Trust is important in every industry, but in finance, it might as well be the coin of the realm. Prospective (and current) clients make snap decisions about service providers’ trustworthiness based on very little information, usually gleaned from their public web presence.
This is all well and good if your financial company has a grade-A web presence: an excellent website, active social media handles, significant earned media, thought leadership, and so on.
But what if your financial services firm’s web presence leaves something to be desired? Perhaps you’ve been working hard to earn your clients’ trust in other ways, or to sign those clients in the first place, and you haven’t the time or resources to invest in digital assets.
There’s a lot you can do right now, or at least soon, to improve how your firm comes off to people searching for you online or interacting with you on social media. Follow these nine often-overlooked strategies to get results quickly.
1. Create a Crunchbase Profile (And Complete It)
The absolutely overwhelming number of free online directories is enough to make you throw up your hands and avoid the space entirely.
That would be a mistake. Some of these platforms have value; you just have to pick your spots.
One “spot” that works up and down the financial services industry is Crunchbase, which focuses on the tech and finance sectors. The Crunchbase listing for Asiaciti Trust, an international fiduciary services provider with a major presence in the Asia-Pacific region, shows why it’s so useful. The density of objective information here is second to none.
2. Ask Your Employees to Designate You As Their Employer on LinkedIn
There’s no better way to appear credible to outsiders than to appear — correctly — that you have lots of people working for you.
Send out a company-wide email — today — asking your employees to update their LinkedIn profiles with your firm as their employer, if they haven’t already. Your LinkedIn employee count will immediately increase, and your visibility within your corner of the financial industry along with it.
3. Post Regularly on LinkedIn
Use LinkedIn as it’s meant to be used: a networking tool that doubles as a publishing platform. Your posts don’t have to be as long or detailed as your blog posts; in fact, they usually shouldn’t be. But you can repurpose blog content in abbreviated form if you’re short on time or ideas.
4. Learn How to Use Twitter (Seriously)
Love it or hate it, Twitter remains an important networking and marketing tool for financial brands. At the very least, you should use it to generate content or product ideas that show up elsewhere in your digital presence. Ideally, you should use it to converse with peers and thought leaders in your niche — aiming for engagement with people and firms more prominent than yours whenever possible.
5. Post High-Quality Content on Third-Party Websites You Have Some Control Over
Third-party websites like Medium and Patreon have higher domain authority (credibility with search engines) than the blog you’ll build from scratch. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a blog of your own — more below — only that it’s foolish not to take advantage of a ready-made soapbox.
Choose platforms with loose moderation standards, where you’re free to say whatever you like as long as it’s respectful and legal. This software executive’s account is a great example of what a freewheeling, credibility-boosting Medium page looks like.
6. Redesign Your Website to Make It Simpler and Cleaner
And mobile-friendly. Always mobile-friendly. It’s likely that most of your prospects, if not the overwhelming majority, search for terms relevant to your firm on their phones, rather than their laptops. (This might be less true if you’re a strictly B2B financial services firm, but even then.)
Your website should look great on a small screen. It should also be simple to navigate and easy to understand. Less is more; clarity of purpose is better than eye-crossing detail.
7. Make Sure Your Regulatory Information Is Up-to-Date and Easy to Find
The details of this one depends on what’s required by regulators in the jurisdictions where you do business. But the general idea is the same, from BrokerCheck (U.S.) to the Financial Services Agency (Japan). Your firm should be easy for anyone checking up on it to find — and to confirm that, yes, you’re on the up and up.
8. Create a Secondary Website Focusing on Your Specific Niche
It won’t have the immediate domain authority of your Medium page or Substack newsletter, but it’ll be even more “yours.” This is your place to publish creative, authoritative content that positions your firm and your team as true experts in your field. It’s your niche site — a type of laser-focused site that it’s increasingly clear Google loves.
2Not to put too fine a point on it, but this site should feel like its own thing. It doesn’t even need to be associated with your brand. For example, Imperfect Foods’ Whole Carrot blog, which lives on a different domain from its parent company and feels like — is, really — an entirely independent website, even if it doesn’t try to hide the association.
9. Build Out Your YouTube Presence
In Finance, Reputation Is Everything
It bears repeating that in the finance industry, reputation really is everything. Most clients are careful — to a fault — with their assets, and they’re hesitant to entrust them to a firm they’re not sure has their best interests in mind.
Presuming your firm does indeed have your clients’ best interests in mind, your task is to show them that this is true — and to do the same for future clients that find your firm online.
Consider this article a road map for your efforts to enhance your online reputation and build client trust. You can begin implementing most of these strategies immediately, though they may take time to execute fully. Results won’t come overnight, but if you stay the course, you’ll see the difference soon enough.
