5 Tips to Align Online Banking with Your Financial Institution

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March 20, 2019
Author: Ben Halverson
Organization: Lorman Education Service

A study of 256 American banks shows that they only spend 0.077% of total revenue on marketing. Banks have been heavily relying on the necessity of consumers to drive revenue. With the help of technology, many businesses are using digital marketing to advertise their products and services. Some financial institutions are falling behind in this strategy. Others are aligning their brick and mortar sales and marketing strategies with that of digital marketing to sell their financial products. This powerful combination makes sense as mobile and digital banking are rapidly gaining popularity among consumers. In a digital savvy world, with 81% of the U.S. population on social media and 2.14 billion people using the internet, banks must adapt accordingly and develop a digital marketing strategy for financial services. If not, they could miss out on offering convenience, accessibility, and innovative ways for their customers to access their products (CIO).

Below are 5 tips you can use to align online banking with your brick and mortar financial institution:

1. CALL ON THE EXPERTS

Chances are, your bank has a marketing team. But does your bank have a digital marketing team? Traditional marketing uses magazines, television ads, billboards, signs, direct mail, and newspapers to increase exposure and visibility. Digital marketing is different. It focuses on digital platforms.

You'll need a team that's well-versed in search engine optimization (SEO) to rank your bank's website in the search engines, pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) to place your ads on Google, social media marketing to advertise your financial products and services, email marketing to send out promotional emails, and content marketing to create high-quality content that converts. 

2. IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE (UX)

With over half of organic search coming from mobile devices, focusing on user experience and creating a responsive website design are very important to your bank's digital marketing strategy. You should make sure your website responds well to varying screen sizes and devices. Page loading times are also important. 53% of users will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Keeping these key factors in mind when designing your website will help maintain low bounce rates and increase conversions. Not to mention, mobile responsiveness and page speeds are important Google ranking factors.

3. USE CONVERSION STRATEGIES THAT WORK

There are various factors that go into increasing conversion rates, from the organization of your page (bullet points, header tags, etc.) to call-to-action (CTA) buttons. In order to increase your bank's chances of converting visitors into customers, you must create content that is easy to read, follows a logical order, and has a clear CTA. And don't forget a strong, compelling headline that will make people click on your content. 

4. DEVELOP A SOLID CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

As a business with an online presence, you want to boost visibility. One of the best ways to do this is through content marketing. Creating blog posts that answer commonly searched questions relating to banking and finance can help attract visitors to your institution's website. Your first priority is to provide real solutions to real consumer problems.

Then, SEO comes next. Having great content alone won't drive traffic to your website. You must thoroughly research common keywords and implement on-page SEO tactics (title tags, meta descriptions, optimized URLs, etc.) in order to rank in the search engines, and thus, drive traffic to your bank's website.

5. LEVERAGE DATA AND ANALYTICS

You've put all of these strategies into practice. Now, it's time to test your digital marketing campaign and see how well it worked to attract new customers and generate more sales. Setting up custom analytics helps to understand consumer behavior such as clicking on CTAs or completing online applications. This data gives you knowledge about what marketing tactics work for increasing conversions, and which ones don't. You can then adjust your digital marketing strategy according to your findings.

Need help with digital advertising for your bank? At Lorman Education Services, we offer training and learning paths for businesses to keep them updated on regulations, laws, and business changes. Contact us today to get your bank's digital marketing strategy on the right track.

Sources

  1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/275814/mobile-share-of-organic-search-engine-visits/
  2. https://thefinancialbrand.com/36606/bank-marketing-budgets-2014/
  3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/
  4. https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-retail-sales-growth/
  5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/275814/mobile-share-of-organic-search-engine-visits/
  6. https://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks.pdf
  7. https://www.cio.com/article/3201198/why-banks-must-have-an-omnichannel-digital-strategy.html

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