Written By: Christina Lu
Feel like you’re running an endless marathon? If you’re constantly pacing to keep up with the digital and tech changes that are shaping marketing.... and yet feel like you, and your organisation are falling further and further behind... you’re in good company.
Best described as Martech’s Law, and explained brilliantly here
, this feeling is one we have to get used to. As Scott Brinker says, “Martec’s Law encapsulates the greatest management challenge of the 21st century: how do we manage relatively slow-changing organizations in a rapidly changing technological environment?”
What worked last year, may no longer work now, and what works now, may not work in the near future. So like other marketers, financial services marketers
and CMO’s must stay ahead of the game. That’s both emotionally and logically challenging. On the emotional front, it helps to identify the unease of not being able to keep up, and to name it (Martech’s Law). Then get back to running – the logical and essential effort of trying
to keep up, or to reset.
As financial services marketers, it helps to know what you can stop, and what you should start.
Here are 3 common mistakes financial services marketers should avoid when moving forward.
#1 Engaging organically through social media
Are you constantly frustrated with low engagement rates on social media? You’ve written great informative content, have a huge following on social media, but no one seems to be engaging with your content.
Organic social media reach is on a decline. Once trusted “knowledge spreaders”, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter made sure your content was reached by thousands, even if your content’s not quite interesting or exciting. However, based on a study done by Forrester
, analysts found that businesses are now only able to achieve a 2.6% reach ratio.
The reason? There is more content than ever before, and as Jeff Bullas mentioned in this webinar
, almost all social media platforms today are overcrowded and noisy, and the competition to win attention is brutal.
However just because organic social media is on the decline, it doesn’t mean you stop doing it altogether. You do have to be smarter with how you use it, and “hack the system”. To hear from Forbes Top 20 Influencers of CMOs Jeff Bullas on how you can growth hack your organic social media, check out this webinar here.
#2 Losing the personal touch in content
Behind a screen, financial service marketers (I include myself in this!) write with a professional voice that doesn’t always connect to their audience. It’s more than just educating your audience with informative, unique content. It now has to be about using a personal voice that resonates loudly with consumers and clients, and delivers a real story.
As Jeff Bullas said, “Your audience wants to feel your pain and see your joy. In this social media age, people want to see the authenticity of your organisation or personal brand. Your story. Consumers today are looking for purpose driven organisations rather than the corporate. Once they trust you, your brand will become more real, more relatable and, become a voice that truly resonates with your audience”. Jeff talks more about this here
in our webinar.
#3 Inconsistent content strategy
Inconsistent content? Inconsistent voice? Inconsistent messaging?
With only so many hours in a day, financial services marketers are time poor. Umm sorry. But that’s no excuse for poor content planning. Without a consistent content strategy, no business can craft a winning content strategy, engage their audience and generate lead conversions. How do we know? We've tried. And failed, again and again and again until we planned properly. Foundational elements like on-brand messaging, content consistency and personalised content are critical to building and maintaining your online reputation and trust. So plan, and develop thoughtful interaction in your social media channels.
Jeff talks about a cost-efficient, time-efficient method to deliver consistent, on-brand and personalised content that really connects and engages your audience in our webinar.
Related: How to Live the Four-Hour Marketing Dream