As you think through the marketing efforts you are making or want to make for your bank, credit union, or other financial institution, how much consideration are you giving to social media?
While social media won’t produce the same kinds of direct return on investment as your website and search engine marketing, it’s still an incredible way to engage with audiences, personalize your institution, and drive traffic to your other marketing presences.
However, using social media to market a bank can be a challenge, particularly if you don’t approach it with a clear understanding of how social media can help you connect with your audiences.
Let’s examine some ways you can work for your bank, along with some ways you can use social media to help build a strong, lasting connection with your prospective and current customers.
How Social Media for a Bank “Works”
The first thing you need to keep in mind about your bank’s social media strategy is a fundamental idea for all social media marketers:
Social media is a conversation.
The primary value of social media isn’t in its ability to deliver eyeballs to your message, like a TV commercial, or to feed an interested audience detailed information, like your website. Instead, the value of social media comes from the interactions you have with an audience that’s there to be, well, interactive.
So, instead of thinking about your social media marketing as just another place to plaster your ads, look at it as a meeting place. It’s one of the few places where you get to talk with your audience instead of talking to your audience. Steer your social media efforts in that direction and look for ways to promote an open and engaged interaction with your audience.
That means using a more informal voice, making content that encourages feedback, and recognizing the platform’s potential as a place for effective reputation management.
Here are some things your bank’s social media presence can help you with.
Bank Social Media, Pt. 1: Reputation Management
Unfortunately, for many businesses, the only interactions they ever have on social media aren’t terribly positive. Particularly for institutions like banks, a lot of the interaction you’ll experience will be people who are complaining. And that’s okay – so long as you use these conversations as a chance to practice some reputation management, aka good old-fashioned customer service.
When a negative comment or review appears on your page, don’t panic. Instead, be polite and ask the commenter to contact you via phone or the social platform’s messenger.
When a positive review or comment comes up, thank the poster for their feedback.
People are okay with seeing a bad review or a negative comment here and there. After all, everyone knows that you can’t please all the people all the time. What worries potential customers is seeing a long string of unanswered reviews and comments. People don’t like indifference, and ignoring negative comments makes you look indifferent. On the other hand, when you show your bank to be helpful and genuinely concerned about your customers’ experiences, it goes a long way towards boosting your reputation.
Bank Social Media, Pt. 2: Education
As we’ve mentioned in the last couple of articles, banking is a field that everyone interacts with but not many people understand well. What’s the difference between a fixed-rate mortgage and an ARM? Why is it important that your bank is a “Member, FDIC”? What in the world is a HELOC?
Social media is a perfect home for infographics and brief explainer videos that answer your customers’ questions about the nature of banking and what the various services and products you offer actually do for them. Educated consumers are confident consumers and confident consumers convert more quickly.
There are a couple of caveats, though. First, people on social media aren’t looking for a dissertation and certainly aren’t there to be bored. Make your educational content brief, to the point, accessible, and engaging. No talking heads – use plain, common-sense language that actually answers questions in a way that’s helpful to the viewer. Second, be authentic. People, especially younger people, can spot inauthentic content and don’t react well to it. Don’t try to use a style or language you’re not familiar with, or you’ll end up sounding like this guy.
Bank Social Media, Pt. 3: Making Human Connections
Think about the five most important connections you have in your life. Are any of those connections with a company or brand? Probably not – your most important connections are those you make with the people around you. We’re all the same in that regard; when we seek a connection with something, we connect with the people involved first.
Use that aspect of human nature to your advantage on your social channels. Let your audience get to know the incredible people on your team. Showcase them as individuals and as members of a hardworking, dedicated group that provides exceptional banking products and top-quality customer service.
Highlight employees on their work anniversaries. Wish longtime customers a happy birthday. Let your loan officers do an account takeover and share their “day in the life” experiences. Do whatever it takes to let the people in your audiences connect with the people inside your offices.
Bank Social Media, Pt. 4: Platform and Audience Optimization
One last thing to remember about using social media is that every platform is different. Instagram is a good place for straight-up engagement posts, brief explainers, and promotions. LinkedIn is the place to post more in-depth content that’s focused on highlighting services for business customers. Facebook is the utility player of social media, an excellent all-around place to do a little bit of everything.
As you’re developing a piece of social content, think about the audience(s) it’s likely to resonate with, the format it will take (Is it text-driven or image-driven?), and then decide where each post will live. While you can cross-pollinate to a certain extent and share content between multiple platforms, the vast majority of your content should be targeted at a specific platform to get maximum results.
Make a Big Engagement Deposit and Withdraw More Leads With M&R!
Fortunately, our talented team of marketing experts is a whole lot better at helping banks make their social media efforts a success than they are at writing banking puns. Give us a call and let a friendly member of our Sales team show you how to turn content into likes and likes into conversions!
Call Today: 478-818-6319
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