[Checklist] Digital Presence Management for Financial Brands

For marketers at financial services companies, managing your digital presence can be complicated. This is largely thanks to the volume of information you have to keep accurate and up-to-date. You need to holistically manage how your brand, your locations, and even your financial professionals appear online.

But even if it's difficult, there are benefits of doing so. An optimized digital presence improves your online visibility and reputation — both of which help build trust with clients. When your digital presence is well-managed, your customers' digital experiences are streamlined (and prospects convert more easily).

Two critical components in a great customer journey are your listings and reviews. Listings management increases the discoverability of your brand, locations, and financial professionals. And reviews management gives you an opportunity to control your brand's online reputation.

From your overall brand to your individual locations, use this checklist to help create a digital presence management strategy that improves your online visibility and reputation — nationally, locally, and everywhere in between.

As a financial services company, your brand's reputation can attract new customers and encourage loyalty among existing ones. These advantages can even be assigned a monetary worth: in 2022, Bank of America's brand was valued at $36.7 billion. A strong brand is sought out by consumers, has a great reputation — and just like any other company asset, it requires dedicated management.

However, marketers today are challenged by the growing number of channels that need to be managed. Additionally, your company's information needs to be accurate and compliant across all channels — not only at the brand level, but at the location, and financial professional levels as well.

One of the first interactions customers have with your brand is via your listings. Listings receive as much as 2.7x more views than a website. To protect your brand, these listings need to have accurate information and be in compliance with any industry-specific rules and regulations. (This means your listings need to include disclosures, disclaimers, and license numbers, and follow regulations like the SEC Marketing rule.) And many listings – like your Google Business Profile and your Apple Business Connect – also contain reviews.

Generally, your listings should show a modest-to-high aggregate review. (Did you know that 80% of financial services and insurance customers say that reviews are extremely important in their decision process?) Brands with highly rated reviews interest potential new customers and spark loyalty among existing customers.

To generate visibility for your brand, build a strong foundation:

Pro tip: Consolidate your listings and review management platforms for easier management. Many financial brands have multiple locations listed across hundreds of sites. This makes keeping your information on-brand across every channel difficult. When you consolidate your listings and reviews management into one platform, you have better control over your brand's digital presence. This also helps with:

• Archiving old listings to ensure books and records are properly managed,

• Managing notifications, and

• Generating reports for marketing, sales, and operations leaders

The Yext digital presence platform directly integrates with sites across the Publisher Network. This allows financial brands to pull all reviews and listings – for every location and financial professional – into a single dashboard. If you need to manage your digital presence at scale, consolidate your listings and reviews platforms.

Listings and reviews are key components in local search marketing. Financial services locations (like bank branches and insurance agencies) use this strategy to meet nearby audiences organically.

Managing your listings and reviews also increases your visibility in the SERP thanks to local SEO. These two channels work together in your SEO strategy to help your branch show up during qualitative searches.

For example, when customers turn to search engines with queries like "best bank near me" or "affordable financial advisor," your reviews can impact how your listings show up in search results. Your listings and reviews should be managed to help surface each of your brand's locations at moments of high intent, like when customers are actively searching for your brand and/or services.

For multi-location marketing in Financial Services, follow these best practices:

Pro tip: User roles and approval workflows in your digital presence platform help streamline listings and reputation management — while protecting your brand and staying in compliance. When you unify your marketing information into one platform, you can manage brand information (like logos and corporate contact information). And with user roles, you can delegate access to users at the corporate level, the individual locations, and even down to the financial professional. This ensures information (like your local phone numbers) are always up-to-date. Together, user roles and approval workflows ensure brand and regulatory compliance.

The Yext digital presence management platform consolidates your listings and reviews into one platform. Then, you can implement user roles and approval workflows so you can easily manage brand and location information across all channels.

In financial services, individuals – like advisors, agents, and MLOs – represent the brand. Managing the listings and reviews of individuals can be just as important as managing brand and branch locations.

Do your financial professionals have unmanaged listings you don't know about? In 2022, the industry saw a 29% turnover in financial professionals. If your professionals aren't updating their listings, it's possible your leads are being siphoned to competitors.

Another core pillar of your listings management strategy is monitoring for duplicate listings of individuals, as well as listings with outdated information. Think of an advisor who has moved firms but whose calls are still directed to their old firm. This gives your competitors an advantage in market, organic search, their online visibility, and share of voice.

Here's how your brand can give your financial professionals what they need:

Pro tip: A portal for financial professionals helps individuals manage their information while staying on-brand. Brands should make it as easy as possible for individuals to manage their listings, comprehensively and compliantly.

Yext's Financial Professional Portal is meant to give individuals control over their listings, while keeping corporate and location listings information on-brand and compliant.

Many financial organizations have multiple locations and many professionals representing their brand. If you leave each location and professional to manage their own digital presence, then your brand may seem inconsistent. And if your digital presence suffers, so do your customer's experiences.

But when information is consolidated, protected with user roles and approval workflows, and managed by the relevant stakeholders, your brand gains better online visibility and control over its online reputation.

However, your listings and reviews are only two components of a larger marketing strategy. Today's customers have dozens of channels to choose from, and it's nearly impossible to know exactly what journey they'll take. Your financial services brand needs to be visible on every channel and always show accurate information.

Every digital touchpoint represents a chance to win or lose a customer, and the ways customers interact with financial brands are constantly changing. The Yext digital presence platform helps financial services marketers make meaningful connections with customers across every digital touchpoint.

Explore how you can increase visibility, engage customers, and drive conversions on every channel in our ebook, The Yext Guide for Marketers in Financial Services: How to Manage Many Digital Channels for Maximum Visibility.