The financial industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. To survive, you need top-notch marketing strategies to ensure effectiveness, including one of the most lucrative marketing tools we have in our toolbelt – social media. Because of the regulated nature of the financial industry, many companies find themselves in difficult situations, so read below about some common social media marketing mistakes your financial institution should avoid.

Six Common Financial Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid 

Not Having A Clear Social Media Goal

Gathering the perfect team and having the right resources means nothing unless they are allocated effectively. And how do you know what you need to allocate without first understanding what you want to achieve? Even with minimal resources, properly articulated social media goals can increase social media presence and effectiveness.

To start setting goals, begin by articulating the KPIs that you will use to track and measure your social media efforts. After all, it’s difficult to create an effective strategy when no milestones are set. Common KPI examples include certain viewership metrics, increasing online sales numbers, or developing an enticing company culture or brand. 

After your team has set the goal post, now is the time to strategize on how to meet these goals. One way to do this is to look at brands that you think are effective and engaging and base your strategy on them. This can be as simple as a marketing style, aesthetics, or the company’s mission.

Not Posting With A Purpose:

Too many financial companies treat social media publishing as a checklist item. The posts on their newsfeeds seem to have no reason other than just to exist. Remember, your social media audience only engages with content that provides them value.              

As a starting point, focus on what makes your brand or product stand out compared to the rest of the market. We can all see the absurdity in some of the recent advertisement campaigns from the crypto world (FTX, BitCoin, etc.) With their marketing campaigns, they want to use celebrity endorsements and cheap mechanisms that play on basic human nature. Set yourself apart by marketing the product itself and its effectiveness, not an image, just to make a quick buck.

Not Having Engaging Content:

In other words, each piece of content you post should align with your overall social media marketing strategy (purpose). It should also entice a reaction from your audience (engaging). Content has to be engaging to your audience to be effective. This is an obvious fact. The real problem is how to make your audience actually engage with your content.

Content needs to grab the attention of your specific audience, and according to the trends, video content seems to have the highest engagement and ROI. “40% of marketers claim the biggest benefit of creating video content is to help customers understand its products and services.” 

This type of content is obviously popular, and all of us are exposed to it every day. “86% of businesses utilize video marketing.” There’s no doubt that content is one of the hardest parts of creating an effective business strategy. When you create content that’s engaging and resonates with your audience, it will create a healthy pipeline.

Not Incorporating Paid Media:

Much like video content, paid media/influencer content has exploded and has been shown to boost social media RIO. “We estimate that in 2022, US social network video ad spending will grow by 20.1% year over year (YoY) to $24.35 billion, making up over a third of total US social network ad spending.” 

Influencer marketing is an appealing juncture because of how diverse it can be. Aside just from social media posts and ads, you can utilize bloggers or vloggers, podcasters, live streamers, or thought leaders to create a variety of posts to keep an audience engaged.

Not Getting The Team Involved:

Your business is nothing without your team. You rely and depend on each other to grow and complete your institution’s marketing goals. Your staff is also an untapped resource of influence on a wide range of markets.

Organic growth is the most important and stable form of viewership. A lot of this is because most of the relationships were forged personally, through local ads, or any other form of marketing. Your staff is so important to utilize because it’s the closest thing to you and can only add to comradery and create a healthy company culture.

Not Fixing Your Mistakes:

Marketing is a difficult equation to solve. There are many different formulas and mindsets that can be used to help your social presence develop. Do the best for your business and create an effective yet tangible content strategy plan with a robust and varied content plan.

SocialToaster can help you make the most of this changing landscape. With SocialToaster, you can amplify your social media marketing efforts by turning your brand fans into content-sharing machines. Learn more and schedule your demo here.

Not Taking Efforts To Expand your Audience:

It’s not uncommon for institutions to stop focusing on audience growth once they reach a certain audience size. They hit a number that sounds good on a roll-up report (10,000, 25,000, etc.) and reallocate their efforts away from audience growth.

The impact? While this may mean more resources become available for content creation, it stifles audience growth. Audience growth is one of the key metrics that drive social media ROI. The more people you have in your audience, the more likes/shares/comments, and sales the channel will drive for your financial institution.

Using a social amplification tool like SocialToaster can help to expand the reach of your social media and increase your financial institution’s marketable audience. With SocialToaster, your biggest brand fans (as well as your financial intuition’s own employees) will be easily be empowered with the tools they need to share your content on their personal and professional social networks.

Click here to learn more about how SocialToaster is working with financial institutions to drive social media ROI.

Remember to Always Keep Your Audience in Mind

People can sniff out bad content from miles away, so it’s important to ensure that you aren’t simply recycling old social media posts and expecting them to be effective. Instead of using the same old lines and regurgitating your social media work from last month, it’s important to find a way of being original and showing a new and fresh perspective.

By following these tips, you’ll be able to create compelling content that attracts the right audience and helps keep them engaged with your brand for the longterm. This will help you to stay ahead of the competition and build a loyal following on social media.