In this blog, you’ll discover investment management firms’ top mistakes when using paid social media for ETF marketing.
Is paid social media worth the investment? Of course it is. That’s why investment management firms should consider using paid social ads to promote their exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
In fact, social media advertising spending is expected to reach up to $207 billion in 2023. That’s a huge percentage of the total expected budget spent by businesses globally on a digital marketing agency. The amount of money allocated for social media ads has steadily risen since before the pandemic.
Throughout that period, spending has significantly risen because more people stayed at home and increased their online activity due to COVID-19 lockdowns. More prospective investors and clients have also started to make their investments from home.
In previous blogs, we discussed success tips when using paid social advertising for ETF marketing and even shared a handy guide for ETF digital marketing.
This time around, we’ll cover what asset management firms should avoid when using paid social ads in order to gain highly targeted traffic, better engagement, and higher return on their advertising spend.
Table of Contents
Why Use Paid Social Media for ETF Marketing
Paid social marketing is a pay-to-play promotion that has become a staple marketing strategy for startups, medium-sized businesses, and even multinational conglomerates for its effectiveness and scalability.
Paid social ads serve as your hook or bait to fish for a specific fish species, which is your target investor. They’re placed in specific waters or SERPs that your prospective clients are most likely to swim by.
“Paid social media can help asset management firms do ETF advertising in a unique way that organic social media could not.”
In some ways, organic and paid social media work in a similar manner, particularly in terms of defining their ads, posts, and promotions based on keywords displayed in search results as well as taking advantage of social media’s highly categorized information on its users.
However, paid social media trumps organic SEO marketing in other ways. For instance, Social Media Advertising Services ensure that the social media platform itself is actively involved in your ETF advertising to potential investors—without you having to swim upstream against the changing tides of search algorithms.
Now let’s take a closer look at the top mistakes when using social media advertising services.
Top Mistake #1: Not Running Enough Tests on Your Paid Social Campaign
Paid social marketing isn’t beholden to the Google or Bing algorithm changes of SEO, which also apply to the search functions of organic social media marketing. Optimization is a valid tactic, but paid social ads can bypass its seasonal issue of algorithmic sabotage.
On the other hand, ETF digital marketing using paid social media allows you to customize your paid social ads. This makes the service an effective advertising tool that can entice would-be ETF clients to give your company a try.
You can flexibly stick to your advertising budget by using the same campaign to release newer custom ads based on data gathered by the same campaign.
In light of this customization, it’s a huge mistake for your company to not run tests that will show how effective your paid social ad campaign is. Sure, you can adjust the live campaign with analytics. However, you’ll minimize ad losses by testing the campaign first then adjusting it later.
It’s ideal to use 5 to 10 percent of the budget to test campaigns rather than going in blind with a campaign and losing more than 5 to 10 percent of your ad spend on an unsuccessful campaign.
Top Mistake #2: Trying to Do Everything in Your ETF Advertising
For owners of startups with only a handful of staff (or a one-man IT department), there’s a huge temptation to do your ETF paid social campaign on your own like you would do SEO for your ETF marketing website.
Unfortunately, that’s not the best way to go when it comes to paid social advertising. Business owners might believe they’re being meticulous and budget-savvy with a do-it-yourself attitude. However, they might end up simply micromanaging. If you lack the resources to competently run and manage a paid social campaign, it’s better to seek professional digital marketing services from experts like Zero Company. Our experts have the experience and time to create sales-driving ETF digital marketing campaigns for your investment management company.
It’s important to give your digital marketing campaign enough time and attention to properly breathe and develop. Having focused eyes will also catch opportunities for growth and avenues for optimization.
Top Mistake #3: Not Thinking Like a Social Media Advertising Agency
As an investment management company offering ETFs, you should also know better than to put all your money in one ‘egg’. This golden rule in investing also works in advertising.
In short, you need to use a variety of digital advertising services. Try to allot some budget for YouTube ads for ETF promotion, PPC campaigns targeting relevant ETF keywords, and so on. And if one social media fails to give you the results you’re hoping for, explore other platforms and websites.
There are indeed many other “baskets” to choose from aside from. Even though Facebook has over 2 billion users and counting, you don’t need to put the majority of your ETF advertising budget on Facebook advertising services alone.
You can spend just a minimal amount to get a huge number of convertible leads and would-be investors from an ad if you’re a Facebook ads expert or if you hired one. So why not diversify your ads?
An ad created by Facebook ad agencies has a $0.27 CPC on average, depending on the industry. Instead of using up all your budget on a Facebook ads agency, try your hand at other paid social ads—such as on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
Top Mistake #4: Using the Same Paid Social Ads Strategy Across the Board
In connection to the previous point, remember that different social media sites are used by different audiences, so even if you’re appealing to the same target investors, your ETF advertising tactic should at least be slightly different, depending on the platform you’re using.
This applies when using Local SEO for ETF marketing through Google and Bing, and this also applies in paid social ETF ads on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn, and so forth. The smart thing to do is to use a myriad of social media channels so you have multiple streams of (potential) “income” through different audiences of prospective investors.
Use different campaign strategies depending on the paid social website you're using.
For instance, Instagram is a strong advertising platform that focuses more on reels and photos instead of textual ads, so text ads created by a Facebook marketing agency that work well on its front page might not appeal as much to the more visual users in Instagram.
On Instagram, your ads should cleanly blend into the timelines of different users, making it ideal for B2C businesses like financial management companies that are advertising to potential ETF clients. Meanwhile, LinkedIn offers the third most popular paid content promo strategy, according to Social Media Examiner.
Boost Your ETF Digital Marketing with a Top Digital Marketing Agency
If you want to avoid these top social advertising mistakes, you’d want a seasoned digital marketing agency as your partner. Zero Company is a social media advertising agency with an incredible track record not only in paid social advertising but also in providing a wide range of digital advertising services for successful ETF advertising.
Consult our experts in digital marketing services for free today!
