Social Strategies That Work for Banking

It may seem out of the ordinary for a bank to have a social media marketing strategy. But, a bank that implements a social strategy can garner a lot of success in building trust and recognition amongst clientele. Social media can be a great tool for banks to create meaningful relationships with customers that couldn’t be established by any other means. It can help create a personalized experience that makes customers feel seen, respected, and appreciated.

By the same token, banks can benefit from their social media strategies in that they are able to get a better sense of their consumers’ needs and wants. This information can enhance their marketing and customer service efforts as well as enhancing the overall user experience. Let’s discuss what these social strategies are and how banks can benefit from them.

Table of Contents

Create Educational Content

Banks provide a great service to their clients by way of loans, creating checking and saving accounts, applying for a credit or debit card, and more. However, it is important for clients that the bank is not just a resource of wealth, but a resource of knowledge. Banks should want to make their clients feel empowered and knowledgeable about how to spend and save their money and give them the tools they need to do so. If you are looking to create educational content as part of your strategy, you may want to consider the following.

Find What Information People are Looking For

First, you want to get specific on what sorts of things you would like to educate your audience on. Think about the demographic of people that most often go to your bank and think about questions they might have. Older audiences may be more interested in how to save for retirement. Perhaps newlyweds are looking into the best money-saving options on home buying. And it is likely that younger clients are looking to pay off student loans. When you consider the type of people you are catering to and what financial goals or questions they are considering, you can use this as the framework to the education content you choose to make.

Decide How to Present Your Content

When you are choosing how to present this educational content, it is best to be as simplistic as possible. Relay the information through the most basic of terms. With any challenging terms that come up, be sure that they are clearly defined. Use a variety of different social media platforms and formats to create your information. You could consider creating fun eye-catching infographics on a service like Canva, which can easily be shared via Instagram stories. Or you could create a 30 second Tik Tok video that is concise, to the point, and can garner a lot of views.

Whatever media format you choose, it is best to create something that the majority of people in your bank’s clientele will understand. You also want to make sure your content is shareable. In other words, aim for content that your viewer will want to save for later or share with their friends. How is this done? Creating high-quality content that has valuable advice with practical ways to implement it into their life. In addition, being aware of your clients’ needs and understanding what they could actually benefit from.

Use Your Employees as Advocates

Any business can benefit from using its employees as brand ambassadors, and banks are no different. Employees are the faces behind the business. They give brands that can seem daunting or anxiety-driven like banks, humanity and are symbolic of the brand and its values. When your employees are able to use their social media or be part of the bank’s social media content, they can help to educate and inform, inspire and connect, and aid your customers in loving your bank even more.

Have Employees Share Positive Experiences

So what are some practical ways to include bank employees in social media content? One great way is by allowing your employees to share their personal positive experiences working for the bank. For example, consider a time when your bank partnered or worked alongside a nonprofit, donated towards a charity organization, or hosted a volunteer event within the community. This could be a great opportunity for an employee to share their experience as a volunteer or as an attendee of the charity event. Let one of your employees write a brief summary of their experience, including photos as well as any heartwarming or inspiring anecdotes of people they met. People absolutely love seeing businesses they support extend generosity and your bank employees can play a big part in broadcasting that.

Engage With Customers

Another example of including your employees as advocates is by allowing your employees to engage with customers in real-time through planned and monitored Instagram or Facebook live sessions. Think of this as an opportunity for people to ask common questions about the banking system, hear about job opportunities within the bank, learn about charity initiatives the bank is planning, along with any other updates. This is a great social media engagement strategy, especially for local banks that serve smaller communities of people. It’s a great way to feel like there is a personal line of communication and customer service.

Never Stop Establishing Your Credibility

It is often advised that new businesses establish credibility as early as possible so that potential clients feel like they can trust the business. However, this is a practice that shouldn’t go away just because a business is no longer new. It’s an ongoing process to not only effectively market to new customers but to retain your current clients.

How do you go about establishing credibility? There are a number of ways to do it, but a great way is to publicly celebrate company milestones and base marketing campaigns on them. One example is spotlighting your employees. You can highlight new employees, employee promotions and retirements, and any of their notable achievements within the bank or the world at large. You can allude to company successes, non-profit partnerships, and any new features or initiatives your bank offers. And lastly, you can always celebrate your bank’s anniversary of establishment, which will positively showcase the number of years your bank has been in business and what it has achieved in that time. Celebrations of these milestones can be a great time to host some sort of giveaway or discount. These are wonderful opportunities to help grow social media for your bank.

Make Use of Customer Testimonials

We know that employees can serve as great advocates for a bank and customers can as well. In fact, customer testimonials, reviews, and experiences are the main way that potential clients make decisions on the products and services they use. That is why you must make sure showcasing customer testimonials must be part of your social media engagement strategy.

Reach out to your community and ask your customers to anonymously send in their testimonials. Although, if someone is willing to be spotlighted, it is always great to see that the testimonials are coming from real individuals. Consider creating a marketing campaign centered around the positive experiences that your customers have had with your bank. Pick up on words or phrases they used in their story and make these quotes the basis for your campaign. Share interviews with customers who have offered to recount their experience in detail through all your social media platforms. Be sure to save any testimonials or positive reviews in a pinned video, comment, or as an Instagram highlight. That way, positive customer testimonials are the first thing people see when looking up the bank’s social account and can provide some positive PR towards your bank’s image.

Bank Social Strategies

As we have discussed, a bank can greatly benefit from maximizing its use of social media. By creating educational content, they can prove their knowledge and expertise to potential clients and educate their current ones. Educational content can be made fun and engaging by considering the financial needs and goals of the audience in question. Then you can make eye-catching and shareable content in line with that.

Using employee experiences can be a great way to advocate for the brand. They will also shed light on the noble efforts that the bank is making to take care of its employees and its community. Highlighting company milestones such as the company’s anniversary or the bank’s recent achievements are an effective way to establish credibility. Giveaways and discounts that coincide with these celebratory milestones can positively increase social media engagement. Finally, using customer testimonials is a great way to attract new customers and make current customers feel appreciated. All in all, using social media for banks provides a plethora of opportunities to take advantage of.