If you are at a community bank, it’s understandable that you haven’t prioritized digital marketing in the past. At a community bank, knowing your customer’s names and faces is a key part of your ability to serve them and understand their needs. So why make digital marketing a priority?
In the age of masks and social distancing, even community financial institutions are being forced to look for new ways to connect with customers. From simple transactions to complex financing, customers are looking for ways to do more online, and it’s in your best interest to make sure you’re present where they’re spending time.
Many community banks have previously avoided digital marketing, because of concerns around compliance, but here are four steps you can use as a guide to online connections:
Partner With an Expert: Not all marketers are well-versed in compliance for community banks, so be sure to ask any marketing specialist about their experience.
Create a Strategy: What are you trying to accomplish in a digital marketing strategy? An experienced marketing team will take you through a process of determining who your target audience is and how they prefer to connect with you, whether that’s on social media or an email newsletter. They’ll help you develop the content you’ll use and how to time it perfectly so that your target audience is mostly like to respond.
Establish Clear Goals and Metrics: This is part of the above strategy, but it warrants special attention. Many novice digital marketers get caught up measuring the wrong things in their strategy. You may get excited every time someone likes your post, but if you’re trying increase the number of loan applications you receive, likes aren’t a helpful way to measure success.
Think about what you’re trying to achieve. Is it more customers enrolled in online banking, or maybe you’re trying to increase the number of checking accounts opened? Think through these goals and which digital marketing responses are linked to those goals being met.
Set a Realistic Budget: One of the attractive features of digital marketing is that much of it can be done with minimal investment. But this can also be a downfall. Having a social media expert work on your posts yields far different results than assigning the task to someone in your office that has a free 15 minutes in their week.
You’ve always felt that community banking is special in its connection with customers. At SJC Marketing, we share that feeling, and we have some ideas for how to strategically connect with your customers through a digital marketing strategy.