their financial situation at that point in time. That means cross-referencing content and gaining insights into what a fund does and how it can help them right then-and-there. The first pitstop to learn everything is the website, where strategically tailoring it to keep their interest and reward their time is only getting tougher in an increasingly web-design savvy financial landscape.
Not all fund managers have their pockets lined with budgets for funky design agencies equipped with floating ads or the latest themes inspired by brutalism. They’re not necessary though; the most functional websites draw initial visitors to deeper pages centred around their philosophy, product ranges or webinars, where collated data informs marketers about the next steps for the nurturing path.
Plus, no other fund should understand your investors better than you do: those yet to find you (who you target as your ideal audience) and your existing customers that may have a rapport with a portfolio manager, likely to re-invest with a different fund offering. If you continually help them find all the information they need to know that sets you apart, you’re onto a winner.
Here’s how a fund site can be optimised to boost connections and, hopefully, AuM conversion rates.
Give Your Housed Content Purpose
It’s wrong to assume content is merely a short blog or wordy report, as choosing the right content type can go a long way to serve a specific user experience (UX) function.
The key is asking how each content format can contribute to a page’s effectiveness in making investors take action to further their buyer journey. Multiple visual media types are great prompters: infographics may help audiences understand investment trends that link to gated reports, while embedded YouTube explainers are short and sweet to identify market outlooks that can lead viewers to investment strategy pages.
Interactive content is excellent for substantiating other webpage elements. For example, a short survey can capture a visitors’ responses alongside a lead capture form, gifting them a download to further financial information where they’ve already signed themselves up for nurturing opportunities. Questionnaires and videos can even be housed on their own microsite catering to certain investment themes, full of resources for investors to rattle through to grow their initial interest.
Speed Up Investor Experiences
Fund marketers reside in an age of convenience where audiences are more likely to watch or read content that’s served specifically to them right away. That’s certainly true on socials, and the website should receive the same navigable treatment. Toolbars should take investors everywhere they need to access fund information, backlinks should be current and tie together relevant landing pages, and plenty of buttons should direct site-surfers with clear and easy language. For existing investors, a prominent button for a portal to find holdings information should be signposted on the homepage.
Multiple forms across a site makes sure there’s always an opportunity to sign-up investors for updates or provide them an educational lead magnet. It’s a worthwhile exercise to test out whether pop up forms (available as widgets) perform any differently to static ones too. The bedrock of a form with great UX is one not distracted by additional cluttered text of visuals. Conveying what you need from them, how their data will be used, and what they’ll receive is paramount, with only one button.
In fact, spring cleaning webpages to reduce large files sizes, broken links, cache, and neglected plugins and code is worthwhile to both ensure security, but also quicken page loads. 50% of visitors exit websites if page speeds lag longer than only three seconds!
Don’t Hide In Google’s Homepage
Another byproduct of slow websites is affected rankings on popular browsers – Search Engine Optimisation. It can often be a tricky marketing concept to focus keywords throughout a site, but SEO Is generally a good thing to have in the utility belt when producing landing page copy or content going forward. Well-conducted SEO makes your website rise to search engine front pages, which not only increases the likelihood of being investors’ first click to see search terms that interest them, but it positions you as a leader in whatever fund sector you occupy.
SEO is an added benefit that should always be completed after other fund marketing commitments (content emailers, messages and networking), but there’s assistance through plugins such as Keywords Everywhere or hiring a creditable SEO agency. Better engagement is a gentle balance between getting seen through SEO and addressing real-life humans through great writing. You’re looking to entice them, and not robots, to invest with you after all!
Always Be Inspired
To ensure the effectiveness of every form, link, or pop up for gathering investor intel, it’s all about delving into the metric weeds. Websites are monoliths for gathering data, but every touchpoint can be automatically collated and visualised by a CRM. Dashboards are outstanding for outlining percentages of complete or incomplete forms, page views, average time spent on pages, content downloads, portal sign-ins and more.
This information shows which UX elements are doing their duty and how they can be used for engagement in future campaigns. One under-performing call to action or piece of ‘guiding copy’ may need to be swapped out for content that’s more relevant, according to your CRM data or talks your sales team has conducted with the market.
One-to-one feedback should never be negated just because of digitalisation! Investors hold the keys as to what you could improve to help them identify firm information, fund products or resources more easily. Just like they conduct market research, so should a fund marketer make it a regular activity to look at competitor sites for striking UX designs. If you connect with them, your prospective or existing investors may too!
No site stays perfect forever. Updating it with any new content you produce is an ongoing effort, and so UX considerations for displaying it well and linking relevant pages together follows, making sure a site is performing at its best. Making these four functionality-focused site updates part of your BAU can make marketing engagement a free flowing experience, for both yourself and the visitors checking back in with you to learn what’s new.
ProFundCom helps marketers engage more investors through various tools and strategies tailored to financial websites including:
Content Recommendations: Personalise content to website visitors based on their interests and engagement history to enhance user experience and increase lead conversion rates.
Website Analytics: Use analytical tools to provide insights into visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and conversion metrics.
A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing on website elements such as landing pages, call-to-action buttons, and forms to identify effective strategies for lead generation and refine website content for better conversion rates.
Cross-Selling Opportunities: ProFundCom’s reporting capabilities highlight cross-selling opportunities by identifying when a prospect shows interest in additional products or services.
Lead Scoring and Tracking: Prioritise leads based on their engagement levels, and identify high-potential leads for conversion by tracking prospect interactions with website content, emails, and other digital touchpoints.
Data Analytics and Reporting: Measure conversion rates and analyse the effectiveness of their marketing strategies to monitor key metrics and optimise lead generation efforts for reliable results.
