strategies

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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How to Get New Bank Customers with Beautiful Content like Blogging

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We all know that switching to a new bank can be…well, painful. The more accounts you have, and the more you automate the banking experience, the higher your retention rate. That’s great for your existing customers, but it doesn’t help when it comes to attracting new people to your business.

Most banks offer similar products and services, so creating a unique value proposition isn’t easy. What’s the secret sauce? How do some banks increase their retail numbers without putting lots of pressure on their service teams?

It’s all about telling a story and making it personal. Your customers and prospects want to feel like you’re speaking to them, that you “get them.” It all comes from your content – Understanding what you write and where you publish it are important, knowing WHO you are writing for is critical.

Let’s dive a little deeper…

Know your Target Client Profile (TCP) – What’s the demographic of your current customer base? Who are the potential customers you want to add? Where do they live? What is their socioeconomic background? Are they business customers? Retail? It’s critical to have a deep understanding of exactly who you want to reach – Their interests, aspirations, lifestyle choices, financial understanding and more.

Think like your TCP – Your content needs to be relevant to your TCP. What is most important to them? What’s going to grab their attention? How will it help? Will it answer their questions? Does it provide genuinely useful information? What will they read? How will they read it? When will they read it? A 20-year-old and an 80-year-old are going to have very different needs and ways of accessing content.

Create great thought leadership and product content – Thought leadership content is where your customers will get the most value. It’s about giving them insight, valuable information, and resources to help them understand and manage money better. When you combine that with information on your products and their benefits, you create a solid content strategy.

Share short, sweet, accessible, and relevant product information on your website – Your website is the place for your product information – make is easy to find and mobile friendly. Your bank’s website should also highlight your staff with pictures and bios. It helps your customers to relate to you, and people buy from others they know, like, and trust.

Blogging is the Grand Poohbah of content – Every bank should have a blog – It’s where your thought leadership and awesome content lives It’s where your staff can shine, and it’s what you will share on social media.

Keys to Blogging Success

  1. PLAN – Have an editorial calendar based on your TCP and your value proposition – Who are you going to write for, and what are your going to write about? Create five or six content areas where that you’ll develop. They might be: Your culture and team – Stories about your employees, what makes them tick, and what they bring to your business. Retail customer information – Speaking to your retail customers directly about the things that matter to them. Retirement planning, mortgages, insurance, loans, real estate, the economy, tips for protecting your home in winter, safety, etc. Financial education and guides – Creating guides, checklists, tools, and resources to help you customers get the most out of their money. Business customer information – Talking to business owners about what matters to them including business bank accounts, small business financing, insurance, etc. Community – The work you’re doing in the local community including sponsorship and other activities. Financial news – Talking about the economy, the stock market, and other interesting areas.
  2. SHARE – Build your brand and expand it through stories. The more people who see your name and your team, the quicker they will connect.
  3. CONNECT – People leave banks because they don’t feel the love. Intriguing content that speaks to them helps them feel connected, which makes them more likely to switch.
  4. REPEAT – For content to really hook your prospects, they need to see it over and over again. Be constant and consistent. Post regularly, share on social media, and get your name and brand out there.

Good examples of banking blog content

Here are some ideas on the type of content your retail audience would find useful:

  • Financial planning and budgeting — Financial planning in everyday life and making sure you’re saving enough. Budgeting for big life events.

• Dealing with loans and overdrafts — Responsibly managing credit and debt, including understanding interest, minimum payments, and credit limits.

• Investing — Ways to invest money including bonds, the stock exchange, index trackers, mutual funds, and other investment products.

• Retirement planning — How to plan for a good retirement including IRAs, 401Ks, and other pension plans.

When you can bring together great content with a good understanding of your audience and share your content in the right way, you’ll start to create momentum. You can capitalize on that, use it to win you new customers, and keep them happy.

If you need help writing your content or want to bounce some more ideas off us – give us a shout – that\’s what we\’re here for![/cs_text][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]

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6 Steps to Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy

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Winging it just doesn’t work when it comes to marketing – ever. You need a strategy, one that is well thought out and you need an action plan. That means you can’t just say – yea, I’m going to toss some posts up on Facebook, pay for a couple ads in the newspaper and hope I sell something. Trust me that “plan” will more than likely fail.

Here’s what you should consider (hint hint – what you really need to do right now!)

#1: Figure out who you are – why do people buy from you?

What sets you apart from the competition – what makes you special. No, you can’t say “Because we are awesome, have great customer service and well, we are awesome!”.

It’s time to write your value proposition statement, your narrative statement, and your mission statement – whatever you would like to call it. It’s time to write it. Here’s how to get started – write these things down and from the “words collected” formulate your statement.

  • What is your niche market – what do you do differently than your competition?
  • List some words that describe your company culture
  • List some words that describe your product or service
  • What are your company’s SWOTs – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
  • What are you selling: Convenience, Quality, Cheapest Price – you can’t do it all – decide what it is and Rock it!
  • What do your customers really want?

All of your messaging & content will be centered around this statement.

#2: Who are your customers?

I call this determining your “Target Client Profile” – again let’s make a list:

  • Make a list of your top customers and your favorite customers – they could be different. Your top customers are the ones you are generating the most revenue from. Your favorite customers are the ones you love and wouldn’t mind spending happy hour with on a Friday afternoon.
  • Determine the demographics of both these groups: Age, Sex, Socio-Economic Background, Location, lifestyle – etc. the more detailed the better
  • B2B folks – are they in a certain business niche? Size of company, # of employees etc.
  • B2C folks – How much money do they make, what types of cars to they drive, what type of jewelry do they wear – again – the more intel you have the better

Now – take all that information and create your perfect customer profile – ones that pay you the most AND the ones you like the best.

All of your messaging & content will be targeted to this group.

#3 What do you want to Achieve? – what are your Marketing goals & KPIs?

This is pretty simple – what do you want your marketing to do for you? Increase sales by 20%, increase brand awareness for a new product by 10%, hire new employees? It can be whatever you want – but it has to be measurable as we will assign KPIs to it – or Key Performance Indicators. This will tell you if your marketing is working or not!

All of your goals will be set around getting your relevant content about your mission to your target client profile.

#4 Determine your Customer’s Journey

You will want to have a marketing strategy that targets all stages of the customer’s journey

  • Investigative stage – your prospects are considering buying what you sell and they are out there getting information
  • Consideration stage – they have narrowed it down to a couple vendors but haven’t made a decision
  • Negotiation Stage – This is the buying stage – the deal isn’t closed yet
  • The Buy – enough said
  • Post Buy – keeping them happy and turning them into Brand Evangelists and referral sources

Look at your business – and look at your customers’ journey. Are there certain triggers for each section. If you are in retail – we all know Black Friday is a BUY day – but leading up to that day – how will you touch your prospects during those other stages? What is your messaging? Who is your target client?

#4 Determine your Budget

This will vary based on your goals and your business. There is NO magic number here. You can definitely market on a budget – but you can also make a bigger splash with a lot of dollars. Think Geico

#5 Determine how you will get your messaging OUT

What “channels” will you use to get your messaging out. Based on your Target Client Profile and your mission – who will you be targeting in each of these venues (you don’t have to use all of them!). Be conscious of your budget – Super Bowl Ads might not be realistic! Ideally you want a good marketing mix – in the end, if the content isn’t relevant to the audience, it won’t matter where you put it!

  • Digital Marketing
  • Emails
  • Social Media
  • Website
  • Video
  • Print Media
  • Radio
  • TV
  • Word of Mouth
  • Networking

#6: Set up your Editorial & Content Calendars

I like to be proactive, it’s so much easier that way!

For our clients here at Red Barn, we:

  • Create a 1 year calendar – with an overview of our content strategy that aligns to our mission and is targeted at our Target client profiles
  • Create Quarterly buckets for content ideas and KPI’s around them
  • Create monthly content calendars – this is specifically what we are going to post on social, blogs to be written, web content, radio content, bill boards, etc.
  • Determine the workflow on how it will all happen
  • Leave room for opportunistic happenings etc.

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