SmartBug Media Celebrates Inbound Marketing Success in Financial Services Market

Agency Leveraged Inbound Marketing Strategies and HubSpot Expertise To Overcome Challenges and Support Business Objectives

SmartBug Media — a leading Intelligent Inbound marketing agency that assists B2B businesses, B2C organizations and D2C e-commerce businesses in growing revenue by generating leads, scaling revenue operations and building market awareness through inbound marketing, digital strategy, design, marketing automation, revenue operations, public relations, paid media and web development — understands the pressure a changing financial landscape places on banks, credit unions and financial services firms. Over the last few years, SmartBug has combined the power of intelligent inbound marketing with deep HubSpot expertise to help financial services clients identify opportunities for increased visibility and awareness of financial products, engage customers and build trust.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, despite contractions in the American economy for two consecutive quarters, has not determined the U.S. is in a recession in large part because job creation is so robust. Still, there are signs — the Federal Reserve steadily increasing interest rates to combat rapidly rising inflation and a volatile housing market — that have financial institutions concerned about providing products and services to their existing customers and attracting new ones.

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“Connection to their customers is the most important opportunity available to banks, credit unions and other financial services providers,” SmartBug Chief Revenue Officer Stephanie Valenti noted. “The days of financial institutions just expecting customers to come to them are gone, and our clients understand they need to earn their customers’ business. SmartBug uses HubSpot tools to meet their objectives, such as building trust through value-first content, solving data-access issues to track conversions and supporting ambitious business expansion.”

Here’s how SmartBug strategists created custom objects through HubSpot that kept track of important metrics specific to the client, including the ability to sort, automate and report on associated data:

First State Community Bank (FSCB) is a financial leader in the state of Missouri, but connecting to current customers and attracting new ones was a challenge. SmartBug optimized existing content — using search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization — to increase year-over-year blog views by 1,346% and website visits through the blog by 219%, growing the bank’s list of subscribers and its ability to build visibility and trust.

Emles Advisors was founded by experts in sales, marketing and investment management, and these experts knew HubSpot was the platform they needed to meet their short- and long-term objectives, but they realized they didn’t know how to use it. As HubSpot’s top agency partner, SmartBug onboarded the Emles team in HubSpot and coached them about how to use the tools available to them on the platform: customer relationship management, marketing hub, sales hub and reporting.

Based in the U.K. and with offices on six continents, Valutrades is a brokerage that provides traders access to the global foreign exchange market. The firm was already using HubSpot but not well, and it needed the expertise of SmartBug to help it expand globally when a host of regulations limited trading. SmartBug took advantage of everything HubSpot has to offer, primarily to transition the firm’s website to a multilingual platform and to implement a smart content management strategy that increased monthly visitors from 10,000 to 50,000 and time on page as well.

“Facing a potential recession is certainly unsettling for banks, credit unions and other financial services, and they’ll need a partner who can tackle tough challenges using a powerful tech stack that includes a powerhouse like HubSpot,” Valenti said. “SmartBug has a deep well of experts across several marketing verticals who can craft thoughtful and determined strategies to help clients weather economic storms.”

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