by deborah
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by deborah
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Approximately three-quarters (73 percent) of B2B marketers and 70 percent of B2C marketers include content marketing in their promotion and growth strategies.
Digital marketing and in particular, content marketing is critical in helping you grow your financial services business and connect with new clients.
To see the best results, though, you need to avoid the five common financial services digital marketing mistakes discussed in this guide.
1. Over-Promising
The financial services industry is competitive, and finding a way to stand out from other businesses can be difficult. Some marketers assume the only way to differentiate their brand is to make big promises.
It might be tempting to declare that you can help people save a certain amount of money or increase their business’s revenue by a specific amount. If you aren’t confident you can produce those results, though, your marketing will eventually backfire.
If you over-promise and under-deliver, your financial services business will suffer in the long term. You might gain more clients initially, but if you can’t make good on your promises, you’ll be met with unhappy clients, negative reviews, and a bad reputation.
What to Do Instead
Be honest. People want to entrust their finances to honest and trustworthy professionals. If you’re making promises that are too good to be true, you’ll lose your clients’ trust — and you might never get it back.
2. Overly Technical Language
Along with being too grandiose in your claims, it’s also essential that you avoid being too technical. Depending on who makes up your target audience, they might not be familiar with many finance-related terms.
If your message feels stuffy or is full of jargon, you’ll struggle to connect with your ideal clients. As a result, you won’t see the kinds of results you’re hoping to produce with your content.
What to Do Instead
Consider your audience and their knowledge level before you start writing (or filming a video or recording a podcast). What terms do they understand? Which ones are they unfamiliar with?
When you’re getting ready to use a complex term, ask yourself if it’s really necessary. Is there another way you can make your point that will help people understand what you mean?
3. Inconsistent Posting
Consistency is crucial to financial services content marketing success.
If you don’t stick to a consistent publishing schedule, you won’t get as much attention from search engine algorithms — which can make it harder for you to rank higher on results pages.
A lower ranking, in turn, reduces the number of people who will see your content and want to learn more about your business.
What to Do Instead
Develop and follow a content calendar. Perhaps you’ll post one blog post a week or two videos a month.
Choose a posting frequency that you can easily stick to. It’s better to post a bit less often but be consistent (and share quality information).
4. Ignoring Trends
In the content marketing world, people often tout the benefits of evergreen content (content that is always relevant to your audience).
Evergreen content is an integral part of a successful content strategy. However, you shouldn’t focus so much on evergreen messaging that you neglect the current trends.
If you don’t pay attention to what interests your audience right now, you’ll lose opportunities to connect with them and make an impression.
What to Do Instead
Strive to publish a mix of evergreen and trendy content. When you’re making your content calendar, vary your planned posts to incorporate the latest trends as well as topics that are always valuable to your prospective clients.
5. Lack of Content Variety
In addition to varying the subjects of your content, you should also mix up the format.
If you always publish blog posts, you’re only catering to one type of person — the type of person who likes to read. What about those who enjoy listening to podcasts, watching videos, or looking at infographics?
You’re missing a significant chunk of your target market when you only publish one content style.
What to Do Instead
Think about the content types your target audience will most likely enjoy. Evaluate your past content marketing metrics to identify trends, too.
For example, do your videos get a lot more attention than your blogs? Perhaps you should focus more on video creation.
That doesn’t mean you can’t ever write another blog post again. However, you might want to adjust your content calendar to include more videos.
Need More Help with Digital Marketing for Financial Services?
From too-good-to-be-true messaging to a lack of variety in your content, it’s easy to make these mistakes in your financial service digital marketing strategy.
If you’re not happy with your results, consider making some changes — like those discussed above — to ensure your content is engaging and appealing to your target audience.
For more help with content marketing for financial services businesses, reach out to us at Fintech Content. We offer end-to-end assistance to help you achieve your goals.