Red Barn Consulting LLC

Community outreach — How your bank can make a big impact (and get more customers)

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With so much emphasis on online marketing and digital advertising, it’s easy to forget that one of the most powerful ways a bank or credit union can reach people is in the real world. We’re not talking about TV, radio, or print ads (although they can help) — We’re thinking of something a bit more grass roots — Outreach and giving something back, through networking, education, and other activities to help teach people about their financial options.

As a local bank, you thrive when you get out there. It’s a great way to raise awareness, educate customers, help your community, motivate your employees, and let people know you care about them. These events matter because they’re a great way to build trust. By investing your time, effort, and money into community and financial education events, you’re creating powerful change. People get something out of these events, and when they do, they’ll remember it was your bank that helped to make things happen.

Relationships between a bank and its customers can last a lifetime, so creating trust with people is a vital first step to bring them onboard. That starts by sharing something that genuinely useful — Here are some ideas on how you can do that.

Holding free classes, seminars, and forums on money and finance. Generally, people don’t know enough about finance and money to make the best informed decisions. One of the ways to change that is to share easy to understand information and free courses that educate people on how to get the most out of their money, for example:

Encouraging children to save — Aimed at getting young people interested in saving for their future. Showing how powerful compound interest can be over time, and why starting to save now can give you big rewards in the future.

Planning for retirement — Educating people on how important good retirement planning is. Letting them know about their options when it comes to the different retirement plans and funds that are available. Encouraging them to start saving for retirement right now.

Good financial management and budgeting — Teaching people how to use their money wisely, including working out how much you need to live each month, income, expenses, and disposable cash. This can be tied in with saving for the future for life events like getting married, planning for a vacation, having children, buying a house, and making big purchases.

Buying a house — Talking through the process of getting on the housing ladder. Covering deposits, mortgages, moving, and other financial protections you’ll want to have in place.

Protecting yourself and your loved ones — The need for insurance and life assurance. How to manage financial risk and make sure that all the people and things you care about are protected financially.Partner with your local schools, colleges, further education classes and community organizers to create opportunities to teach others.

Professional networking – Get involved with your local Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau. Look for other opportunities to network with business owners and executives.

Ask entrepreneurs about any new plans for expansion or other opportunities. Find out about their financing and provide alternative solutions. Provide advice and support, answer questions and let people know about your products and services. These events are a great way to build up your authority and visibility with other local businesses.

Sponsorship is another great way to increase awareness of your bank and brand, while giving back to your community. There are bound to be lots of local opportunities for sponsorship, whether that’s the Little League, the Humane Society, charity drives, or anything else that gives back. Think about how you can enhance your visibility:

  • Have your employees attend the event as advocates.
  • Do branded giveaways of items people want.
  • Setup a booth providing free financial advice.
  • Be a speaker at the event.

In addition to donating money, you can also encourage your employees to donate their time and effort by giving them paid time off for community projects.

These might all seem like simple approaches, but sometimes going ultra-local really is best. Putting some time, effort, and money into community outreach and helping people gets your name out there, which can be great for winning more customers.

Have you attended an event that you thought was really amazing – let us know what it was and what made it stand out to you.

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Getting Your Content Shared — When Less Is More

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Many SEO and marketing firms will tell you that content is king. They’ll share stats about how longer pieces of content get better placement in Google search results, and why having really in-depth articles and information builds your authority and business brand.

While all this is true, it’s not the whole picture. The fact is, sometimes we can overdo it on content, and that means you could be missing out on a big audience — And who wants that? (Certainly not us, that’s our Kryptonite.)

Now, before you dismiss us and say “Yes, that’s fine RBC, but it’s not what the stats show,” we’ll just tell you that 54% of statistics are made up on the spot. Seriously though, different types of content appeal to different audiences, and don’t you want everyone to love you? Besides which, even if this stuff doesn’t feature that highly in search results, it is the type of content that gets shared on social media. And that makes it incredibly valuable.

So, changing up your content strategy can be a great way to get more eyeballs, and whether you’re a witch brewing a potion, or a business selling products and services, that’s a good thing. Instead of going for “War and Peace” style blog posts, why not try the following:

Infographics – People love to take information in visually. Infographics are a fab way of bringing out really important information and making it obvious to people. Infographics are some of the most shared content online, so creating one can be a surprisingly good way to share your brand.

Galleries – People love great pictures, and not just of cats. (Although if you can get a cat to advertise your product, go for it and you might want to search #catsofinstagram if you are a feline fancier.) Creating a really thematically strong collection of images based around your brand and products is a fantastic way to show them in their best light.

Personal stories -In a world of facts, data, and information, people yearn for a personal touch. Writing real-life stories can create a deep and profound connection with your audience.

Widgets – Not something you’d buy off of a 24 hour shopping channel, but little apps and games that spread like wildfire. Think quizzes on Facebook, fun mini games, web apps, and other entertainment that passes ten minutes with a smile on someone’s face.

Video – You don’t need to create the next Gangnam Style (not everyone can dance like that) to have a really successful video. Add some quirkiness and fun to your product marketing, or just share something unique. Video is an increasingly popular way to share content.

Audio and podcasts – People are busy, busy, busy! That\’s why content they can consume while doing other stuff (like chores, walking, driving, or daydreaming) is becoming incredibly popular. You can get your message into people’s ears.

With the world going increasingly mobile, you need to make your content a snap to download and digest. Make sure it’s fully mobile responsive, and that people can find it quickly and effortlessly. Next time you sit down and think about your content strategy, think about all of the marvelous, exciting, and splendid ways you can share your awesome content with the world.

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The Gentle Art of Insurance Referral Marketing

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There’s a powerful force we instinctively use every day when we make decisions. It’s a force that business marketers want to tap into, because it can create powerful, profound results — And it’s a force you can take advantage of when it comes to selling insurance.

What is that force? One simple word — Trust.

More specifically, building trust by having people recommend your insurance products and services to others. The fancy-schmancy marketing term for this is “Customer advocate led referral marketing” but that’s entirely too much of a mouthful. What you need to know is that encouraging and incentivizing your insurance clients to refer their friends, family, and associates can get you plenty of new business, stat.

So, how do you go about doing just that? Glad you asked…

Learn about your existing customers. The first thing you need to do is to find out all about your existing customers — Who they are, what they do, the things they care about, what they need insurance for, and the lines of business they have with you.

Although you’re aiming to build an emotion (trust), ironically, it’s from cold, hard data you’ll be able to find the people who will speak up for you. Once you know who they are, you can start communicating with and incentivizing them.

Look for long-time clients, those who you solved a messy claims issue for – The ones who drank your proverbial Kool-Aid. They’re the ones who love you and wouldn’t dream of going elsewhere unless the zombie apocalypse forced them to (and even then, who doesn’t need insurance against zombie attacks?)

Provide truly exceptional customer experiences. Trust starts by making your insurance clients feel great — That means providing them with fantastic customer service, getting a deep understanding of their needs, speaking to them as individuals, and having a personal touch.

Maybe that’s sending them a card during the festive season or on their birthday, perhaps it’s notifying them about new insurance options that would give them better coverage or save them money. Essentially, anything that adds value is going to give them the warm fuzzies. And warm fuzzies equal glowing referrals.

Incentivizing your customers. We are all busy people! In the cold, hard world of business, that means you often have to provide strong incentives for people to recommend and refer their friends and family. Now, those incentives are often cash rewards or money off, but you can also offer vouchers and coupons, entry into competitions, specialized insurance, or other unique opportunities.

Sadly, people aren’t going to refer just because they really, really like you (although that definitely helps) — You have to give them a little extra. Big tip here – check with your State Insurance Department on the rules and regulations for your state regarding any type of incentive program. Often you can provide referrals but it can’t be contingent on the sale. So regardless, if there is a sale, the incentive must be rewarded.

Make it easy for them to make a referral. In marketing, friction (making something harder for someone) is always a bad thing. That means if you want to get insurance referrals, you have to make it easy-peasy. How you do that depends on how you want people to refer.

If they’re doing it through social media or email, have a unique referral link they can send to friends. If it’s going to be over the phone, have a special number they can call. Doing it via an online form? Have a specific section where they can enter referrer details. The art here is to not make your customer or prospective customer think too much.

Say Thank You. Lastly, always personally follow up with the people who made a referral and thank them. This is important, not just because they made the effort (and people like to know they’re appreciated) but because it creates positive reinforcement. In other words, the more you thank people, the more positive they’ll feel about your insurance business, and the more they’ll recommend you.

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Healthy Options — Do Your Patients Know Everything Your Medical Practice Does?

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To the average patient, medical information and healthcare can be a strange place. It seems locked behind an arcane door of unpronounceable medications, conditions with Latin or Greek names, and baffling procedures. It doesn’t help that the only time most people interact with their doctor is when they’re sick.

We know that’s a problem — Marketing your practice isn’t easy. However, we’ve never shied away from a challenge (except for that pumpkin pie eating competition that one time), so we’ve got some pretty good ideas. It all comes down to a few things:

  • Making your patients aware of everything you do.
  • Keeping them healthy in addition to curing illnesses.
  • Giving them more options in their healthcare and medical choices.

How does that look in (medical) practice? Sharing your full range of services[/x_custom_headline][cs_text]It’s important to move people’s perceptions away from your practice just being somewhere they can go when they’re sick, and instead focus on how it can help them stay well. That starts by giving your patients an easy-to-understand list of services and how they can benefit their health. For example:

  • Nutrition advice — Tips on eating well to live a healthier life and feel better.
  • Exercise and fitness — Advice on recommended classes, programs, and routines for people of all abilities and age groups.
  • Smoking cessation — Services you provide to help people quit smoking.
  • Pre- and post-natal services — Helping mothers-to-be through pregnancy and after
  • Screenings and prevention — Details of the various diagnostic and screenings tests you can do to reassure patients or detect early signs of a problem.
  • Any other services — Referrals to alternative holistic options such as life coaching to focus on mindfulness, therapy, acupuncture and more.

Once you’ve collected together all of the great things you do, you need to do two things:

  1. Centralize all the information in one place — We’d recommend your website, and in various leaflets you can hand out at the practice.
  2. Tell your patients about the services — This could be through posters in your practice, via email, through a letter to their home address, or other personal channels.

The main purpose of this is to wow your patients and create trust with them — And that’s vital when it comes to healthcare. What specialized treatments do you provide? Another area to think about is any specialties your practice has, Review the skills, background, and experience of your staff and check you’re representing the various treatments you offer. Examples include:

  • Addiction treatment — Helping people get over alcohol, drug, or other types of addictions.
  • Counselling — Recommendations on good psychotherapists and counselors for helping people deal with mental and emotional issues.
  • Options for medium- and long-term treatments — Providing choices and options for longer-term care of persistent conditions.

With these types of services, it’s best to take a case-by-case approach.

Ultimately, it’s about putting choice and information in the hands of your patients. Once they’re properly informed, they can make better choices about their health and discuss them with you. This all helps to build better relationships with your patients that you can use to enhance their lives and the services you provide.

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What You Need to Know About Facebook Advertising

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Since 2010, Advertising on Facebook has grown more than 680%. More than a million advertisers have spent more than $8 billion.

Every day, more businesses are pouring advertising dollars into the social network. Currently, it’s one of the most powerful avenues for paid marketing.

If you’ve ever used Google’s AdWords, you know that program shows ads to users based on their searches. If they search “Chinese food Omaha,” anyone who bought that term will show up first. Those types of ads are effective because the searcher is already looking for that solution.

Interruption ads, like billboards and TV commercials, are usually just noise. They get in your way and often provide no value.

Interruption Marketing

Facebook ads are interruptive (because the user didn’t request them), but they are powerful because they’re powered by Facebook’s tremendous data sourcing machine. Facebook keeps data on everything you or I do on the social network. It builds profiles for each user that catalogs everything they can.

Facebook knows your religion, political party, favorite soft drink, preferred book genre, and where you live. From basic pieces of data, they can extrapolate bigger things, like how much money you make, where you work and in what field, and your opinions on Donald Trump.

With all that data available, marketers buy ads that carefully target their ideal customers. You can have your ad shown to people based on their location, hobbies, interests, behaviors, and several other factors.
So even though I’m not requesting anything through Facebook, the ads that are shown to me are highly relevant. Since I’m interested in that content, I’m likely to click.

Growing Your Brand

The benefit over AdWords, is that you aren’t bound to a certain demand. Through Google, ads can only be shown when a similar phrase is searched. If customers aren’t searching it, the ads won’t display.

On Facebook, however, you can put your ads in front of people who may not know a solution or product like yours exists. This ad format is a great way to expand your brand.

It’s also good for promotion products or services that people ordinarily wouldn’t buy off the Internet. You may sell an extraordinary line of premium jam and jellies, but most people get those at the grocery store. You have to interrupt a user to market to them.

Buying Facebook Ads

Since 2014, Facebook has been using an ad buying structure that’s suited for serious testing and experimentation. Their goal is to give users all the tools they need to create powerful ads with solid ROI.

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If you use this structure properly, you can adjust audience segments and run different ads against one another to determine the most effective.

When you buy ads, you’ll first establish a budget. This prevents Facebook from charging you more than you expect (which would be very easy if you didn’t understand how to use the interface properly).
When an ad is to be shown, Facebook holds an auction. The auction considers three factors before displaying an ad:

  1. The advertiser bid – You can let Facebook choose this (recommended) or set the bids manually (for advanced users only).
  2. Ad quality and relevance – How much Facebook thinks people will like your ad.
  3. Estimated auction rates – How likely a person is to take your ad’s action.

Evaluating Your Campaigns

Once you set your ads, don’t forget about them! Even though they can be set to finish at any time, you’ll want to check back into the Ads Manager to see their performance. Facebook is great about showing you the data you need at a glance.

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Evaluate the results of your ad, the cost, and the reach. Does anything seem out of place? Can you do anything better? How can you tweak your ads to get better results?

The answers to those questions are an entire industry of advertisers, but that doesn’t mean Facebook’s ad program is beyond you. With some careful study and data-minded thinking, you can use Facebook to sell products, build subscriber lists, and grow your business.

Have you seen some really cool Facebooks ads recently? We\’d love to hear about them.

What You Need to Know About Facebook Advertising Read More »

Ready to be an entrepreneur? Only if you can answer these questions

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You’re a wide-eyed entrepreneur, dreaming of the next big idea and how it’s going to change the world. And you could be right — Perhaps you’ve got the genesis of the next Facebook, Apple, or Tesla in the back of your mind. Don’t be fooled though, being an entrepreneur is tough — It’s not just about the ideas, it’s about the flawless execution, the product, the hustle, the market, and more than just a little bit of luck.

It’s also about asking, and answering the right questions. So much of being an entrepreneur is about making the right decisions, and that comes from asking deep, penetrating questions of yourself, your business, your industry, and your customers.

Here are some of those questions you should be asking — Think about each of these deeply, see how they spin off into other questions, and answer them as best you can. These questions will help you validate your ideas, understand if your products can survive in the market, and see if you’ve got the resilience to succeed.

Questions about your products and services, or “What is it that my business does best?”

A great business starts with products and services that meet a genuine need and offers them to your customers in the best possible way. These are the questions you’ll need to answer.

  • Do I understand who my ideal customer is, and what they need from my business?
  • Have I validated our products and services to check that they solve a genuine problem?
  • Have I tested, tweaked and refined our products and services so that they are as good as they can be?
  • Do I have a consistent brand and visual identity that builds trust?
  • Do I know the best channels to make my customers aware of what we offer?
  • Have I built a community of early users?

If you can answer these questions confidently, you will create products, services, and brands that meet a genuine need, create trust, and add value for your customers.

Questions on your knowledge and expertise, or “I don’t need to make every decision myself.”

As a startup, you will want to have access to knowledge, and experience from several different sources. Use this expertise to guide you when you’re making decisions.

  • Do I have investors that I can speak to that can share insight and knowledge?
  • What are my co-founders and employees good at and how can I best use that expertise?
  • Do I understand the results of my decisions and the impact they have on the business?
  • How should I react when growth slows or stalls?
  • What is the best way for me to delegate tasks to others?
  • Am I collecting the right metrics and feedback and using them to help decision making?

Remember that there are people that can help you, and they want to see your business succeed as much as you do.

Questions about the culture, tools and processes to let you scale, or “We’re doubling business every quarter, and we’re on top of it.”

If you want to be successful and grow rapidly, you need to put the right culture, tools, and processes in place now to help you scale up.

  • Do I have a simple business structure that can be easily expanded as needed?
  • Am I communicating regularly with my people to let them know what’s happening?
  • Have I built a culture of trust and am I listening to my employees?
  • Are our business processes and tools as simple as possible?
  • Am I tracking progress and do I have realistic targets in place?
  • Do I have the best employees, freelancers, or outside experts in the right roles, with the right amount of accountability and ownership.

Good hiring and communications practices, combined with a simple organizational structure, active feedback and the right processes and tools will help your business thrive.

This is only a taster of what you want to think about, and starting to answer these questions will help you firm up the right ideas and approaches in your own mind.

One of the first things you’ll need to think about is “How do I share my business, ideas, products, and services with the world? How do I get my message out there?” That’s something we just might be able to help with.

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The Department of Justice is looking at your website – are you ADA compliant?

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Compliance. It’s a word that finance managers are all too familiar with. We know it might cause a slight sinking feeling, but compliance guidelines exist to protect everyone — You and your customers.

That’s why it’s vital to understand the impact and implications of the new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines issued by the Department of Justice. In short, it’s about making sure your banking website and online presence is easy to access and use for visual and hearing impaired customers (and that’s good for everyone).

It matters for two pretty big reasons:

  1. It shows your commitment to all your customers and making their banking experience as easy as possible.
  2. It protects you from legal action — Businesses with websites that fail to meet ADA / DOJ requirements have been fined or sued (ouch).

The problems visual or hearing impaired people have with using websites.

For most people, using a bank website is easy (especially if they don’t forget their password!) They visit the site, enter their login details, get into the online banking app and pay their bills, check their statement, and manage their finances. If you’re blind or visually impaired, that gets a lot more difficult.

They may need specialist tools like braille or tactile interfaces, screen readers, voice activated navigation, and specialist software. When they arrive at a banking website they may run into more frustrations because the site isn’t coded properly to work with their hardware and software.

If your customers are hearing impaired, they will run into problems with audio content, or if they needed to call a service center to get issues sorted out.

It’s these problems the DOJ\’s guidelines are trying to solve, and they’re serious about it.

How do you know if your website is ADA compliant?

The simple truth is, if you need to ask whether your website is ADA compliant, it probably isn’t. For example, does your website:

  • Allow navigation completely by keyboard (not using a mouse)?
  • Have rich alternative descriptions for any pictures or visual elements on your website?
  • Explain what’s happening in customer service videos, purely through audio?
  • Provide sign language interpretation for audio content?

These are just four examples from the over 70 requirements the DOJ has. Ultimately, it comes down to the question: Is your banking website completely usable by all of your customers, regardless of their ability or disability?

Why your bank website needs to get compliant

Your bank website needs to be compliant by 2018. If it’s not, you’ll run into several big problems:

  • You could get sued or fined by the DOJ for non-compliance.
  • You could fall foul of equal rights laws.
  • You could get negative publicity and a bad brand reputation.

In short, getting compliant isn’t an option if you want to stay in the clear.

Relax, we’ve got this

We understand just what it takes to get your banking website ADA compliant. We also understand you just don’t have the time. That’s why we’re here to help — We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

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4 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Brand Awareness

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You’ve heard that social media is a powerful tool for your brand. You’re ready to make content people love to share, but without those first fans, how do spread your message?

Choose the right social media networks

There are hundreds of social networks, but they aren’t all useful to you. Don’t spend your time putting yourself out there on a dozen networks. Find the ones that provide the best results and focus.

Facebook is the most common, but some brands fine it hard to get their content in front of fans if it’s not “sexy.” Instagram is designed for striking visual content and interaction, but there’s no real way to send traffic to another website. LinkedIn is designed for professionals who want to further their careers or find a job. Pinterest is best for visually pleasing subjects that need to be linked elsewhere, like crafts, recipes, and tutorials. Tumblr is for… Well, Tumblr is Tumblr.

Find influencers and exploit their fan base

When you don’t have much of a brand, you need to get your content front of eyeballs. The best way to do that is to leverage the fan base of someone who has already done the hard work.

First, find popular accounts with similar fan bases. Then, collaborate with those accounts so they share your content. You won’t have much to offer in return, so your content has to be stellar (something their fans would love to see) or pay for the privilege.

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Don’t sell too hard

People aren’t using social media to buy products. As much as the social networks would like that to be an avenue for sales, they just aren’t effective. If you’re looking for a clear ROI from your social media marketing efforts, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Social media is about putting yourself in front of your fans with value. At least 80% of your content should be about the customer, not about you. What are their problems? How can you offer information, links, or images that solve those problems? You don’t have to get fancy here. Sometimes the user just wants to be entertained.

Use paid campaigns

Technically, you can build an audience on any social network without investing anything other than time. But who has time? Each social network has their own ad platform. You’ll have to decide which is right for you. In the case of Facebook, for instance, you can pay to have Facebook push your page on other people. On Twitter, you can buy a promoted tweet that forces your content into people’s feeds.

No matter which platform you use, always use their targeting options. Drill down as deep as you can to stretch your money as far as possible. You only want to show your content to people who care.

Post often

At first, it may seem like you’re publishing for no one. Once a few start trickling in, maintain a consistent publishing schedule. Many would-be fans check out your content before committing to make sure you’re worth their interest. If they see you post infrequently or irregularly, they won’t both.

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Be engaging and responsive

Social networks are just that: social. People expect to talk to brands. They want to interact with you because they love your content or product. If you don’t respond, they’ll stop engaging or unfollow from your page/account.

However, if you delight your fans by replying to their comments, liking their content, and making yourself a part of their lives, they’ll reward you by spreading your message to their fans.

Always remember: social media is a tool. And like all tools, it’s only as effective if you use it. Don’t sit around and wait for results. Be active. Be social.

Need some additional guidelines and tips – give us a call!

4 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Brand Awareness Read More »

Why You Should Be Using Drip Campaigns

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When someone subscribes to your email list, it’s important to capture their newfound interest by making a strong connection. The best marketers use drip campaigns to quickly interact with new fans in a short period of time.

A drip campaign is an automated series of emails sent to your subscribers. The emails are sent on a specific timeline or based on user actions. There’s no denying their effectiveness. The email marketing app Emma found that targeted emails are far more likely to earn clicks than general broadcast emails. In fact, links in drip emails are clicked 119% more often.

Drip campaigns typically begin with a welcome email that reminds the fan how they signed up and what they can expect from you. Further emails can take different shapes depending on your goals. A campaign may introduce your fans to your best content or answer common questions about your product or service. Some campaigns are almost entirely educational, designed to deliver tremendous value to subscribers.

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The most common structure of drip campaigns is called lead nurturing: an email course that solves a subscriber’s problem. The fan signs up on your website because he’s interested in the information you promise. They involve five to seven emails with a two-day delay between each. Marketing automation experts at Drip report that lead nurturing creates 50% more customers ready to buy.

Throughout the emails, the campaign offers information that soothes the reader’s pain points. Each email should end with a call to action, usually a link to additional content or offers on your website.

Toward the end of the course, position your product or service as a logical solution to the problem with calls to action that encourage the visitor to sign up. By this point, you should have offered enough value that the reader considers you an expert.

As you begin to craft your email series, use these guidelines.

DO understand your reader. You have to create your copy to solve their problems. First, you have to know what their problems are.

DON’T be sales-y right away. If you hit your fan too hard with sales copy, you’ll turn them off from the experience. You must provide value first.

DO end every email with a call to action. Just because they’re done reading doesn’t mean they’re done engaging. This can be a link to a blog post, a social action (like, share, follow, etc.), or a link to a landing page.

DON’T rush the reader down the buyer’s journey. For instance, content that compares your service to competitors should come after you convince the user they need a service like yours in the first place.

DO move the user into your broadcast list once the drip campaign has completed. Most email marketing applications offer procedures like this.

We\’d love to hear your feedback on drip campaigns – on successes, failures, or even programs that you like or dislike.

Why You Should Be Using Drip Campaigns Read More »

Banks and the social media compliance debate

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We work with several financial institutions, and we know that one of their main concerns is compliance – How do you make sure that what you’re saying in your Facebook or Twitter feeds meets all of the rules, regulations, and guidelines of the financial industry? Compliance can be a headache, but that shouldn’t stop you having a good social media presence.

We’ve got a solution we think you’ll love. Here’s why you should consider adding social media and social selling to your marketing.

The way to make sure your posts are compliant is to be proactive – You need to create and manage a proper editorial calendar and have a solid review process for your content. Run your content calendar, posts, blogs, and social media strategy by your compliance department.

They’ll likely provide some advice on how to phrase your posts, what to add, and what to remove. Make sure the person responsible for your social media profiles has regular conversations and check-ins with your compliance team. That way you can ensure everything your publishing has a seal of approval.

As a local bank or credit union, you’ve built up a great reputation in your area. Targeted marketing is a good way to get noticed and to encourage personal and business customers to come to you, but that’s only half the story. If you want more chances to sell your financial products and services, you need to seek out and act on opportunities — We’ll explore exactly how you can do that.

If you’re a commercial lender, your main purpose is lending money to expanding businesses. In addition to income from loans, you can upsell other products like financial protection, insurance, retirement planning, and more. The question is, how do you find those expanding businesses in the first place?

Fortunately, there’s some good technology, which, combined with some tips and tricks, can help you create some powerful leads for your banking services. In this article we’ll cover three main areas – LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Twitter, and other social media.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

As the largest social network for professionals, LinkedIn is already a strong resource for businesses. Hopefully you’re already making the most of your bank’s LinkedIn presence, but today we’re going to focus on one specific part of the platform, LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you collect together prospects from across all of LinkedIn, whether you’re connected to them yet or not. It has built in algorithms to help you identify potential clients and businesses who might be in need of your bank’s financial products. It helps you understand where people are changing roles, when organizations are launching new initiatives, and how a business posts about any changes.

You can bring all of this information together in one place so you can start having informed, relevant conversations with the people that matter — The decision makers in your target businesses. It helps you put context around these conversations too, building trust with your potential clients. Combine this with insights into your professional network, other’s profiles, and lead recommendations, and it becomes a very powerful tool for finding commercial banking prospects.

Twitter

You might not think of Twitter as a way to find business banking opportunities, but used correctly it can be a great way to connect with potential customers. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

  1. Follow the Twitter profiles of any businesses and professionals in your target geographical area.
  2. Review your Twitter feed to see what people are sharing — Are they discussing new opportunities, products, services or research?
  3. If they are, engage with them — But here’s the trick — Don’t try to sell them anything. Provide useful financial advice, professional banking support, and insight. The idea is to build up trust.
  4. Once you’ve built up that trust, you can suggest products and services to help them achieve their business goals.

It’s vital that you don’t just promote your banking products and services — That can turn people off very quickly. Instead, you want to spend time building up a good reputation and strengthening your expertise and authority.

Other social media

Finding leads isn’t just limited to Twitter either. Facebook, Instagram, even Pinterest can be good places to find new banking customers, if you know how to look. As with Twitter, start by identifying the people and businesses in your local area and connect with them.

Then, spend some time cultivating relationships — Share genuinely useful financial information and links to your Facebook page or Pinterest board. You’re looking to build a brand focused on financial trust. As you add to that content, you’ll get more visibility and potential customers will start to see you as the “go to people” for advice on their money.

As you can see, these tools can help you rapidly expand your banking market. When you start out actively seeking leads, and engaging with them in the right way, you’ll be able to build trust which will lead to more sales of your financial products and services.

Still feeling a little hesitant on tackling social media? Give us a call – we can set up a training session with you and your banking team.

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