Right now, there are 1.2 billion active users on Facebook, 500 million active users on Instagram and 271 million on Twitter. What should this tell community banks about social media? Ultimately, there is massive marketing potential to engage existing customers and welcome new ones to the fold. These days customers expect brands and businesses to interact on social media. They want to know that they are viewed as a respected and valued client. If you can ensure this, your brand reputation will improve and you will reach more of your target customer base. Let’s explore why social media can be beneficial and what you can do to maximize your potential on these networks.
Maintaining A Presence Within The Community
As a community bank, it is vitally important that you do have a place in the community. Customers and potential clients need to be aware of your presence and must understand that you are part of their social circle. This could be as simple as promoting, sponsoring or campaigning for a local event. By doing this, you are showing that you care about the local consumer population and that you want to be connected to them.
You can also do this by providing a window inside the workings of your community bank and even your customers. For instance, by posting a live story on Instagram, you can provide a behind the scenes glimpse at the employees who are hard at work delivering a service to local customers and clients in your community bank. In a world of automation, customers want to see the humans behind the services they are using and a community bank is no exception.
Becoming A Trusted Resource
It’s important to follow the 80:20 ratio when publishing content across social networks. This means that only 20% of the content published should be direct promotion for your business or organization. Instead, the majority of your content should be providing, useful, valuable or interesting information to customers. For instance, you could publish an article with fantastic advice on cost savings or information on tips for first time home buyers. As long as it provides value to your target audience it will be worth publishing. This will ensure that your bank is seen as a trusted resource and will improve your community bank reputation. That’s always going to lead to loyalty within your customer population as well as positive word of mouth.
Remember, your target audience is using social media. 23% of users on Facebook are between the ages of 18-24 and Instagram has an even higher percentage of these younger audiences. This is the perfect age to start marketing to consumers that can become customers for life.
Advertising Products And Solutions
Finally, the last 20% of content on social media can be used to promote new products, services and solutions that your community bank is offering. The benefit of social media is that these products can be promoted in a way that is nonintrusive and will likely be seen by a massive portion of your target audience. So, you can increase potential sales and still be seen as a valued resource within the community and online. A professional marketing team can also help with the positioning of these product messages so that they are shown as beneficial to consumers rather than simply just holding your products out for sale.
We hope this helps you understand why social media can be such a beneficial tool for community banks. Utilized correctly social media helps you to further saturate your local markets and solidify relationships.
