By Anna Willems, Marketing Director, Mention
If this year has taught us anything, it’s that a strong online presence matters. Consumer habits are changing rapidly, and having a strong online presence, that involves social media is now a crucial part of all business strategies. Whether they are retail brands, sports teams, libraries or even restaurants, most companies are investing more and more in developing their digital brand image and online presence – financial institutions are no exception.
In fact, some of the fastest-growing actors in the industry are even pure players, meaning they operate 100% online. What’s more, when it comes to market trends and innovation, financial institutions are first on the line. After all, we — people and companies — trust them to manage our money to the best of their abilities. And even more so than any other market, we demand secure, trustworthy, fast and user-friendly services.
Reaching such high expectations is not a given. To this point, banks and other financial institutions have no other choice but to have a perfect understanding of their market, their audience, and their needs. What they need to get there is a fail-proof online strategy.
Better understand your market through social media
Before social media, one of the few ways brands and businesses could learn about their audience was to invest a LOT of time and resources in sending out surveys and conducting polls. Nowadays, while you can still employ these techniques, listening to your audience online can deliver a lot more insights, for a lot less. One of the best things about using social media to learn about your audience is that people give unsolicited opinions. They speak their mind and share their thoughts candidly.
This is the key to help any business to learn about themselves. They get to analyze their audience’s challenges and aspirations without having to ask them directly or serve them time-consuming surveys and polls.
For example, UK-based Asto, a company that is part of the Santander Group, is committed to helping small businesses have access to financial and non-financial tools. Asto was looking for something that could help them discover what their target audience was talking about and find opportunities to add to the conversation. Mention enabled Asto to keep on top of reviews and customer comments, which has helped Asto provide a better service to its customers.
Selecting the best social media platforms to reach your audience
Investing thousands of dollars in a TikTok promotional campaign because you’ve been told it’s the hottest social app at the moment doesn’t make sense if no one there cares about what you have to say in the first place. No. You need to be where your audience is – online.
To do this, you can either spend a lot of time and investigate manually (and risk missing important data), or automate the process using a social listening tool. A social listening tool will help you to view your market as a whole and identify where the key conversations are happening — and, therefore, where you should be. What’s more, you will never miss any relevant mention of your institutions, products, services, or competitors.
Leverage social media for crisis management
Social media is where things “go viral”. For this reason, financial institutions need to watch carefully for negative press. In theory, rogue employees or unhappy clients can post anything they like online to try and hurt your brand. And if their messages gain traction, you’ve gone from one person saying bad things, to thousands.
What’s more, a brand crisis will always sneak up on you when you least expect it. And if it does, you’ll be glad that you caught it early and had a chance to limit the damage. That’s why listening needs to be part of any crisis management plan. Now, sometimes, there are crises you cannot prevent. And those usually hit pretty hard.
Influencer marketing can be an incredibly powerful mechanism
Weaving nano-influencers into your marketing strategy can help reinforce your brand promise to a niche market. Some question whether influencer marketing will still be here leading into 2021. The answer is yes – but it has evolved. For an influencer marketing campaign to work for your financial institution, partnering with nano content creators is the way to go. They’re ability to play a part in how they shape your brand story can make a huge difference when it comes to engagement and reason to believe in your service.
Many financial institutions are already leveraging influencer marketing. It’s an efficient strategy to: Build trust and gain credibility, reach out to new audiences and share engaging stories.
Harness online reviews – good or bad
94% of consumers check online reviews before they decide to buy something or subscribe to a service. They need what we call social proof. It says that the more people say they use your service, the more it will look like a good service. In short, you need to show how happy people are using your service. But not all online reviews are positive.
Having said that, we find that financial institutions shouldn’t ignore negative reviews. embrace them as an opportunity to rebuild trust. Instead, embrace them as an opportunity to rebuild trust in your brand. Less delicately put, take the bull by the horns and turn them to your advantage. Always respond to relevant complaints (and as fast as possible). Take responsibility for what happened. Be helpful.
And ignore trolls.
Use social media to learn from your competition
Over the last two decades, a marketer’s daily life has greatly evolved. Most importantly, we now can measure everything we do, including the consequences of our actions on our business. Having said that, you can’t evaluate how well you’re doing without comparing against
others.
Truth is that 77% of businesses rely on listening to keep an eye on their competitors. What this means is that 4 in 5 of your direct competitors are likely watching each and every single step you take. And you should do the same.
Become the trendsetter
Whether you’re a worldwide institution, a pure player, or a small local branch, banks and financial institutions need to keep their pulse on what is being said about them – and thus start monitoring. From staying up to date with the latest industry trends and innovations, to keeping an eye on the competitors’ newest services, to being the first to know of potential brand crises – tracking relevant online conversations lets marketing and communication professionals working for financial institutions to stay one step ahead in an industry that is leading change and innovation.
