By: Alex Vasilakos, Director of Marketing
The growth of your financial brand depends on attracting and retaining clients. In the modern market, some of the most successful strategies center on targeted content and social media marketing. If you’re ready to make this marketing strategy work for your financial brand, here are some powerful tips to improve your chances of success.
Why Social Media Marketing Is Important
First, it’s important to understand where there is room for improvement in terms of social media and content marketing. While many other industries have successfully navigated social media and developed effective sales content, the financial industry as a whole has been reluctant to move away from more traditional marketing methods, such as print. One of the challenges with traditional sales campaigns is that they can’t be effectively tracked or analyzed. However, targeting your audience through social media can be extremely effective. Most of your potential clients are already spending time online, so it’s wise to engage with them there instead of waiting for them to stumble on your website or find a print ad or a direct mail piece that you sent to them.
Benefits of Targeting Content Marketing
A modern content and social media marketing strategy offers many potential benefits, including:
• Aligning advertising budgets with consumer behavior
• Targeting potential clients accurately
• Efficiently generating leads
• Providing platform for developing relationships
Make Paid Promotion Work for You
The days of being able to connect with potential clients organically through Facebook and Twitter are a distant memory. Modern social media feeds continue to fill up with paid promotional content, so if you want to make sure your audience has the chance to see your posts, you need to invest in sponsored content. The upside of this trend toward paid content is that it offers advertisers an array of effective targeting techniques. Whether you are thinking of using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or another platform, you can get access to consumer data to help you truly understand your target demographic and tailor your content for maximum impact.
What demographic do you want to target? The data collected and analyzed by social media platforms can provide you access to any number of specific groups. Maybe you want to promote your factoring product or ABL program to businesses or individuals that have recently opened a business. Perhaps you are working on winning clients who are established businesses and potentially focus your efforts on targeting referral partners. You could develop sponsored content about a specific niche industry and how factoring can help cash flow during down time or when there is an upswing in orders.
There are numerous other options for targeted content. With all the useful data social media platforms have available, you can consider several targeted marketing campaigns, such as:
• Purchasing receivables for staffing companies
• Cash flow solutions that can help the renewable energy space
• Companies struggling to make payroll because they have open invoices
Improve Collaboration Between Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Although your sales and marketing teams may communicate every so often, it’s far better to have them actively collaborate on content and social media marketing strategies. Sharing ideas and reviewing data together can ensure both teams understand the goals of each campaign and the best way to reach them. Proactive collaboration can help everyone agree on how to define a good lead and what sort of metrics to use to determine success.
Ensure Sales Content Matches Your Target Audience’s Expectations
The more customized you can make your content, the better chance you have of making a strong connection with potential customers. A stronger connection means there is a better chance of converting that targeted individual into a client. By its nature, social media encourages users to desire a completely personalized experience, even in terms of advertising. When a customer feels like your post speaks directly to him or her, he or she is much more likely to pay attention and engage with the content.
However, developing unique, customized content can be challenging. Not only do you need to take into account different personalities and ages, you also need to tailor your content to fit the potential client’s location in the sales funnel. Content designed for an initial connection with a client should look different than content designed to close a deal. The quality of your posts is also important. People will likely ignore social media content that reads like a high-pressure sales pitch. Instead, focus on creating valuable, helpful posts that help your target audience feel like your company is both knowledgeable and caring.
Put It All Together
What does effective, valuable content look like? It depends on the target audience. For example, if you are creating a campaign to help improve cash flow for a business with factoring, your content should evolve based on your client’s situation. Your initial contact with your potential client should focus mostly on improving brand awareness and providing helpful information. You want the client to be aware of your services as he or she is considering the pros and cons of different alternative lending solutions.
As you continue to target this client with customized marketing content, your focus can move from brand awareness to the reasons he or she should choose your institution as an alternative financial solutions provider. You may want to focus on your turnaround time, recourse vs non-recourse options, or negotiating better terms with suppliers or take advantage of early payment discounts. Once you have succeeded in converting this targeted individual into a client, you can also promote your other financial products (if you have ones beyond just ABL and factoring), such as equipment financing, commercial real estate, or business term loans.
An effective social media marketing campaign can help you convert and retain clients. When you understand how to correctly engage with your target demographic and ensure your sales and marketing teams are working together, your content has a better chance of success.
https://www.factoring.org/files/commercial_factor08-18.pdf
