We’re celebrating 100 episodes of the Hit Record Podcast with a special roundtable discussion featuring Meredith Olmstead, Nida Ajaz, Kristin Mock, and Sophie Bawany. From how the podcast started to our team’s favorite episodes over the years, we’re reflecting on the trends that haven’t changed—and the tactics that still move the needle for credit unions and banks. Whether it’s email strategy, branded search ads, or being human on social media, this episode is packed with timeless insights for financial marketers.
Key Takeaways:
Some lessons are evergreen. Branded keyword strategy, personalized emails, and authentic social media have all evolved, but they’re still as critical in 2025 as they were in 2021.
Short, implementable content wins. The Hit Record Podcast was created to offer quick, actionable tips for busy financial marketers. That approach still resonates today.
Human connection is still the difference. Even in an AI-driven world, authenticity and trust remain the best ways to engage, convert, and retain members.
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there, I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO, and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency, and we work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. I am here with an unusually large group of my team, three other members of our FI GROW team, because we are celebrating our 100th podcast episode. Yay. So say hello, Kristin Mock, she is one of our senior strategists.
Kristin Mock:
Hello.
Meredith Olmstead:
And Nida Ajaz is our senior VP of marketing.
Nida Ajaz:
Hi, guys.
Meredith Olmstead:
And finally, Sophie Bawany. She is our social media guru and all things for driving engagement with younger consumers.
Sophie Bawany:
Hi, guys.
Meredith Olmstead:
So we are here to celebrate our 100th episode, and we wanted to do it in a couple of ways. First, we wanted to talk really quickly about how our podcast came about, so that was Nida's suggestion. And so we're going to talk about that, but then we're also going to talk about our favorite episodes and some key takeaways that we've all had from those episodes. So the first thing, Nida, you wanted to talk about how our podcast came around. I'm very interested to hear what you think the story is behind this, because I have no idea how our podcast came about.
Nida Ajaz:
Well, I remember you, me, and Penny were talking about, on our executive call, like, "Hey, we need to start a podcast." But I know from the name perspective we were like, "Oh, let's hit record and understand ..." So I know that whole conversation was kind of unique in how we approach things in podcasts, where it's very well planned for other podcasts, but for us, we just hop on, talk about something that we've learned, a very implementable tip. Which is really different from, some of the other podcasts are more generic, philosophical, more big picture.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
And we kind of do some of those, but I like how we have direct implementation ones as well.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I think the key for me was, keep it short and simple. Because some podcasts, when I start to listen to a podcast, honestly, and I look at it and it says an hour and 45 minutes, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I can't commit to this." I don't even want to start it.
Nida Ajaz:
Like a Hollywood movie.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I don't even want to start it because I know I'm going to have to listen to a million different ads and I'm not going to get anything out of it until halfway through or further, it's going to take up two hours of my day, or I'm going to have to stop halfway through and never finish it. So that was a big thing for me, is keeping it short and sweet. And then the shorter it is, and it's not super planned, so we just work off of usually a quick little outline, but that's not stressful.
So that was the big thing for me, was I was so tired of writing blogs. And we've been blogging for years and years and I was like, I really like this medium because it's much easier to talk about something than to have to put it together very polished on the page. So that's pretty cool.
Meredith Olmstead:
And then obviously it's this amazing medium that has grown. I can't believe we've done this for, I look back, our first podcast was in October of 2021. So we've been doing this for four years. Amazing how different the world is now in four years with podcasting.
Sophie Bawany:
Well, it's funny, because the world is different, but something that we all noticed was, when we were picking our favorite topics, things haven't really changed as much as we thought they would when we were looking for our favorites. It's funny how
Meredith Olmstead:
Of course leave it to Sophie, our social media engagement guru, to segue into the second part of our podcast with no real plan ahead. So yes, that is what I was supposed to pick. So I'll go first. I was supposed to pick my favorite podcast, and I went all the way back to podcast one because I wanted to give it full consideration. And I was looking at all these titles and I was like, "Has anything changed in four years for marketing for banks and credit unions or just generally?" And I was like, it's really amazing to me, as I look at a lot of the topics that we've covered over the last four years in the 100 episodes we've done, so many of the same problems have persisted. So the one that jumped out at me was episode two. And the title is, Should Your Financial Institution Bid on Branded Keywords?
So the key takeaway from this, and this is funny because I literally have done another podcast about this with Ida, our director of digital ads, recently, like in the last probably 10 episodes, because it's shifted. So everybody's always wondered about branded keywords. Now, what a branded keyword is, is it is a keyword that somebody would search that's really specific to your brand name. So for FI GROW it would be, the branded keyword would be FI GROW, or FI GROW Solutions, or FI GROW agency, or any combination of keyword search or keyword search phrase that is specific to our brand. And the reason we call it branded is because somebody already knows who you are if that's what they're searching. So the controversy for a long time was, should we pay for those? If they're looking for us already, should we be paying to rank? So initially the answer was, not really, unless you had a competitor who you knew was bidding against you. In which case they could be paying and buying your branded keywords and showing up in the paid spot before you did.
So that was one thing. So that's definitely something that we always said for banks and credit unions to keep an eye on, especially the big guys always have to do this. They're always trying to, US Bank and Citizens and Wells Fargo, they're always trying to compete with each other and steal each other's branded keywords. But that's not as relevant with the smaller institutions. But what I will say nowadays, we have actually reversed that a little bit and said, hey, it's okay to spend a little bit of money of your budget on branded keywords, mostly because it's like the cost of doing business. If somebody is searching your name, you want your name and your link and your website to come up first. So you definitely want to make sure that if you have a little bit of budget that you can allocate to a separate pay per click branded keyword campaign, that you definitely spend it.
When we say a little bit, we mean like 5%, 8% of your budget. The rest should be products and services. And your branded keywords should not be mixed in with product and service campaigns. Because then you're going to have people who are looking for your homepage for online banking getting an auto loan ad or a HELOC ad. That is a terrible user experience that you do not want anybody to have, especially people who know you already. So we would typically say you would use branded keywords as negative keywords for those product campaigns and have a separate campaign for just branded keywords. So that's my big takeaway from 2021 all the way to 2025. Nothing has changed, it's just a slight difference in how you do it. So that's mine. Who wants to go next?
Nida Ajaz:
I can go. So mine was an episode halfway through our podcast. I do love having new guests. I think it adds fresh ideas and outside perspectives, and I really like the episode 53 where Ben Bauer, another creative agency, a leader, and you both talked about leading a creative team. And that is pretty much evergreen topic, but it's so relevant nowadays, because one of the main points that stuck out to me was investing in your team members to learn. And I really like that, especially in today's day and age where AI is taking over. And really you want to empower your team with the best knowledge and give them opportunities to get this where they don't feel that they're out of place, like fish out of water. They want to be making knowledgeable, strategic decisions. And for that, you do want to invest in your creative team. So I really like that point that you made. On an ongoing basis it helps in so many different ways. So that was my favorite.|
Meredith Olmstead:
I love that episode. Ben's awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing him soon at the MAC conference in October. He's one of our MAC ambassadors, so he's great. Kristin, you want to go next?
Kristin Mock:
Sure. So the episode I picked is also pretty early on, so I had to open up all of them to make sure I picked my favorite out of everything. So I chose episode six, and it's one that you did with Penny about email strategy. And so it's all about the emails that your financial institution must send. And I love this one because it's such a high-level strategy, but it's one that I feel like is still talked about constantly, every time we have a new client, every time we're re-looking at emails that we're sending or not sending. And the big message on this one was that it's not about sending them just your generic quarterly campaign. You don't want to email mortgage every spring and then auto loan, and you don't want to just hit these campaigns, but it's more about emailing the most relevant message to the right people at the right time.
So talking about if they're on your website and they're looking at mortgage, send them an email about mortgages. If they're on your website looking at whatever type of content, that's what you should be sending them, and that's when you should be sending it. And a lot of the data is showing that these financial institutions are not sending enough emails. I think we see so many times people are like, "Well, I emailed yesterday," or, "I emailed last week," or, "I emailed this month already." And it's like, if it is a relevant message to that person right now, it doesn't matter. They're going to open it.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, it's funny, with financial institution average open rates in the 20% to 25% range, most people are deleting your emails. If they're still on your list, you're not actually bothering them. They're staying subscribed, but they're not even really opening your emails most of the time. But as soon as they see a subject line that is relevant to them because they just did something, they just showed you their interest, they would absolutely be more likely to open those. And those open rates for smart behavior based emails, like when people have just been on your website, we have open rates in the 40% and 50% range. So it's pretty crazy high engagement rates. So I love that one too. Sophie, what have you got?
Sophie Bawany:
Well, mine is, keeping in my world of social media and engagement, it's actually one of the first episodes I recorded with Meredith, so it has some sentimental value for me as well. It's episode 65, which is, believe it or not, Social Media for Banks and Credit Unions Hasn't Changed That Much in 10 Years. And what I really love about this episode is, it was my chance to really talk about social media and also to look into the 10 years that FI GROW Solutions has been working with social media. And the reality is, being trustworthy and being authentic will always supersede being aesthetic. We've had moments where social media has peaked and we want really pretty pictures and a beautiful aesthetic cohesive feed. That time has passed. And coming back to the bare minimum roots and something we constantly tell our clients, be relatable, be authentic, be real, show the flaws and the cracks and the fun, and the fact that you guys are human, humanizing your brand.
And doing that on social, big picture strategy wise, yes, Instagram and TikTok and Facebook are important. It trickles into other aspects of your bank and credit union. Your website, your user experience, how you interact in the branch. So I like to think that, yes, your social media is one part, but it does trickle into building a website that is more cohesive and targeting the people that you want to be your members. Having a marketing strategy, your email strategy, your onboarding, it's all encompassing. So if you're authentic and being a person first and having that mindset, you will have a better overall digital marketing strategy. So I really think that's still true.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, you know what's really funny about this is, it is so much, we're working on a webinar for next quarter, for early October, on AI and the difference between SEO and GEO. And what we're finding, Nida has been doing a ton of research on it, is the personal side and showing the realness of your brand at your credit union or your community bank is what will win out in the long run, even through these AI generated kinds of search, and differentiating yourself in an AI driven marketplace. So you're not going to be able to throw out generic content that everybody could make or that just anybody could make. But instead, it is really going to be about differentiating who you are and what's different about your institution. And honestly, one of the best places to do that is social media.
So it's kind of funny how it swings, right? We started as a social media marketing company. We've moved more, as an agency we've moved more into full service, digital marketing, websites, inbound campaigns, all of that. But I can see us now moving back towards custom social media support because it is now, again, so incredibly important to show the human side of your brand, because otherwise you just get lost in the chatter. So awesome.
Well, thank you ladies so much for being on for our 100th podcast. I cannot believe we've done 100 podcasts. It's literally, it's blowing my mind. But four years and a lot of episodes later, I still love making these episodes and I love sharing what we do with our audience. So if you all are interested in learning more about any of the topics that we covered today, please visit us at FI GROW Solutions, figrow.com. We have lots of other podcasts, blogs, we have case studies, and we would love to connect with you and keep this great conversation going. Otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.