Have a look at what some of the most active financial institutions are doing on Facebook. You will notice an innovative shift in editorials that hit the spot on lifestyle instances and emotional storytelling.
Banking services are receiving a full-on makeover on social media as promotional hard selling content has transformed into customer-oriented messaging. If you’re looking for ideas on promoting your bank or credit card, you’ll want to read on.
Let’s look at this year’s winner of ‘Best Social Media Strategy’ at The Marketing Awards — Emirates NBD. This award came in recognition of its pages having an average engagement of 0.35 per cent, while it has a 53 per cent share of voice on Twitter compared to the bank’s GCC competitors.
Emirates NBD’s strategy has been simple, yet practical and efficient. A focus on current affairs, community building, promotional partnerships and customer service aided the development of a diverse and interactive fan base.
The bank targets a new group with the campaigns or activities and targets them well. The secret of its success is avoiding any endorsement of their services upfront. Each of the services is positioned along an activity their fan base genuinely enjoys; for example, personal saving is aligned with shopping sprees and credit card promotions with discounted holidays at luxurious locations.
The mindset of ‘you spend, we support’ has deepened people’s dependency on their favourite banking institution. Let’s take RAKBank into account. With more than 100,000 fans on their page, their strategy is luring more fans to become loyal customers by offering them exclusive product-based promotions tagged as “#RAKBANKDeals”. This progressive content strategy is the main support system for the bank’s substantial online presence.
As a service sector, customer service management as an attribute on a Facebook page can by itself transform into a unique selling proposition (USP) for the brand. Managing complaints and criticism on Facebook in a short span of time adds great value to a brand’s ability to make their presence valuable for their patrons.
Another popular activity is hosting competitions relevant to a bank’s financial activity that also fulfils their target audience’s needs. HSBC’s international page set up a Facebook competition that rewarded eight students with an educational bursary of £15,000 (Dh90,465). It showed the brand to be communally active and caring about youth development. The bank promoted the competition exclusively on Facebook and received a massive community participation including 3,000 comments and 40,000 votes.
Lastly, Facebook is a great way to tell your community about your side activities and brand activation efforts. Not only will this strengthen your brand in the process, but will attract audiences from those activities that perhaps were unaware of your services. Smaller institutions should similarly use their Facebook pages to share local projects in which they are involved.
Eventually, the success of any strategy depends on the power of their call to action. Get creative with your subliminal sales pitches and write engaging content.
Give your offline activities online exposure, learn from leading examples and use compelling visuals. After all, we’re all looking for engaging content that shares a bespoke story and evokes action.
— The writer is director at McCollins Media.
