To become a leading financial institution in your area, your bank needs to stand out among the competition as the clear and right choice for customers.
But how can you accomplish this?
Below are eight bank marketing strategies along with seven tips for helping your bank branch do just that. But first, let’s talk a bit about what bank marketing is.
What is bank marketing?
Bank marketing is the process of promoting your business and services/products to attract, convert, and retain new and existing customers. You do so by sharing marketing materials and running marketing campaigns through traditional (e.g., direct mail or billboards) and digital (e.g., email, website, social media) channels.
Since it’s pretty much a given that everyone needs a bank account once they’ve hit a certain age, there’s always going to be a need for your services. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t competition. The key is standing out as the right choice for bank customers who are looking for the right fit for their unique needs and preferences. And marketing can help. Here are eight strategies that your bank may consider using.
Marketing for Banks: 8 Strategies That Work
1. Blog and Content Marketing
Produce blogs and other content marketing materials to share education, thought leadership, and information about how your target audience can manage their banking needs with your support. By also keeping search engine optimization (SEO) best practices in mind, your blogs and other content (e.g., e-books, web pages, etc.) will rank on Google and other search engines when relevant phrases are searched for, increasing traffic to your site.
2. Text Marketing
Text messaging is a very effective communication channel for local businesses as it allows your team to engage with customers more efficiently, improve communication, and personalize all interactions. For example, one of your employees may send an appointment reminder via text and your customer can respond to confirm or change the date/time of their service. You can also send texts (and use one of our 500 texting templates) asking for Google Reviews, which have the power to build a strong online reputation and improve your local search engine ranking.
3. Positive Customer Reviews
Speaking of customer reviews—especially positive reviews— collecting them as numerous benefits for your banking business. They give prospects and new customers a good impression of your brand and increase the likelihood of more of those prospects into customers. The best way to gather good reviews is to ask for them. Simplify that process with our easy to send Google Review link generator.
4. Social Media Content
Create unique and memorable banking social media content and run social media campaigns on the platforms you know your audience is on. This improves brand awareness, builds and maintains relationships with potential and current clients, and helps you share business updates.
5. Local Ads
As a local bank branch or community bank, you can set up ads to help you reach your local target audience. Run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns or Google Ads so your local audience sees your advertisements when they search for a business like yours.
6. Web Chat
Improve your ability to provide delightful banking customer service and support by adding web chat to your site. (See what Podium’s web chat looks like on your website here.
7. Customer Service
Customer retention can improve by providing excellent customer service. Organizing your communication with customers can make a big difference in ensuring they feel supported throughout their journey of banking with you.
8. Partnerships With Other Firms
Partnerships with other local banking-related institutions allow you to access a new audience and create an association between you and the partner brand and increase business for both of your companies. Ensure the partner you choose communicates your values to consumers accurately.
7 Tips to Get the Most Out of Bank Marketing Strategies
1. Make customer experience a top priority for your financial institution.
Nothing is going to set you apart from the competition if you don’t provide phenomenal customer service. Obviously, right? Well, sometimes that can be easier said than done.
Working with people and their finances can be very rewarding, but it can also be difficult at times. However, if you put the customer experience above all else, everything beyond that will fall into place.
We understand that it is a tall order with all the means of engagement nowadays with the advent of digital marketing. But it is critical to provide bang-up customer services everywhere from your local branch to your social media.
Take a page out of td bank’s book, recently named J.D. Power and associates’ top financial institutions for customer service.
Graded on various banking criteria such as convenience, availability of banking services, channel interactions, and problem-solving. TD received top marks for providing ‘consistent customer experiences across all accounts.’
This just goes to show that consistency in quality service is paramount to a good marketing strategy.
2. Do your research before you do bank marketing.
Second only to providing a great customer experience, you need to do your homework. See what other local banks are offering. How will you know how to beat the competition if you don’t even know what they are doing?
It should be stated, don’t throw together a marketing strategy with assumptions. There are simply too many variables to account for. Don’t make guesses. Speculations on what your competitors are offering can be a big downfall.
A great example of this is a bank from the land down under, Commonwealth Bank.
They did their research and found that the people in their community wanted more access to mobile banking. The competitor’s offering of mobile access was lacking. Commonwealth discovered the immediate customer problem and delivered top-notch mobile features as a solution.
3. Demographic targeting—who are your consumers?
Is what you are offering, even appealing to your target audience? Put in the time and energy to get to know your ideal demographic. There’s no other way to cater your content marketing and offerings to resonate with potential customers.
After doing your homework to define your target audience, it’s time to put that knowledge to work. Put together marketing that is hyper-targeted toward the people in the community you are trying to reach. Working on a smaller, local scale should make this simple enough.
Let’s say you are a local branch in a major city, and the folks you are trying to reach are millennials. There are about seventy-three million millennials in the US. They are the main population of your community and need flexible financing options. With that data, you can develop a pointed marketing campaign.
A great example of this is Citi Entertainment.
Citi Bank has fully embraced its key demographic and knows what they want.—Entertainment. So they entirely pivoted to cater to their bank brand accordingly.
4. Stand out amongst other competing banks.
Nearly everyone needs a bank account; why not stand out by offering your potential members a reason to choose you over the competitor? Does the competition offer extensive information for folks looking for financial advice and guidance? Probably not, and if they do, you can do it better.
These types of programs help focus on customer outreach. An informed consumer is a happy consumer. Plus, it gives you one more touchpoint that emphasizes your dedication to the customer experience.
One local New Mexico bank that nailed this strategy is Centinel Bank of Taos. They go above and beyond with not only extensive online education articles but also presentations and community workshops.
Offer classes in-house to fully engage with the c and show off your stellar in-house customer service. Customer outreach and community engagement are big hitters in local bank marketing strategy.
5. Tell an inspiring story to your customers.
Tell the story of your community. Brand storytelling is a fantastic way to generate content and captivate your local target audience.
Everyone loves a heartwarming tale. Is your branch’s founder from nearby? Put together some ads that talk about how they grew up in the community and how they strive to improve it.
Highlight how your bank’s branch fits into the narrative of a tight-knit town with local financial success stories. Like the Bank of Elk River, who won “Best in Show” in 2018 for their video that chronicles the tale of a family buying their dream home.
Not only does this type of storytelling solidify your place in the community, but it also helps people visualize themselves as those homeowners who couldn’t be happier in their perfect home and how your local branch can get them there.
6. Utilize video marketing in your digital marketing strategy.
On that note, you really should try videos! They are a great way to convey a ton of information in an engaging format within a short period of time. Most people would rather watch a video than read a whole blog post and there are options with the right software for banks that you can use to generate these videos.
Perhaps try taking some of the curricula from the educational courses you offer and turn them into little tutorial videos. It sounds crazy, but your bank should have a youtube page as it is the 2nd biggest search engine in the united states, comprised of tons of videos.
One bank that is absolutely knocking out of the park is Silicon Valley Bank. Surprise! A bank in the heart of tech land has fantastic videos. Who would have guessed? That’s killer demographic targeting if we’ve ever seen it.
Your main goal is to get your branch a lot of attention. Using videos on any platform and partnering with influencers can help you do that. Svb has nearly ten thousand subscribers. We’d say that’s a lot of attention.
7. Implement the latest bank marketing technologies.
We know this is a rather broad statement. Especially in this day and age, there are a billion tech platforms to choose from. However, not every solution is going to fit your local branch’s needs. Financial tech options are wide-ranging.
One big suggestion is to go with the avenues that will cater to the people using it. That’s likely going to be gen zs and millennials. It’s just a fact they are the largest demographic looking for flexible mobile options and are simply more digitally inclined.
In 2019 j.P. Morgan was named for the best tech overhaul. They tackled all the major points, connectivity, ease of use/mobility, and data integration.
To keep up with the latest generation of users, try something like Podium. It’s one of the best options for communication software. With tools for messaging, keeping track of your online reviews, and also features lead generation tools.
Use Bank Marketing to Grow Your Business
At Podium, it’s our mission to help local businesses like yours succeed. Create Google Review links to collect customer feedback and build a strong online reputation. Use text marketing to improve communication with your customers and make interactions with your brand quick and convenient. And install web chat on your site to offer easy customer service for customers who want to get in touch with your service and support reps.
In doing so, your bank has the potential of scaling the way TAB bank was able—the bank transformed its online reputation by using Podium and saw a 12x increase in reviews in three months, and a 300% increase in review response rate from text compared to email.
