In an age of aggressive fintech marketing and consumer uncertainly, banks need to work harder to deliver innovative solutions and marketing messages.
Tight budgets, changing consumer behavior, disrupted markets, and fierce competition from aggressive fintech marketing companies forced rapid transformation across the financial industry. Of course, the coronavirus pandemic encouraged banking to accelerate some of these trends in effort to maintain their relevance and respond to disruption.
Four progressive bank marketing examples
According to The Financial Brand, a successful financial services marketing agency would urge today’s banks to focus on customer experience, new media, and results-oriented efforts. To gain some inspiration, consider a few of the best examples from across the fintech and banking sector.
1. Encourage customers to save more
Acorns offers an example of a fintech company that grew its business by letting savers invest in stocks by transferring round-ups from purchases to their investment accounts. To use this program, Acorns investors have to register their bank accounts, so Acorns can track spending and withdraw the right sum.
As an example, spending $37.50 on takeout food with a registered checking or debit account would result in moving .50 to the Acorns investment account. Even though a father-son team started this company in 2012, it already manages over $1.2 billion in investments. This supports the idea that saving cents at a time makes financial sense for the company’s customers and of course, its owners.
Since Bank of America already had customers with checking accounts, they emulated some of Acorn’s ideas with their Keep the Change® program. Current checking account holders didn’t have to do anything but spend money in order to grow their savings.
Even if this program averages saving just a dollar a day, over the course of a few years, the balance can easily grow to hundreds of even thousands of dollars. With an interest-bearing savings account, savings can compound and grow even faster. As savings and interest returns grow, many customers will feel encouraged to save even more.
In particular, this kind of program tends to appeal to younger adults. This gives Bank of America a chance to invest in the financial stability and loyalty of long-term customers. At the same time, the bank benefits by encouraging the growth of their deposits through innovative fintech marketing.
2. Offer struggling customers crisis relief
In particular, banks should know that some of their customers may face unusual struggles during the pandemic. Very often, offering resources to tide these people over for a few months works out better for both the customer and the banks than generating more defaults and losing customers.
As an example the Capital Good Fund offers reasonably low-interest loans for up to $1,500 with deferred payments and interest for three months. If the crisis continues, the finance company may extend deferrals too, though they were originally planned with 15-month payoffs in mind.
Even though offering loans to distressed customers might appear risky, the relatively small size of the loans can minimize risk and generate plenty of good will. Discover, HSBC, and other finance companies have their own versions of skip-a-payment programs to help tide over struggling customers.
3. Connect and teach
Some savvy banks have found a great way to add valuable content to their social platforms while improving customer experience. As one example, Queensborough National Bank developed a program they call IQ University. Topics include credit, investing, budgeting, and homeownership. Material like this can help inform customers and provide plenty of useful, engaging content for blogs and social sites.
As another example, other banks found that socializing on such established networks as Facebook did not help them reach younger customers as well as they would like. To support this idea, recent studies found that younger adults and older teens may gravitate to Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube as much or more than Facebook. Before making an investment in fintech marketing for financial services, it’s important use the platforms that are most likely to have already attracted the target market.
4. Use video testimonials
Testimonials help because they give businesses a chance to connect with new customers by letting current customers tell their stories. Instead of just having text testimonials, The Bank of Elk River produced a video that recounted the story of how their bank helped a family purchase a home.
The American Banker’s Association even recognized the video with an award. More than that, viewers could hardly help but feel touched by the heartwarming story and perhaps, imagine having a similar experience of their own.
A financial services marketing agency should put people first
Even without a global pandemic, customers probably don’t care that much about a bank’s bottom line. They want to work with financial companies that appear to understand their goals and problems. An experienced financial services marketing agency can help research both prospective and current customers to find innovative solutions and of course, the best marketing platforms to connect on.
