Digital Marketing for Financial Services | Strategy Template Included

Let’s not pretend this is easy. Digital marketing for financial services in today’s landscape is noisy, highly regulated, and trust-deficient. But here’s the good news: if you understand how people make decisions and you’re willing to meet them where they are (not just demographically, but emotionally), you’re already ahead of most competitors.

This article is not another checklist of marketing tactics. It’s a distilled playbook based on our agency’s experience, including wins, mistakes, experiments, and results from working with finance firms across Australia. We’ve packaged our lessons into a digital marketing template to help you avoid the generic and build something that’s actually useful.

Download Our Free Digital Marketing Template

Whether you want more leads or attract higher-paying clients, this article, along with our template, is guaranteed to help you create a better marketing plan.

Marketing Strategy for Financial Services

ASIC is currently reviewing and planning to update Regulatory Guide 234, emphasizing the importance of honest, transparent, and non-misleading advertising. If your content sounds too good to be true or lacks clarity, it’s on the chopping block. As history shows, advertising regulation usually gets stricter, not the other way around.

That’s the thing about marketing in financial services: the rules change. Platforms shift. What worked yesterday might get you penalised tomorrow. However, you still have control over your message, branding, and intent. That’s what this strategy is about.

Nearly 70% of people now research a financial provider online before they even pick up the phone. Forget about billboards or flyers. If you’re not showing up clearly online, consistently, and confidently, you’re invisible. No one’s waiting around for your brochure, and you might find yourself heavily depending on referrals and repeat customers.

Inside Our Template: How to Build a Marketing Plan That Works

We’ve created a plug-and-play template you can use with ChatGPT or on your own. In this article we will walk you through it and provide tips along the way to help with your marketing. The template is structured around four key areas:

• Customer persona
• Marketing budget and Distribution
• Core marketing funnel
• Communication strategy

Page One – The Customer Persona

No guessing. No vague avatars. You need to know what keeps your ideal client up at night. What they fear, what they want, and what might stop them from trusting you. Understanding your customer will help you create effective messaging that aligns your brand with them as their ideal choice when they discover you online.

Here’s what you’ll map on this page:

• Their goals and pain points
• Where they spend time online, so you don’t waste money on advertising on the wrong platform.
• What type of lead magnet (case studies, FAQs, calculators) would move them to act

Drag and drop the template in ChatGPT and use the below prompt format to get started.

Prompt format – (Action: complete the whole buyer persona page), (context: give some details about your ideal buyer persona and your business)

The information generated by ChatGPT needs to be reviewed by you to ensure it’s correct. Effectively profiling will help you improve your ads and marketing copy, identify which platforms you should be advertising on (e.g., Facebook, Google, LinkedIn), and identify a lead magnet that may attract cold leads who are not yet familiar with your brand.

Page Two – The Monthly Marketing Budget and Distribution

This part of the template isn’t about relying on AI to do the work, so there is no prompt. We created it to help you think clearly about your budget and determine which marketing approach aligns with your goals. Knowing how much to spend on digital marketing and how to allocate it across different channels is key to avoiding overspending and maximising the return on your efforts.

Here’s how to break it down.

Part 1 – Marketing Budget Calculation

You’re given two easy-to-follow ways to calculate your marketing budget within the template:

Method 1: A percentage of your revenue (rule of thumb – Usually 5-10% of your monthly revenue).

Method 2: Based on your Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA).

Part 2 – Budget Allocation Made Simple

This section guides you in choosing how to invest your marketing budget. Whether you’re after quick wins to drive immediate revenue, aiming for consistent growth, or focused on building a lasting brand over a longer time period:

• Short-Term Focus relies heavily on paid ads for fast results.

• Medium-Term Focus combines SEO, content, paid advertising, and email to establish a stable growth path.

• Long-term focus places greater emphasis on SEO and content marketing, which deliver more substantial returns over time through compounding impact.

Part 3 – Performance Benchmarks to Strive For

To help you track success, we’ve also included key performance indicators (KPIs) tailored to each strategy. These give your team clear targets for what outstanding performance looks like across your top three metrics. Use them as your North Star.

Page Three – Digital Marketing Funnel for Finance Businesses

The marketing funnel helps you turn unfamiliar prospects into loyal customers by aligning your messaging with their stage in the buying journey. It’s an effective framework for making sure what you say actually connects with your audience. Using the same message for everyone can result in poor conversion rates.

Audiences that have never heard of you may not engage with you immediately. They need to see some proof that you are an expert, such as case studies or testimonials. They may need to review your content over time before they consider you. These are called cold audiences, which align with the top-of-the-funnel content.

At the top of the funnel, the focus is on building awareness. For financial services, this could involve sharing valuable insights on social media, contributing articles to reputable finance sites, or running ads. The key is matching your offer to the needs and awareness level of your audience.

People don’t move from awareness to conversion in a straight line. They ask friends. They check Google. They lurk. Then, suddenly, they act. Once they receive proof, they warm up, and they are more open to your middle and bottom-of-funnel offers and communication.

Here’s how to meet them along the way:

• At the top: spark curiosity with value-driven content (like explainer videos, blogs, infographics)
• In the middle: offer deep dive content and initial engagement opportunities like case studies or free consultations
• At the bottom: give them a reason to act and explore your services/products, use concepts like urgency, proof, and reassurance

Prompt format – (Action: complete the third page of the core marketing funnel) (context: use the customer persona details you previously generated)

Page Four – Crafting a Client-Focused Digital Communication Strategy

Don’t chase every shiny platform. Your 55-year-old mortgage clients aren’t on TikTok. However, they may also be present on Google, Facebook, and possibly LinkedIn. If you are starting your digital marketing strategy, limit yourself to using only 2-3 channels. Otherwise, you will oversaturate your effort and spend more money, time, and effort.

Here are the channels we typically recommend starting with for finance-based companies:

• Google Ads: best for high-intent searches (“refinance my loan”)
• Facebook Ads: ideal for trust-building and retargeting
• Email: underused, yet incredibly powerful when segmented
• LinkedIn: gold for B2B finance, accounting, or lending

If you’ve built your persona correctly, you’ll know where to focus.

You can also ask ChatGPT to recommend channels based on the persona. But always apply your judgment. You know your clients better than the AI does.

Prompt format – (Action: complete the fourth page of the marketing channel strategy) (context: use the customer persona details)

Real Tips for Finance Marketers

• Tell stories of your client success. Not features, not jargon. Real people, real results.
• Make SEO your long-term play. The compounding effect is worth it.
• Use video. A talking human beats a PDF every time.
• Segment everything. Generic messaging is a lazy tax that yields poor results.
• Show up in your community. Online and offline—it builds a reputation.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and start marketing smarter, grab the template. If you need help navigating it, book a strategy session. Either way, start now, and we are always here to provide additional guidance.