Financial services companies are all about the numbers. So why are so many so bad about tracking marketing metrics and evaluating results?

It’s probably because there are so many numbers that asset and wealth managers can track across a complete range of marketing platforms. It can leave financial professionals and marketers feeling overwhelmed.

That’s why we cut through the clutter to come up with a complete list of marketing metrics financial firms should track.     

What are Marketing Metrics in Financial Services?

Marketing metrics are data that help people at financial firms monitor, track, record, and measure the performance of promotional efforts from individual campaigns to complete marketing and sales programs.

Metrics are an extremely valuable resource and have become more robust and available across countless marketing, communication, and sales tools like Google, social media sites, Hubspot, and more over the last several years. There is almost nothing in your financial firm’s promotional campaigns that you cannot measure. That’s why we created this list of metrics worth tracking across all parts of the investor life cycle and the rationale for monitoring them. They’ll help you select the correct ones for you to track so you can avoid data overload.

Top Marketing Metrics Financial Firms Should Consider Tracking

What are the critical marketing metrics you and your team should focus on? It depends on your financial services business and its marketing and sales goals. Here is a list of those that are likely valuable for you to stay on top of.

Awareness metrics

Brand awareness data can help you understand how familiar investors and other people you want to do business with are with your company. Becoming aware of your brand is the first step in the relationship development process. Here are some metrics to help you determine how well investors, financial advisors, and others know and understand your brand.

• Keyword rankings reflect the performance of your website and its pages on Google and other search engines. Many financial companies live and die by their online search traffic. Even businesses that rely on referrals from financial advisors and investors depend on validation traffic to their websites to check on things like investing philosophy, process, client experience, and historical performance. As Google pushes traditional search results lower and lower on the first search engine results page (SERP) because of its focus on AI overviews  (artificial-intelligence-powered answers), Featured Snippets (answer boxes), and paid advertising, it’s critical to rank in the top three for your key search terms. If you fall below, your financial brand will not earn enough awareness in search, and it’s time to refine your search engine optimization strategies.
• Impressions track the reach of digital advertising campaigns on search engines like Google and Bing, social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, and other media outlets like financial news sites. You can also track impressions to monitor organic searches. (You can see website impressions within a specified time on Google Search Console.) Impressions are a baseline marketing statistic. They help you determine whether your brand is getting in front of enough of the people you are targeting. If not, it will be impossible for you to achieve your assets-under-management goals.
• Brand mentions let you know how frequently your financial firm is discussed online. This metric reflects how much “free” website traffic your company could earn through online mentions of it.

Social media metrics

Social media plays a critical role in the marketing programs of many financial firms. Here are some social media metrics you should think about monitoring:

• Organic post metrics such as likes, clicks, and shares can help you understand whether your social media followers react positively to the financial, economic, and other content you publish in your feeds. If you’re not earning enough positive reactions to your posts, adjust your social media content mix until you find a winning formula.
• Paid social media metrics can help determine if your campaigns are performing as intended. LinkedIn, other popular social media platforms, and some marketing blogs offer benchmarks against which financial firms can track performance. Some key paid social media metrics include:
  • Impressions are the number of people who see your social media ads. And while this isn’t a primary metric we recommend tracking, going one level deeper can be valuable for financial firms. For instance, if you’re targeting financial advisors on LinkedIn, check the demographic data backing the impressions to ensure you’re reaching the professionals you want at the correct firms. If not, it’s time to rework your targeting so your campaign is more efficient with fewer wasted impressions.
  • Cost-per-click (CPC) is the price you pay for someone to move from a social media platform to your website or landing page. If your CPC is too high, bringing in new assets under management at an efficient cost could be impossible.
  • Click-through rate indicates whether the people you’re targeting are responding to the calls-to-action (CTAs) in your ads. If click-through numbers are lower than industry benchmarks, it’s time to rethink your ads and consider stronger CTAs.

Be aware: CTR and CPC are metrics that could be valuable to track for any digital advertising effort, including ads on financial publication websites.

Website metrics

Here are some metrics you can use to determine whether your marketing efforts are performing as you intend on your website.

• Traffic sources are a series of numbers that tell you where your website traffic is coming from, such as organic Google search, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, or other sources. This metric helps you better understand how traffic from different places behaves on your site. For instance, are visitors from LinkedIn more engaged than those from Facebook?
• Time on page can help you understand how much time visitors spend on pages on your website. If you expect a two-minute visit to a landing page and it only averages a few seconds, people are likely having a bad experience. If this happens, it could be time to install tracking software on your site to help determine what visitors are responding to negatively, such as historic investment performance or your approach to investing, and adjust how you message it.
• Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who exit your website after viewing only a single page. A high bounce rate indicates people are not engaging with your site, likely due to navigation issues, slow page load times, or other signs of a bad visitor experience.
• The click-through rate on your website is similar to the CTR in digital advertising. It’s the percentage of visitors to a page who click on a link, usually a call to action. If your CTR is low, it’s a sign you’re putting time and effort into attracting visitors to your website only for them not to take the action you want them to take, such as booking a financial consultation, downloading a white paper, or investing. If this is the case, take time to determine why website visitors aren’t converting and adjust your promotional tactics accordingly.
• Value per visit allows you to improve the dollar value of each visit to your business website. You simply assign each conversion on your website with a dollar amount in Google Analytics. For example, if you estimate that a form fill to request a consultation is valued at $1,000, you can add that action to the value of a website visit. Value per visit is an early indicator of whether your marketing program is cost-effective.
• Conversion rate is a primary way to track digital marketing performance. It is a metric tracked in Google Analytics (GA). It measures the rate of users reaching an end goal, such as scheduling an appointment or providing contact information. If conversion rates fall, people may find your marketing program tired, your competitor’s more compelling, or you may not be addressing current market or economic conditions.
• A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is someone who has provided contact information, downloaded a white paper, scheduled an appointment, or anything that expresses interest in your firm. An MLQ is one that has been determined to be likely to do business with your firm after being evaluated against defined criteria. They get passed on to advisors, wholesalers, or customer service reps for follow up. An increase in the percentage of leads that qualify as MLQs indicates improved targeting and overall marketing campaign performance.

Pipeline metrics

Once you’ve built brand awareness and got investors, advisors, and others to learn about your business online, it’s time to determine the quality of your leads and the effectiveness of your sales process. Here are some metrics that will help you do that.

• Second-stage meetings are virtual or in-person sessions with sales leads after they have been qualified. The meetings could be anything from seminar or dinner attendance and related conversations to formal financial planning sessions. Earning a significant number of second-stage meetings is a sign that your firm is targeting the right people and presenting the correct messages making them willing to advance in the relationship-building process.
• Sales-qualified leads (SQLs) are those that are likely to turn into business. If you find that you’re bringing in leads that are not qualified and seem like poor sales prospects, you’re just wasting time and money on your marketing efforts, and you should adjust them.
• Deals closed from marketing are the number of new client relationships generated by marketing activities. A high number indicates your marketing is targeting the right audience with the correct tactics and messages.
• Pipeline progression (close rate) is the average time it takes to close a deal. It indicates how efficiently your firm completes the relationship-building process. If you find that someone on your team closes opportunities faster than the others, you should find out what they’re doing so you can apply it to the rest of the team.

Marketing performance metrics

Performance metrics allow you to analyze your complete marketing funnel. They provide a bottom-line, profit-based view of how healthy and effective your marketing program is.

• Cost per lead (CPL) measures how much it costs to bring in a lead. It is critical to determining marketing efficiency. Simply divide the amount spent on a marketing tactic or program by the number of leads generated by it. A relatively high CPL is a warning sign of poor targeting, ineffective messaging, bad media selection, or other marketing issues.
  
• Marketing return on investment (ROI) is the revenue earned from a marketing plan, campaign, or activity. It is calculated by dividing the revenue earned by one or more marketing activities by the amount spent. Marketing ROI is the simplest way to determine if your efforts are paying off. The added complexity for financial firms is that it can take time to bring in assets and earn revenue on them. Most financial companies leverage revenue projections for one or two years based on historic data to make this calculation in a timely way. If the value is less than one, you’re spending more on marketing than you earn from it over the short term.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) allows you to understand the efficiency of your marketing programs more completely than marketing ROI. CLV calculates how much a client or advisor relationship is worth to your business from their first day working with you through their last. You can calculate it by determining the total amount you earn from a client or advisor during their entire lifetime relationship with your firm. Considering this will help you see a more complete picture of the value of your marketing efforts.
• Acquisition cost is how much you spend to bring in a client or establish a new relationship. To calculate it, take the total cost of a marketing effort and divide it by the number of new relationships resulting from it. A relatively low CAC demonstrates a more efficient marketing campaign.

Retention metrics

While attracting new clients or building new advisory relationships is essential, retaining them is more so. Retention metrics reflect how well you keep investors and advisors engaged and active. Retention is more important than attraction because doing more business with a current relationship costs less than bringing in a new one. Here are some retention metrics that can help you understand whether your relationships are sound, laying a solid foundation for doing more business with your firm.

• Churn is the rate at which clients and advisors move their business to competitors. If it is too high, it could be a sign your service levels or investment performance is poor or some other operational issue. When clients and advisors abandon at too high a rate, you’re forced to spend more to bring in new relationships.
• Net promoter score (NPS) is, on a survey scale of one to ten, how likely someone is to recommend your business to someone else. It reflects customer loyalty and points toward highly efficient business growth. If customers are likely to promote your company, you will bring in more new business at a relatively low cost.

24 Marketing Metrics that Matter: The Final Word

Leverage this guide to determine the metrics your financial firm must track to achieve success. The only way companies can do so is to consistently measure, learn, and adjust their promotional tactics based on what the numbers show. If you need help figuring out which metrics are right for you and how to monitor them, schedule a free consultation with Dan Sondhelm and the digital marketing pros at Sondhelm Partners.