Trading Strategies & Tech
Could FINRA Finally Help Finance Companies Market On Social Media?
25 Nov 2014
Businesses that offer financial services to its customers have long been trying to dominate the social media channel. With a gargantuan-sized audience, finance companies are trying to connect with their customers more than ever and on a more personal level. However, without the help and/or approval of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), they will not get far.
But with all the efforts FINRA has publicized, could they be the answer to simplifying social media marketing for finance companies, or complicate them? This article takes a look at FINRA’s efforts in the field for well over a decade and a half, and how it is translating for finance companies.
FINRA Can’t Regulate Loose Rules
While FINRA has provided a substantial amount of regulations and rules to companies offering financial services, the problem is many of these rules can be bypassed relatively easily. For example, when a social media ad is posted, aimed at promoting a service, finance companies are required to state a warning for it. However, this warning can be written or integrated in a picture, often small. As such, regulating loose rules can be rather difficult.
As such, while FINRA can help finance companies market their services better, they will need to overcome regulatory problems in order to do so, and that may not happen within the next 5 years.
Creativity and Personalization May Not Be Possible
For social media to thrive, a company needs to personalize its posts in order to both cater to its customers’ needs and preferences, and stand out from its competition. However, finance companies are rather limited on the posts they or their agents can make, often relying on pre-approved messages. This not only inhibits creativity but limits the messages they can send. By putting proper guidelines into place, FINRA will be able to enable more personalized messages to be created, allowing finance companies to be creative with their messages.
Measuring Your ROI – Still As Complex As Ever
For numerous departments, such as marketing and especially human resources, measuring ROI is not as simple as it may seem. When it comes to social media, measuring your ROI becomes a rather difficult task. Identifying the base factor, likes, comments, shares, and direct messages leading to purchases, can be simple but using them to identify ROI is difficult. With many finance companies worrying about current regulatory and compliance issues, real challenges may be overshadowed by a mediocre one. However, if FINRA does well in putting transparent rules in place quickly, it may shed light on ROI methods.
FINRA has been working tirelessly to help finance companies market their services better on social media channels. Unfortunately, their momentum is rather low and it seems they may not make much headway soon. However, once they do, FINRA could help improve the future of social media marketing for finance companies. Until then, it seems FINRA will not be able to do much for these companies.
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