Subscribe to The Financial Brand by email for FREE!
In the age of digital transformation, financial institutions face both challenges and opportunities to stay on the ball. The financial space is getting tighter with the advent of digital-first banks, fintech companies, and cryptocurrencies.
Differentiating your brand from competitors, especially in an industry as crowded as financial services, is of the utmost importance. Whether with engaging social media tactics, attention grabbing content, or excellent customer service, financial firms need to do the job to differentiate themselves from potential consumers and keep existing ones.
Based on their experience working with banks, credit unions, and other financial organizations, Saltwater Collective’s marketing team has gathered five actionable insights to empower your financial marketing strategy:
- Define and differentiate your brand identity
- Know your audience
- Embrace the digital transformation
- Let your audience know
- Prioritize customer service
1. Define and differentiate your brand identity
Before you can secure your place in the crowded banking industry, you need to find out who your brand is and what makes it different. Standing out means leaning on what your brand stands for.
The key to standing out in a crowded industry is to enforce your brand identity, which makes your financial organization unique, and incorporate it into everything you do: your products, services and messages need to be consistent and your personality and values to the Express.
“Anyone can raise a rate,” notes Cristina Parsons, Account Strategist at Saltwater Collective, “but when you have a certain image and message that really reflects who you are and what you want to achieve, it really attracts new customers . and helps to stand out a little more. “
The strongest brand identities will clearly differentiate your company. “Some small banks seem to have a really good sense of what makes them different,” said Mike “Sully” Sullivan, VP of Creative Services at Saltwater. “If a bank doesn’t know, then there is an inherent challenge.”
Key point:
It’s important to remember that your brand identity isn’t always being received by your audience the way you imagine.
There’s a vital difference between what you think and how your audience perceives you, and it’s up to you to make sure those two are in sync.
There’s no better way to understand your customers’ perceptions than by directly interviewing them through branding studies and surveys. This work can reveal potential discrepancies between your intended brand and the audience’s perception.
Once you understand and identify these opportunities, you can remedy the situation by tweaking your content and branding approach, as well as through ongoing surveys to track progress.
2. Know your audience
Before you can successfully reach your audience, you need to fully understand them. “It’s not enough just to know what makes you different,” says Sullivan. “You have to figure out how to best convey that to your target audience.”
Once you know your audience exactly what motivates them, what drives them, and when and where you have the opportunity to reach them, only then can you connect with them.
This can look different for different target groups. Sullivan explains, “It’s always difficult to reach your audience because your tactics are so demographically dependent. You will reach 22 year olds differently than 62 year olds. ”Understanding that distinction and doing the work to target different audiences rather than implementing a unified approach is key to effectively connecting with your audience.
Additionally, Parsons points out that it’s important to think about the past year to understand what people have been through, how consumer trends may have changed, spot new trends, and then start making your plan for that early on beginning next year. “The sooner you start planning,” she says, “the sooner you start digging through data and determining why things are working one way or another, the better the insight and understanding will give you about strong and strategic upcoming Develop goals. “
This is another place where branding studies and audience surveys can provide vital information to back up your strategies.
3. Embrace the digital transformation
It is important for financial institutions to stay abreast of digital trends and do their best for digital transformation so that they can not only keep up, but also be one step ahead. This includes implementing new digital tools and digitizing the way you reach your target audiences.
“With the digital transformation, consumer habits are shifting towards a more digitally native world, so banks need to provide cross-channel plans to ensure they can be reached anywhere,” notes Tish Mallory, media strategist at Saltwater Collective.
Digitization can bring some challenges, but it also offers many opportunities to be more personal with your customers and to adapt certain tools, services and products. This digital personalization can take many forms. For example, a digital tool that more and more companies are using on their websites to get in touch with users is the chatbot.
“When you create a chatbot,” says Parsons, “you create a persona. You develop something very personal for the brand and something that the consumer can identify with. The chatbot personalities of all brands are somehow connected to the organization. “
The chatbot tool enables brands not only to further connect with users, but also to present their identity and personality in new ways by personalizing their brand as a “responder” in this chatbot scenario.
Digital branding tool:
Chatbots can bring your brand to life and allow you to communicate directly with consumers faster and more effectively.
In addition to engaging with consumers, digital tools provide a new way to engage your audience and gain deeper insights into your performance using data and insights not readily available through traditional channels. You can tailor who you want to target, how you want to target them, and what products and services customers need, depending on where they are in their customer journey.
The targeted use of digital tools offers you more opportunities to cross-sell your products and to deepen the relationship with your customers.
4. Educate your audience
Speaking of deepening the connection with your customers, financial institutions have a unique opportunity to produce and share educational content that offers incredible value. Many of your customers probably don’t know their way around when it comes to financial jargon, tools, and services.
Additionally, when you deploy digital tools and extensions, a certain segment of your audience may initially or inherently be unfamiliar with how to best use them. This gives your brand an opportunity to educate and support – improve the customer experience and build loyalty and trust with your audience.
You can stand out from your competitors by posting educational content, posting on a blog, hosting seminars and webinars, sharing expert videos, and leveraging your staff’s expertise. Educational content that teaches financial literacy can be a sales tool and allow you to connect with your customers and showcase your personality through the content you produce.
Spreading your financial information content on your social media channels is also an opportunity to connect with your customers personally and ensure that your social channels are active and engaged.
This type of content not only helps your customers better manage their financial journey, it also helps build trust between your brand and your customer base. Financial education content should come from thought leaders in your institution. It is important for banks and credit unions to be the face of their offering. When developing educational content, make sure you present your brand’s personality authentically in order to further connect with the consumer.
Make sure to use your own employees and executives in the educational content you share to build the relationship and trust between your brand and your customers, old and new.
5. Prioritize customer service
Whatever new digital tools you use, nothing is as effective as good service. Customer service should be a priority on all channels and in every customer interaction. Ensuring strong customer service enables you to foster a positive, trusting relationship between your brand and your customers. Customer service is the cornerstone of maintaining a loyal customer base.
“It’s really about accessibility,” says Parsons. “You should be available to your customers by answering phones, not putting people on hold, dropping or forwarding calls, and responding on social media, especially when customers have questions or leave comments.”
Being engaged and interactive with people at all digital touchpoints is extremely important in building a strong relationship with your customers.
The central theses
Now is the time to put these findings into practice. Here are the actionable tips you can use to instantly improve your marketing efforts:
- Define your brand identity and what you stand for to differentiate yourself in the financial industry.
- Conduct market research and consumer surveys to know your audience and how to reach them.
- Leverage digital transformation to leverage tools and tactics to personalize and customize the customer experience.
- Build your audience with educational content marketing to establish yourself as a thought leader in finance.
- Finally, you practice excellent customer service in everything you do to build trust and loyalty with your customer base.
Comments are closed.