If you operate a bank, credit union, or other financial institution, what are you selling?
- Account services?
- Loans and mortgages?
- Investment options?
While those certainly may be some of the products you offer your customers, they’re not actually what customers are looking for in a bank.
What you’re really selling is trust.
Few industries require a higher level of trust between businesses and customers than the financial sector. People literally entrust banks with their life savings, and banks entrust their customers with loans that can take 30 years or longer to repay.
Establishing trust between two entities can take years. Unfortunately, in the highly competitive financial services market, you need to do it in a matter of minutes – or even seconds.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at some ways you can help your audience trust your bank or credit union through effective marketing of your institution’s unique value propositions.
Bank Marketing Tip #1: Identify Your Uniques
Quick, what are your bank’s value propositions?
If you just said, “Our customer service!” you’re not alone.
See, the tricky part about marketing a bank’s services and offerings is that these services are some of the most tightly regulated in the world, and industry regulations strictly limit what you can say about your actual banking and lending services.
When it comes to identifying market differentiators in the banking world, many institutions fall back on the old standby—customer service. That’s not to say that your bank’s customer service can’t be a significant selling point or that it can’t help you establish trust with your audience. In fact, your customer service goes a long way toward building that relationship of trust.
But banks that succeed in marketing their services find another way to look at their customer service and at their services as a whole. They look for the uniques.
What do you do that no other bank does? What can you do that no other credit union can do? How is your customer service different from that of your competitors? Those are your uniques, and they’ll be the value propositions you’ll use to set your financial institution apart from the rest.
Bank Marketing Tip #2: Think Through Your Uniques from a Customer’s Perspective
Once you have your list of unique value propositions, go through them and think about how each of those uniques can help engender a sense of trust among your audience.
- Do your loan officers frequently coach young or first-time lenders to avoid things like HELOCs that may be beneficial now but have a significant negative impact later? That helps people trust that your lending team is looking out for them, not just for your bottom line.
- Do you offer advanced security features for online banking, like multi-factor authentication and biometric login options for your app? That helps people trust that you’re taking every available precaution to protect their money and their privacy.
- Does your team really get to know customers and greet them by name when they come in? That helps people trust that your institution is invested in them and able to provide them with the personalized guidance they need.
Bank Marketing Tip #3: Personalize Your Company
One of the most significant steps you can take to help people develop a sense that your bank or credit union is an institution they can trust is to show it as being made up of people they can trust. Providing excellent, personalized customer service in your interpersonal conversations with customers helps that, but some marketing tactics can help with this, as well:
Social Media
Use your social media presence to showcase the people who make your financial institution great. Create “getting to know you” posts about employees at every level of your organization, from the tellers to the branch managers and beyond. Help your audience see that your bank’s team is actively engaged with customers and the community, promoting your institution as a safe and secure place to keep, borrow, or invest money.
Social Proof – Testimonials and Reviews
Use plenty of testimonials and stay on top of your online reviews. Together, reviews and testimonials are forms of social proof, and it’s one of the main ways that companies in any vertical build trust with their audience. Make sure your testimonials come from a broad spectrum of people with varying backgrounds and circumstances, not just from your wealthiest or most successful customers. People want to see that your bank has helped others like them succeed with their finances.
Email Marketing
Almost nothing in marketing can be as easily or affordably personalized as an email marketing campaign. With email marketing, you can reach out to individual audience members and begin establishing that important relationship of trust.
Bank Marketing Tip #4: Answer Your Audience’s Questions
Managing household or business finances is no longer a skill that is taught in high school. When people first set out on their own, they usually have questions about their finances, and they’re looking for a source of information they can trust. They need answers to questions like:
- What’s the best way to save money?
- How does a mortgage work?
- How do I set up a monthly budget?
- What do I need to do to get an auto loan?
By setting yourself up as a trusted source of reliable information, you’ll be getting your audience used to listening to what you have to say on financial matters – and when it’s time to open a new account, take out a loan, or look for other financial services, they’ll turn to you first.
You can use several different channels to start building your reputation as a trusted resource: articles on your website’s blog, videos, social media posts, and more can all serve as explainers. Use these tools to actively show the measures your bank takes to keep customers’ money and information secure. Make them approachable and engaging, not stuffy and authoritative.
- Write blog articles about how to set up a new account, how to shop for the best terms on a loan, or the differences between types of small business loans.
- Make videos showing some of the ways your bank secures customers’ valuables in safe deposit boxes or about how to use an ATM safely.
- Post short pieces on social media explaining the difference between a bank and a credit union or what will qualify a homebuyer for a VA or FHA mortgage.
There is literally no end to the number of questions your bank can answer for your audiences. The better the answers, the more trust you’ll earn.
Let M&R Make Your Bank Stand Out in a Crowded Market
Our team of creative, dedicated marketing pros knows how to define audiences, build bank brands, and craft messaging that catches the eye and drives conversions. Give us a call and let a member of our sales team show you how we can make your bank’s or credit union’s marketing pay maximum dividends!
Call Today: 478-818-6319
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