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Bank Marketing Strategies.

35 Marketing Tips For Banks.

Marketing is essential to any business in any industry and is a proven way of generating more leads. Customer satisfaction is paramount and Banks & Financial Institutions need to have strategies in place aimed at capturing the customer’s attention and having a full view of customers’ needs fulfilling them in the best possible way by required services, identification of potential customers, and conducting the activities on the basis of market segmentation.

There are many ways of marketing and advertising from traditional television and radio ads to editorial and digital advertising.

Here is a list of things one can do to increase brand awareness. Even though your brand is a household name there is a way to capture more customers by the way they search for a product or service and that can also work alongside your brand name, exact match searchable keywords, or keyphrases domain names that point to your site or a stand-alone extension to your SEO Link Wheel. The best way to do this is to have a site that has regular content uploaded relating to your business. This could be a blog where articles on all the latest banking news and can be shared on social media platforms, groups, and pages. Having an exact match searchable keyword secures your global positioning as there can only be one “UKBusinessBanking.co.uk and “UKBusinessBanking.com “Domain Name”, these keywords alone have search results of 6,170,000,000. Imagine being on top of the ladder with these exact match searchable keyword phrases. These domains have to go as one package as you do not want your competitors using the same keywords.

The list of innovative ways to get more exposure can be done doing the following:

1. Exact Match Searchable Keywords or Keyphrases Domain Name. Expand your SEO link wheel to gain traffic from multiple directions.
2. Blogging. A blogging strategy for your bank can increase traffic to your site, build your social media profiles, and establish customer awareness.
3. Social media Content. This is a must-use tool to market your bank and establish a brand presence amongst your competitors. However, social media should be used to engage your followers with useful, relevant information, not just simply to selling. It should be entertaining to capture the audience attention.
4. Brand Awareness. Having your brand on everyday items that people use such as umbrellas is essentially free advertising minus the cost of printing the merchandise. Give an umbrella to all your employees and customers. Give away mini eco frienedly shopper bags, not only are you saving the planet your are also promoting your brand. Make the bags colourful whilst maintaining your corporate brand image.
5. Video Content Campaigns. Your customers expect lively entertaining digital content. Take advantage of videos and podcasts to capture their attention. With engaging digital media, you can develop content marketing strategies that position your bank for the best kind of marketing: word of mouth.
6. Digital Signage. If you are a credit card company for example consider having a giant credit card strategically place on a busy high street. If you are high street bank have a giant piggy pank somewhere near where children will see and then offer a limited collection of mini piggy banks, or animal money box to each child as incentive to save money as collectables. Award each child who reaches certain limits and get the parent to come in to the bank to collect the piggy bank/money bank with their child. This is a great opportunity to then upsell your products and services to the parents. With digital signage, your displays do the selling for you so you don’t have to. Use well-placed displays to show graphics and videos that promote your latest services or tutorials for your latest products. Have an ATM machine with an image of life size bankteller on the side of the machine.
7. Non-Traditional Rewards Programs. When designing a rewards program for your customers, consider these three primary goals: Increasing customer loyalty. Extending retention. Cross-promoting services and products. Offer unique rewards program that aims to achieve these objectives, for every amount that you spend using your debit card.
8. Strategic Partnerships. Partner up with organizations that share the values of your customer base. This could be through entertainment companies, real estate agencies, or nonprofits.
9. Customer Data. Data will give you clear insight into your existing customer base. With data you can learn customer behavior patterns and offer relevant deals that fit within your customer’s daily lives.
10. Community Initiatives. Customers look to their banks for ideas on how to manage their personal finances. Instead of simply offering a booklet with this information, organize monthly workshops open to the public. Give monthly money budgeting planners to your customers, teach young people how to budget their money. Here are a few topics that would be interesting:

• Financial Planning For New Parents
• Smart Savings to Homeownership
• Getting The Most From Your Credit Cards
• Wealth Management and Investing
• Setting up a Business

11. Guerrilla Bank Marketing. Guerrilla marketing has become very popular and gained a lot of press coverage over the past 30+ years, and for good reason, because in most cost cases it actually works. Of course, marketers have defined the concept in myriad ways, describing it at times as being low-cost, quirky, small-scale, energy-intensive, spontaneous, or grassroots-oriented, for example. What’s ingenious in some markets may be humdrum in others. Like the guerrilla warfare, it’s named after, guerrilla marketing draws impact from being unconventional, agile, and resourceful. It can be set up in almost any area, from direct mail to social media to street-level promotions. Part of its appeal is the surprise factor. That said, there’s very little that’s really new under the sun. And in an industry like banking, a little surprise can go a long way.

When dreaming up a guerrilla campaign, make it entertaining and thought-provoking. It may help to remember that grasping the attention of people can go a long way to spreading brand awareness.

Direct Mail

12.  Incorporate promotional information into a 3-D mailer, send a packet of seeds and say something just like these seeds will turn into a plant, shrub, or tree one day consider planting a little money and see your money grow. Everyone loves to receive gifts and open a box when it arrives in the mail.

13. If you can’t afford a 3-D mailer, send a postcard with an arresting design. Anything that’s not just another stuffed envelope. Send a tea bag with your branding and say something like “have a cup of tea and relax whilst your money grows”. Or send a mini easter egg and say “consider saving for a nest egg”. Another option is to send a cardboard golden key and say “this is your key to your new home if you take out a mortgage with us”, or “this is the key to your new car if you take out a loan”. The possibilities are endless.

14.  When sending a box or a stuffed envelope consider printing an ad on the outer packaging.

Perks

15.  Remember that not all loans have to be financial consider loaning out a branded corporate signage removal van for customer use can be a perfect way for mortgage customers facing a move.

Social Media

16.  Open a Business Instagram Account and turn control over to employees from across the organization—and let them take turns posting. Capital One and Danske Bank in Copenhagen have tried this as a way to personalize the brand and engage with the larger community.

17.  Create a team of community liaisons, a combination of social media, thought leadership, appearances, and community events.

18.  Rewrite your job postings in a way that showcases to prospective clients the skills and engages your staff offers—and turn routine job searches into a social media billboard for your top talent. Umpqua has had a lot of success with this technique, even getting HR to foot the bill.

19.  Get your customers to spread awareness of your brand with a photo challenge on social media. Participants are invited to post a picture of a favorite “happy place,” on Instagram and tag it with @WeBankAtYourBankName and for a chance to win a free getaway.

Community Outreach

20.  Sponsor a series of street festivals to celebrate local music, shopping, and food. Speak with your local council to see what up and coming events are coming,

21.  Sponsor events and also local businesses. As well as street festivals and other community outreach—with the bank’s success in saving its business—and reviving the local economy.

22.  Donate water bottles made from recyclable plastic to charities or exercise mats—branded with your bank logo—to a local gym.

23.  Get involved with the local schools. Do a seminar on how to teach kids about money and savings. This could make kids think twice about spending their pocket money or doing paper rounds and one day these kids will want to have a bank account. In fact, offer trending design debit cards to attract your young customers.

24.  Donate a specified amount of money to a food bank as a reward for customers who fill out bank surveys. Or plant a tree each time a customer hits a savings threshold.

25.  Showing, empathy, empowering, and inspiring people are the first steps of building trust. Showing kindness and decency to those in need can be the best possible branding. In partnership with the American Cancer Society, Inland Bank and Trust provide paid leave to employees participating in Project Purple Roads, driving cancer patients to their chemotherapy appointments.

Game Time

26.  Jump on the augmented reality bandwagon. CenterState Bank put Pokémon Go characters at some of its branches to drive traffic and identify the best places to promote a product or brand.

27.  Open your new branches with a bang. Premier Bank in America invited neighbours of its new branch to come in and play a game called Crack the Vault. Prizes were relatively modest—including a grand prize of $1,000 cash, an iPad, gift cards, and various electronics—but the response was enthusiastic.

28.  Anywhere where it is busy, such as airport terminals, railway stations where you would get a lot of footfall can be an opportunity to capture people’s attention especially if they have to wait around for flights, trains, or coaches. Consider QR codes that provided users with free Sudoku puzzles, crossword puzzles, and classic literature (from the public domain). The strategy alleviates its customers’ pain points—and what screams “pain point” louder than an airport terminal?

Showtime

29.  Be the coolest bank in town by sponsoring a summer concert showcasing local talent, while the bank’s partnership with a local radio station brings up-and-coming national touring artists to the area.

30. Instead of spending marketing pounds or dollars on sponsorship of a local radio station, use those funds to produce a talk show of your own. Fidelity Bank produced a 30-minute radio show called “Fidelity Bank…On Business.” Each show features one of their bankers talking about their area of expertise, along with insights from various thought leaders and bank customers. Interact with customers visit their businesses and video the interview.

31.  Go viral. Heartland Bank in the USA produced more than 30 videos in-house and uploaded them to Facebook, showcasing its offbeat sense of humour. Get your staff to upload work videos and share them on social media.

32, Hire influencers that mention your brand each time they use their debit/credit card. They could also have merchandise that they could use as props, sneakingly lurking in the foreground.

33. Affiliate Marketing. Get other ordinary people who have websites and blogs to promote your bank. Pay them a commission for each sale. Rakuten Linkshare and Share-a-sale are a couple of affiliate places you can start with.

34. Hire a children’s books writer and get them to write a story about saving money. Encourage schools to sell your book to parents or give your book away for free, you have to speculate to accumulate.

35. Send leaflets and mini books to the schools to give all the children options about opening bank accounts. Obviously, the parents will have to open the accounts on their children’s behalf, but you have already got one foot in the door by making the parents aware of your corporate brand.

Market Segmentation

An important criterion for market segmentation is the economic system is which the agricultural sector, industrial sector, services sector, household sector, institutional sector, and rural sector require due weightage.

Marketing Mix for the Banking Services

The formulation of the marketing mix for the banking services is the prime responsible-to of the product portfolio, which means, the different types of services/ schemes formulated by the banks.

Product Portfolio for Banks

Every Day Banking

Deposits

International Banking

Letters of credit

Foreign currency

Credit Cards

Consultancy

Tax

Merchant banking

Project counseling

Investment counseling

Mortgages

Loans and Advances

Agricultural loan

Vehicle loan

Educational loan

Jewel loan

Business loan e. Miscellaneous

Safe-deposit-boxes

Credit cards

Travelers‟  Cheque

Collections

Gift Cheque

Promotion Mix

In the formulating of the marketing mix, the bank professionals see also supposed to blend the promotion mix in which different components of promotion, such as advertising, publicity, sales promotion, word of mouth promotion, personal selling, and telemarketing are given due weightage.

Advertisement

While developing advertising the bank has to prepare appeals, slogans, and messages and select suitable media for traveling the messages. There are a number of devices to advertise, such a broadcast media, telecast media, and print media. For promoting the banking business, the print media is found economic as well as effective (newspapers, finance magazines). Telecast media is very much effective, but it is found very expensive. The messages, appeals can be presented in a very effective way.

They have to provide a sufficient budget and test the effectiveness of advertisements. Banks need to develop and strengthen public relations activities to promote their business.

Personal selling

Personal selling is found instrumental in promoting the banking business. Personal seeling in at the forefront of how the bank meets and greets its customer. the person who greets the customer needs to represent the bank in a professional manner. It is what the customer will remember when they leave. The banking organizations need to make use of this dimension with the help and cooperation of efficient and personally committed salespeople. If the salespeople have in-depth knowledge of the sales, dialogue, sales technique behavioral profile of the customers, the task of transforming the dialogue into a business is found easier. This requires an intensive training program. Personal selling is based on the personal skill of salespeople. Showing the customer that the salesperson has knowledge about all the products and services builds customer confidence and trustworthiness.

Sales Promotion

The banking organizations also think in favour of promotional incentives both to the bankers as well as the customers. The gift, contests, fairs and shows, discount and commission, entertainment and traveling plans for bankers, additional allowances, low-interest financing, and retaliatory are to mention a few found instrumental in promoting the banking business.

Word of mouth

“A happy customer will tell their friends and family, an unhappy customer will tell the world”. Therefore it is important to do regular surveys and get reviews. If a customer leaves a bad review reach out to them and invite them in and try to rectify the issue for them to edit their review and then they will tell more people that you went out of your way to help that customer making them feel special. The social reformists, popular cine artists, TV artists, opinion leaders, vocal persons may act as word-of-mouth promoters. A satisfied group of customers is considered to be the most successful hidden promoter. Happy customers will commend to others the excellent services of a particular bank or the outstanding properties of a particular scheme. Hence it is clear that the word of mouth promotion is important of the promotion mix, but its instrumentality is influenced by the quality of service offered.

Price Mix

Comparing your competitor’s rates and adjusting your prices will entice customers to bank with you. The pricing decisions related to interest and fee or commission charged by banks are found instrumental in motivating the target market. The pricing policy is considered important for raising the number of customers visa-versa the accretion of deposits.

Place Mix

A selection of suitable places for the establishment of a branch is significant with the viewpoint of making the place accessible and in addition,  the safety and securing provision are also important.  A branch needs to be disability friendly, it should have room for wheelchair access to get through. There should be a way of allowing the teller to help with everyday banking issues. The doors should be automatic eliminating the need to touch door handles. The management of the office is also found significant with the viewpoint of making the services attractive. The furnishing, civic amenities, and parking facilities cannot be overlooked. The interior design needs to be welcoming and making the place environmentally friendly.

People

Commercial banks need to assign a priority to the development of quality people for the development of an organization. Hence the first task is before the bank’s physical presence is in the recruitment process. While having a bank that has well-thought-out interior design, is in a prime location the most important fundamental criteria is the need to assign people to represent the bank’s brand and ethical values. Further, the education and training facilities are required to be innovated. Above all training needs to be given for the development of Human, Humane, Humanism, these three terms if found in the human resources, help to develop productive people.

Further Reading:

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