Financial Services Marketing: 5 Strategies to Win New Customers
Updated: Oct 23
Financial services is one of the hardest categories to market. Products look similar, rates change, trust is everything and every claim has to pass compliance. Banks, credit unions and advisory firms that compete on rates alone end up in a race to the bottom. The ones that grow find a way to be more useful, more local and more human than the competition.
We asked marketers who work with banks, credit unions and financial advisors which strategies have brought in new customers. Here are five that work, with how to measure them and how we'd put them into practice.
Financial services marketing strategies at a glance
Strategy | What it does | How to measure it |
|---|---|---|
Life-moment campaigns | Leads with customers' goals, not products | Account openings and applications by campaign |
Hyper-local content | Makes you the local expert | Local traffic, branch visits, accounts opened |
Gated educational guides | Captures leads at the research stage | Downloads, cost per lead, lead-to-customer rate |
Trust-building content | Positions you as the expert over time | Engagement, returning visitors, assisted conversions |
Interactive calculators | Gives useful answers and captures intent | Calculator completions, lead quality, cost per acquisition |
1. Lead with people's life moments, not products
Max Kringen, Founder and Chief Storyteller at Tellwell Story Co., worked with a local bank that wanted to stop competing on rates and app features. The campaign focused on customers' life moments instead: one story followed Maria, a food-truck owner, and mini-documentaries followed first-time homebuyers. Social media featured local businesses the bank served. On the website, product buttons like "Apply Now" were replaced by paths built around goals, such as "I want to start a business".
The bank reported a 40% increase in new account openings and a 25% increase in loan applications. One customer summed up why it worked: the bank asked about her goals before it asked about her credit score.
Our take: start with the three or four life moments that bring most of your new customers, such as buying a first home, starting a business or planning for retirement, and build content, ads and landing pages around each.
2. Go hyper-local
Justin Belmont, Founder and CEO of Prose, recommends that regional banks and wealth managers get hyper-local. Content like "How to save for college in [your town]" or "Investment tips for [state] residents" is paired with geo-targeted ads and emails. The result was more local clicks, higher engagement, and a rise in account openings and branch visits.
Our take: national brands can't match genuine local knowledge. Local market updates, community sponsorships and branch pages with real local content also help you rank in Google's map results. Our guide to SEO for banks and credit unions covers multi-branch local SEO in detail.
3. Offer gated educational guides
Brooks Manley, Agency Owner, Web Designer and SEO Strategist at Brooks Manley Marketing, has run campaigns built around free guides such as "How to choose the right mortgage" and "Investment basics for beginners". The guides are promoted through Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram posts, and visitors enter their email to download. Success is measured by downloads, cost per lead and the share of leads that become customers.
Our take: gated guides work best for decisions people research for weeks, like mortgages and retirement planning. Follow up with a short email sequence that answers the next question, then invites a conversation. For campaign structure and budgets, see our guide to Google Ads for startups; the same principles apply to financial brands entering a new market.
4. Use content to build trust over time
Brenton Thomas, Founder of Twibi, uses blogs, webinars and guides to position financial brands as the expert people turn to. He measures success through gated content downloads, engagement and conversion tracking connected to customer acquisition.
Our take: in finance, trust is built by being consistently useful. Our article on content marketing for financial advisors explains how to plan this content and stay compliant.
5. Build interactive calculators
Pankaj Kumar, Founder of Naxisweb, builds custom mortgage, savings and other financial calculators for websites and landing pages, promoted through social media and sponsored posts on financial blogs. Users can save their results or book an appointment. Clients reported up to a 25% improvement in customer engagement and more qualified leads than from traditional ads.
Our take: a calculator gives visitors an answer they actually want and tells you exactly what they're planning. Offer to email the results, and follow up with advice specific to their numbers.
Stay compliant
Financial marketing is regulated. Depending on what you offer and where, rules may include SEC and FINRA advertising rules for advisors and broker-dealers, Truth in Lending and Truth in Savings disclosures for rates and terms, fair lending rules, and the special ad category restrictions on Meta and Google for credit products. Involve compliance early, and build approved disclaimers into templates so campaigns aren't held up.
What we'd prioritize
Pick two life moments that matter most to your growth and build a campaign around each.
Create one genuinely useful tool or guide for each, such as a calculator or checklist.
Promote it locally with search and social ads, and capture emails.
Follow up with a short, helpful email sequence.
Track accounts opened, not just clicks, and shift budget toward what works.
The roundtable: our contributors in their own words
These are the full answers our contributors gave for this roundtable, word for word.
1. Financial Advisor Marketing: The "People First" Approach
Nobody dreams about opening a checking account. But everyone dreams about what that account represents—the first car, the dream house, the kid's college fund, the family vacation that'll be talked about for years.
That's what hit me when working with a local bank that was tired of competing on interest rates and mobile app features. "What if," we suggested, "we stopped talking about banking and started talking about lives being lived?"
We called it "People First, Banking Second," and it flipped the traditional bank marketing playbook on its head. Instead of leading with products, we led with people. Like Maria, who walked into the bank branch one day with a crumpled business plan for her food truck. The bank didn't just see a loan application—they saw her grandmother's secret recipes and a dream of sharing them with the world.
The campaign wove together dozens of stories like Maria's. We created mini-documentaries that followed first-time homebuyers from apartment viewings to key handovers. Our social media didn't spotlight new credit card features—it showcased local businesses that grew from kitchen-table dreams to Main Street storefronts, thanks to someone at the bank who believed in them.
Even the website got a human makeover. Rather than the usual "Apply Now" buttons, we created pathways based on life moments: "I want to start a business," "I'm ready to buy a home," "I'm planning for retirement." Each path led to stories of people who'd been there, mixed with practical tools and guidance.
The numbers were impressive—new account openings up 40%, loan applications increased by 25%. But the real win? People started seeing the bank as more than a place to store money. It became a partner in their story, a believer in their dreams. As one customer put it, "They didn't ask about my credit score first—they asked about my goals first."
Banking is really about life's big moments. When you remind people of that, the products sell themselves.
Max Kringen, Founder + Chief Storyteller, Tellwell Story Co.
2. Marketing Strategies for Financial Services: Hyper-Local Content
For regional banks and wealth management clients, we've found that getting hyper-local is the secret sauce. Think blog posts like “How to Save for College in [Your Town] Without Losing Your Mind” or videos breaking down “Investment Tips for [State] Residents Who Hate Math.” Pairing this content with geo-targeted ads and emails turned the bank into the go-to local expert. The results? More clicks from local IPs, higher engagement, and a nice bump in account openings and in-branch visits. Turns out, people like it when you talk to them like a neighbor—not just another financial buzzword factory.
Justin Belmont, Founder & CEO, Prose
3. Content Marketing for Financial Institutions: Educational Guide
One effective strategy that my team has used for our bank and financial services clients is creating helpful educational content that targets their core audience. Here's a good example for you: we created these simple online guides on topics like "How to Choose the Right Mortgage" and "Investment Basics for Beginners." Then, we promoted these guides with high-intent Google Ads for startups and social media posts on Facebook and Instagram.
That let us drive potential customers to a dedicated landing page where they are able download the guide by entering in their email address. We measured the success of this campaign by tracking the number of downloads from the landing page, the cost per lead, and eventually the percentage of those leads who became customers for our client. The campaign was a success in attracting new prospects for our client as well as building trust online.
Brooks Manley, Agency Owner, Web Designer and SEO Strategist, Brooks Manley Marketing
4. Content Marketing Builds Trust & Acquisition
An effective digital marketing for financial services strategy is using educational content marketing to build trust and attract new customers. By creating blog posts, webinars, and guides addressing financial pain points or offering investment tips, I've positioned brands as reliable industry experts. Success was measured through lead generation metrics, tracking downloads of gated content, and monitoring engagement rates on educational campaigns. Additionally, conversion tracking linked these interactions to customer acquisition, ensuring the strategy drove tangible results while fostering long-term client relationships.
Brenton Thomas, Founder, Twibi
5. Innovative Lead Generation: Custom Calculators
One of the useful strategies we applied to increase the interaction with our websites for the financial services industry clients was including custom financial calculators. The custom calculators embedded on the websites/landing pages provide the potential clients with insights regarding their mortgages, savings and other key aspects of their financial being.
To increase the reach, we further advertised the calculators through affected social media and sponsored promotions from financial blogs. Each interaction with the calculator required little fill-in, but great insights so that users could upload the results or book appointments.
We measured success by tracking metrics like conversion rates from calculator interactions, lead quality scores, and the cost per acquisition. Clients reported up to a 25% improvement in customer engagement and a significant boost in qualified leads compared to traditional ads. This approach ensures both utility for customers and ROI for the business.
Pankaj Kumar, Founder, Naxisweb
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About the author: Kate D. is vice-CEO at SYMVOLT.
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