bank marketing

Why the Financial Industry Needs to Invest in Social Media

January 31, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Social media’s original purpose was for friends and family to stay connected with one another. Since its birth, it has evolved into more than just a way of communicating. It’s an effective medium to get in front of your customers. Often, banks, wealth management firms, and insurance companies skip out on this marketing opportunity because of the fear of breaking regulations with compliance. Do not fear compliance. With your own policy and social media strategy, you’ll soon be adding another powerful marketing asset, connecting with new potential customers, and having more people walk through you door.

Is it actually worth the risk?

Yes. The average person maintains more than 5 social media platforms. Millennials specifically use it when they wake up, multiple times throughout the day, during their downtime, and right up to the moment they fall asleep. If they’re using it, you need to use it, too. This group is quickly gaining purchasing power. Get in front of them before they make the final decision on opening a checking/saving account or gaining financial advice from one of your competitors. Yahoo! states, “50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media network.” Your presence on social is critical to staying relevant in today’s digital world.

How to Start

Many banks and firms have had many mergers and acquisitions. So, there may be social media accounts associated with previous company names that lead to your current website, address, or phone number. Gain access, merge your pages, or delete old accounts that have nothing to do with your current brand. Not only do you need to think about the business’ accounts, but some employees may be marketing themselves through social media. If you do not have someone monitoring, you have no insight into what your employees are saying (social’s not just about your customers).

Once you have the appropriate channels, you’ll need to decide what you’re goal is for them. Obviously, gaining more customers for your business is one of them. But, this may not be the true purpose of your pages. Goals may include to quantify content to a dollar amount, to educate your followers, to recruit, or to provide faster customer service. Defining this will help you get started on the type of content you will be providing and give you a clear vision of where you are heading.

Posting Without Fear of Compliance

The FINRA, the SEC, FFIEC, and the FDA will need to know about your social media channels and you know they will be auditing your content. Creating a standard strategy for you and your employees to abide by will help you to avoid violating any regulatory guidelines while maintaining full control on all content disseminated online. Setting these standards on what you expect to see will leave anyone with admin access in a comfortable position for posting onto social media. Avoid the madness, completely, and never have an issue with compliance.

Get to Know Your Customers

Monitor the conversations that are happening about your brand. The first place people go to complain, to brag, and to share their opinions is a social media account. You’re leaving your reputation in the hands of others without any say. Be a part of the conversation. If a negative comment occurs, be the first to respond. Having a social voice will not only help your credibility; you’ll soon truly get to know your customers. What are their interests, hobbies, locations, and languages? What do they like or not like about you? Where did they come from or go after interacting with your brand? Answering these questions will eventually help you in all areas of marketing for your company. If you want customers to invest their time and resources into you, you need to invest in them.

Working With a Social Media Marketer

We’ll do what we need to in order for you to have peace of mind about your new venture. We’ll help you educate your employees – what they’ll need to look out for, how to build those relationships, themselves, on their own channels, and the appropriate language and wording. We’ll thoroughly explain the strategy to leave no one questioning any part of it. We’ll help you gain access to all of your previous channels and secure each page. Our social media management tools have built-in compliance features that will help us all avoid disasters. Most importantly, we will create a crisis management procedure if a problem were to occur. The combination of a social media marketing team and a compliance officer will allow your content to be accurate and entertaining for your followers. (Yes, entertaining. Your boring content won’t get you anywhere. We’ll give you a personality compared to your standard legal jargon.)

Example of Financial Companies Utilizing Social Right

We understand the uncertainty you may feel about utilizing social media marketing. There’s the pressure of legal limitations and costly violations if an error occurs; but, you must soon realize the pressure is even greater to be active on social media. You’ll soon be a forgotten face in a crowd of your competitors without it.

Learn what is being said and what needs to be said. Let’s build our relationship so we can help you build one with your customers. We know you have questions, so ask away in the comments below!

Bank Marketing: Creating Your Bank’s Brand

December 27, 2016 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

If you are not careful, a bank can easily become a faceless organization—making one virtually indistinguishable from another financial institution. That is why even though a bank is offering a service which is considered a NEED, not a want, a branding message is vital. Banks have print, digital, and branches that need a consistent message and look. This message is something that should carry across mediums, devices, and generations. To improve your bank’s marketing and financial success, utilize these bank branding guidelines.

Effective Bank Marketing Starts with Your Employees

External branding is visible to each and every customer, or potential customer, who walks into your bank or researches your firm online. However, without internal branding, it is easy to let this message slip away. Your employees must carry the message, value proposition, differentiation and “live” the brand that you have clearly defined. Your slogans and taglines should be more than just statements; they can be shown through actions and customer interactions. Every employee should understand the bank’s branding. These employees will become ambassadors for the firm and may be responsible for carrying the message to both existing and potential customers.

Guidelines for Branding Your Bank

You need to put together a list of guidelines for your brand so that it appears consistent across all mediums. What font or typography will you use? How will the logo be placed? What color(s) will be utilized? Keeping these consistent is vital. Think about how the brand will be delivered, both in person and digitally, to ensure there are no mistakes. The smallest inconsistency can be magnified when published. As far as for use in your physical locations, you may need to hold training sessions with your employees on how to display any brand elements, too. Finally, don’t forget to cover yourself from a legal standpoint. Protect your logo and other branding elements and make sure you are not stepping on other toes.

Creating Your Bank’s Brand

When your bank is branded, it becomes more and more necessary to take advantage of your digital assets. Even if you don’t plan to use them today. Claim social media platforms when they become available. Get listed in the major directories. Additionally, you may wish to research reputation management and how it can benefit your bank. In certain cases, this can be necessary to give your company the right look and feel.

What the bank’s unique value proposition?
What differentiates them from other banks?
What’s the voice, style, and tone of the bank?

The answers to these questions will help you as you work to create your brand and make it “live” in the hearts of your customers.

Humanizing Your Brand

Your brand doesn’t just exist on paper, so it is important to “make it human.” Continuously reinforce the brand with your staff, customers, vendors and outside firms. This extra effort will go a long way in reinforcing what you stand for and creating something that will not only serve you well today but grow with your bank and become the core of what you are and how you serve those around you.

For more information about bank marketing and branding, leave a comment below or contact us today!

Financial Marketing Tips: Combining Print and Digital Advertising

December 19, 2016 by Daniel Laws 1 Comment

Today, marketing comes in more forms than ever before. Digital advertising is expanding, but that does not mean that traditional advertising methods are dead. When marketing for a bank, you want to reach today’s savvy customers across multiple platforms. Discover how to connect each of your financial marketing efforts and accurately measure its performance across traditional and digital, including mobile.

Financial Marketing Starts With Your Customers

There is more data available about bank customers today than ever before. Luckily, good customer relationship management (CRM) can help you harness this data and find the most valuable information to you. When building your marketing plan, you need to know who is using your mobile banking service, who is using your app and how they are utilizing these programs. Additionally, you need to know who is NOT using these services. Once you understand more about the people who use your various forms of contact, you can find patterns and ideally see what you can do to address the wants and needs of your different customer segments. How can you make the entire process better for everyone?

Invest in Additional Analytics

Measure the success of your email campaigns based on user ID’s to see what’s happening across mobile, desktop and tablet devices. In some cases, the loan application process is located on a different website (apply.atthebank.com/) from the primary website (thebank.com). The tracking function then breaks as the URL changes, throwing a wrench into your analytics. This is why it is imperative to have cross domain tracking setup. Any additional information can come in handy as you build up future campaigns, such as collecting data from a call tracking tool. Tagging the URL, which is done for campaign tracking purposes, can also help you avoid losing data—especially across platforms.

Review, Measure, and Analyze

Once you have invested in analytics program and you have the data, it is vital that you use it. Measure your bank promotions performance in various segments or by branch. Check out your return on ad spend by campaign or promotions. Once you know what type of marketing is working best for you, it will make it easier for you to determine what marketing methods you should choose in the future. One vital consideration is that you should never limit your measurement to only the last touch point. A potential customer might apply for a loan after clicking a paid search ad, but he or she made up their mind after talking to someone in person or having read a direct mail message.

There is so much to think about when it comes to marketing for a financial institution. Working with a digital marketing expert who knows the banking industry can help you grow in ways that you never imagined was possible. If you have questions about how you can harness the power of digital AND traditional marketing, reach out to us today. We would love to work with you.