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Bank Marketing
Bank marketing is the strategies and tactics that institutions use to sell products and services by prioritizing an educational first and service-based first approach. Building trust by valuing the individual’s financial well-being over the bottom line is important for standing out in today’s crowded space.
How banks and credit unions position their brand and attract new customers and members is criticial to their success. With the acceptance of digital banking by all generations, there’s never been a more pivotal moment for institutions to build relationships with their customers and attract new customers and members.
Marketing Challenges Facing Banks & Credit Unions
According to the Hartford Business Journal, banks closed nearly 4,000 branches throughout the U.S. in 2021, with smaller banks (those with less than $1 billion in deposits) bearing the brunt of this trend. To avoid such outcomes, it is imperative to have a strategic marketing plan in place.
When devising a marketing strategy, whether for a new location or an existing branch, taking stock of present challenges is a good starting point. Once you have a better understanding of the areas in which your branch can improve, you can tailor your marketing approach to meet those needs. A few of the top obstacles financial institutions currently face include:
- New branch underperformance
- Nonexistent sales culture
- Lack of aptitude in educating and advocating for customers
- Reactive customer service
- Difficulty embracing digital while boosting the human component
While these challenges can be detrimental to your branch’s success, there are many different solutions that can help improve your brand presence while meeting the needs of your customers and members.
Let’s dive into 10 marketing tactics you should include in your institution’s marketing plan.
1. Define Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial within the retail banking industry. Knowing who exactly you’re talking to will help you gain a better understanding of your customer and member needs, preferences, and behaviors.
There are two ways you can approach research. Both are valid and will give you insight into how you’ll go to market.
- By Product
- By Demographics
2. Acquiring Gen Z in Your Financial Institution
With Gen Z being substantially harder to acquire than all other existing generations, it’s crucial to start strategizing ways to do so. We asked intern, Hannah Ritchie, to weigh in on how institutions can best market to Gen Z.
When asked what banks and credit unions could do to attract more customers and members within Gen Z, she emphasized that her generation is tech-savvy, and that tech should be prioritized within a branch experience, whether it’s enhancing mobile banking or the incorporation of digital signage.
Hannah says, “With digital signage, consider making it interactive. If it catches someone’s eye while waiting around and they realize it’s interactive, that visitor is going to be more likely to read and engage with the content as opposed to standard signage. This is a great tactic to use on Gen Z because many have a short attention span, so if they’re standing inside your branch waiting around staring at blank walls, they’re going to be unengaged and dissatisfied. The bottom line: be sure to engage customers and members of Gen Z, and for those who can’t be swayed to walk into your physical branch, give them an incentive to do so through promotional offers and giveaways. You’ll have a better chance at getting them to come in, and engage with them face to face!”
3. Reframe Tellers as Trusted Advisors
The evolving role of the bank teller can serve as a great marketing tool for banks and credit unions. With the rise of self-service options such as ATMs, Interactive Teller Machines (ITMs), and mobile banking, now is the perfect time for traditional tellers to evolve into financial agents who advocate on behalf of customers and members.
As clients are now able to handle many routine transactions independently, employees have the chance to dedicate more time to connect with their customers and members. This enables them to educate clients and improve their financial literacy and situation through various financial products and services.
To help tellers transition into advocate roles, banks and credit unions can establish training programs that teach employees how to communicate with customers and members in a more personalized manner. Training should emphasize the need for agents to be proactive rather than reactive in their interactions with visitors, providing helpful suggestions without being prompted. Additionally, agents should be educated on all available products and services and understand when cross-selling is appropriate.
4. Streamline Branch Marketing Tactics
Outstanding in-branch customer service is an important marketing tactic and driver for brand success. Each time a customer or member visits your branch, you have an opportunity to deliver a positive experience, while simultaneously contributing to customer retention. Additionally, it’s important to improve interactions with in-branch personnel, and as equally crucial to ensure that customer time spent unattended is satisfactory as well.
Two important tactics to incorporate into your branch marketing strategy include:
- Digital signage: Utilize graphics and videos that promote your top services, provide tutorials for the latest products, and communicate local information, such as weather, news feeds, etc.
- Digital brochures: Incorporate digital kiosks, tablets, or displays that customers can interact with while they wait. These digital brochures can provide information about services, such as mortgages, checking accounts, auto loans, savings accounts, etc.
Use these in-branch marketing strategies to reinforce your overall brand image while positioning your bank or credit union as a modern institution that provides valuable information as a way of engaging with customers, particularly while they are waiting.
5. Getting Started With Content Marketing
Financial content marketing is a specific type of marketing that aims to improve an individual’s financial literacy. The goal behind this is to take potentially complex financial challenges or questions people may have and break them down into an easily digestible way through copy, imagery, and video.
When creating financial content, consider longer forms such as podcasts, blogs, emails, and even videos. Although a marketing team’s role is to drive leads for the institution, be sure to balance product promotion with educational. Below are a few ideas of the different kinds of content your financial institution could be producing:
- The Steps to Getting a Mortgage
- How to Get a Car Loan Without Going Through a Dealership
- CD’s vs High Yield Savings Accounts vs Money Market Accounts
- Child Financial Literacy
- How to Save on Taxes
Below you can find a quick info guide on how get started:
- Understand Your Audience
- Who are you making this content for?
- Will it resonate with your audience?
- Determine Pain Points and Challenges
- Come up with a niche list of topics relevant to your audience
- Don’t Let Perfect be the Enemy of Good
- Create and publish your content quickly
- Even if it’s not perfect, you can always come back and make adjustments
- Distribute Content Among Multiple Channels
- Don’t let your content sit on one platform
- Repurpose your content with added spins keeping it fresh
- Distribute content amongst your internal network
- Use Measurements for Improvements
- Utilize your data to improve your content over time
6. Improving Customer Retention
Banks and credit unions always aim to improve their customer retention rates, but besides maintaining loyal customers and members, what are the additional benefits to consider?
- Lower Acquisition Cost: There are opportunities to cross-sell to your existing customers or members, which is more cost effective than acquiring new ones.
- Word of Mouth: When customers or members are kept satisfied with your service, inevitably, they’ll give referrals and boost your word-of-mouth marketing. Word-of-mouth is key in this industry, as people are more inclined to try something new when recommended by someone they trust.
Various marketing tactics to consider that will help improve your overall customer retention rate include
- Promotional product giveaways
- Window clings
- Incorporating digital signage within your branch
In doing so, you can better support cross-selling and education, showcase your branch’s community involvement, and most importantly, foster an environment driven by engagement and connection.
7. Embrace Digital Marketing
Digital marketing outreach should not be underestimated when it comes to connecting with customers and establishing your credibility as a brand. Today’s bank customers and credit union members are tech-savvy, with a recent Insider Intelligence study finding that 89% of financial consumers use mobile banking applications.
Your financial institution can build upon existing relationships and bring in new customers with an appropriate digital marketing strategy that includes:
- Email Marketing: Send periodic emails containing valuable content to existing customers and new leads including the latest news from your branch, recent blog posts, and various types of email campaigns such as:
- Educational Drip Campaigns
- Welcome Campaigns
- Back To School
- Savings For Occasions
To ensure your branch or institution is creating and sending out effective email campaigns, develop an understanding of when your audience is on their email, establish consistency, and ensure content remains relevant to your recipients.
When prioritizing specific digital marketing efforts, email marketing should be one of the items at the top of your list. When you have an existing audience that opts in to receiving notifications, you have the advantage of having a direct route to feed them information on a regular basis.
- Blogging: Write and post educational articles on your website that inform readers about branch services, product offerings, and popular topics from the finance industry. Blogging can help drive organic traffic to your website while helping build credibility as an industry leader.
- Social media: Maintain a steady social media presence that includes a mix of ads, educational content, and promotional contests.
- Ads: Use bank advertising to promote your latest product and service offerings. Use Google Ad placement to attract potential customers who live in your area.
8. Cultivate Community Partnerships
Another way to market your bank or credit union is through community partnerships. By teaming up with community organizations or participating in local initiatives, you can galvanize customer and member loyalty, bring in new customers, and make a difference in your community. Potential community partnerships could include:
- Sponsoring a local sports team
- Fundraising for local animal shelters
- Helping build houses in the community
- Hosting free classes or workshops on budgeting or other topics at a local library, community center, or high school
9. Utilize Promotional Merch
Promotional marketing includes activities related to spreading knowledge of a brand to a wider audience as a way of increasing brand awareness and sales. Promotional materials include items displayed by in-branch employees, worn outside of the office, or sold to the public and often include:
- Apparel: Popular promotional apparel items include outerwear, performance wear, and polo shirts.
- Personalized collections that fit the service provided: For example, customers/members who are approved for their first home loan receive a branded kit that includes practical items such as a tape measure, level, screwdriver set, etc.
- Customized, branded gifts: Providing personalized mugs, T-shirts, water bottles, and other items help customers and members feel like part of the branch family.
- Employee dress: Maintaining a cohesive look helps set employees apart from visitors and demonstrates pride in the financial institution.
Embrace promotional marketing to take your brand outside the walls of your branch and show customers and members how much they matter.
10. Leverage Customer Data
Data analytics encompasses a critical part of bank marketing, in which customer information is used to optimize resources, streamline operations, and maximize returns. By collecting and organizing data related to customer spending patterns, frequency of credit card usage, investment preferences, and more, banks and credit unions can learn how to best serve their customers and members.
Beyond increasing your bottom line, data analytics can also boost customer satisfaction. Using customer data can help to deliver much more personalized, relevant, and timely messages to existing customers. Data can help better understand customer and member behavior patterns so you can offer relevant, personalized deals that are complementary to your customers’ daily lives. Furthermore, data-informed processes help customers feel more connected and valued since you are offering the services they need and want.
11. Traditional Marketing Strategies are Still In, But Need to be Integrated into an Omnichannel Approach
We’ve seen a return to more traditional marketing strategies, such as mailers, but only when they are incorporated into a marketing campaign as an omnichannel experience.
Clients are using mailers to drive awareness and bring foot traffic into the branch, while then utilizing in-branch signage, social media, and promotional products to reinforce the campaign.
Institutions running any type of campaign, especially traditional strategies, need to be aware of siloing their traditional efforts away from more digital and in-branch tactics. With siloing, your institution can face problems such as inconsistent messaging, inefficient use of data, and a disjointed customer or member experience.
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Your financial institution’s marketing strategy is a key component of your overall brand success. Incorporating these marketing tactics can help boost customer loyalty, bring in new customers, and create a more cohesive and recognizable brand presence both within your digital channels and the confines of your branch space. Spread awareness, cultivate customer loyalty, and demonstrate your credibility with the right bank or credit union marketing plan. Reach out to the Element team today to get started.
