As the banking industry has changed, so has the importance of social media in banking. In the 1990s and early 2000s, banks’ marketing strategies were primarily focused on traditional forms of advertising and marketing, such as billboards, community events, mailers and branch grand openings. But whether we were aware or not, around that time social media was alive and kicking in its very infant stages in the form of blogs and community sites. Today, with the advent of mobile devices, tablet PCs and abundant technology platforms like Facebook, social media has become a vital form of communication in most people’s lives; yet banks struggle to understand how to integrate it into their own marketing strategy.

No one could have ever predicted that one day people’s primary form of communication and research on a bank brand would be socially, through the cloud; nonetheless, here we are. And since the way humankind communications have drastically evolved, a bank should evolve its marketing strategy with it. Consumers access social media for a myriad of reasons, but today I would like to address how they utilize social media and the web to choose banks, banking products and services.

Crowd-Sourcing Your Banking Needs

So where do consumers go to eventually find their banking relationship today? They may start by going to Facebook or Twitter to ask their “friends” – “Anyone know a good bank to get a mortgage with these days?” Or they may go to Google and do a search on “banking reviews,” or they go to a rating and review site like www.yelp.com and find a bank near their location with the highest consumer generated ratings and reviews.

These queries happen every day; the amazing thing is that consumers these days can do all of the above – and more – within seconds. With that said, how should a bank’s marketing strategy evolve?

First, consumers rigorously research and scrutinize banks based on what other people are saying about that bank.

Second, a bank’s advertisements and promotions can be ineffective when a consumer performs their online research and there is non-existent, very light or negative bank branding and consumer-generated information about that bank via social media and search engines.

Third, a customer experience with your bank becomes another person’s pre-shopping experiences. It used to be that if someone had a positive or negative experience with your bank, they would tell their family and friends. Today, they praise and/or complain on Facebook or Twitter, or on social media platforms that are searchable and can be indexed into search results. This makes consumers’ experiences with your bank available to everyone, and it is used as an integral piece of new shoppers pre-shopping research.

One important note regarding the points above is that the younger potential bank customers are, the more influential and important these points become when it comes to choosing a new banking relationship. So if you are targeting younger customers, your traditional marketing strategies must evolve, or your bank will have limited or no access to the new banking generation.

Getting Started

Here’s how to get started today, regardless of the size of your bank:

Make your bank the obvious choice: If you knew nothing about your bank, and researched the web for a new banking relationship, does that research cause you to choose your bank? Or would you choose another? Try a Google search on keywords around banking products and services. Where does your website results show up within that search? In that same search, what types of consumer or third party results show up and what do those results say about your bank? Type in “[your bank name] reviews;” what types of reviews come up about your bank?

All of those searches should point directly to your bank as the obvious choice. In order to be the obvious choice, you need strategy, planning and care, but great results can follow by adding marketing strategy tactics to influence and increase positive user and third-party content about your bank.

The first step in improving your bank’s strategy is to understand the foundations of this approach. Web stores like Amazon.com and Google.com/shopping have changed forever the way that people shop for products; essentially they train consumers how to shop for products today. Customers look at product reviews, ratings, comparable products, even seller reviews. Mobil devices have further simplified this process. Ingrained deeply in every young shopper is the need to find and digest this information. The lack of this information in banking searches causes consumers to search other options.

A new strategy for a new era in banking: Your bank should build a strategy around utilizing sources that are easier for consumers to access and greatly influence their decisions, rather than a shotgun approach to strategy.

A quick example of this is to optimize your Yelp.com location pages and try to find creative ways to get real, happy customers to rate and review you, rather than trying to create and manage a Facebook page that has only 51 to 1,000 likes. The truth is, when your potential customers search for a bank in Google, your Facebook page will most likely show up very late in the search engine results, and do very little to influence a banking decision. But real ratings or reviews on Yelp and websites specific to banking, like mybanktracker.com and depositaccounts.com, will show up on the first page, or even as the first result, of a Google search, and will heavily weigh on a consumer’s decision on choosing a banking product or service.

Measuring for success, not for more “good friends.” How do you measure success with your social media efforts? Here is a vitally important point: if your initial goals are murky or non-existent, measuring your campaign’s effectiveness will mirror your goals, and be murky and non-existent. Goals should be tied to very specific and real-life business goals.

A Team Effort

No longer is marketing and branding a silo in the marketing department. Social media has forced everyone at all levels to be a part of the bank’s marketing efforts. Social media should be viewed as a resource for growing in your potential market, and not as a technology. At the end of the day, social media is about people and how they interact with each other and make decisions about many aspects of their lives, including banking. If you haven’t considered implementing social media at your bank, you will eventually have no choice, if you are to survive. Why not take the strong approach by starting today and strategizing to thrive?

If you’re currently using social media at your bank, put your efforts to the test. Before sharing any content through your social media channels, put yourself in your consumers’ shoes and ask yourself, “Would I read this post if I found it, and would it influence my decision to choose my bank?”

Without question, having an effective and strategically laid out website, social media campaign and search engine existence is vital to the future of your bank, and the banking industry as a whole, since it’s how consumers today and tomorrow will find and communicate within their new banking relationships. A fully effective and integrated social/search/website campaign doesn’t grow overnight. So take your time, and properly care for your efforts. It’ll be worth it. 

John Siracusa is president and CEO of mOSa e-bank marketing services.