“It is hard to find things that won`t sell online”
—-Jeff Bezos
The COVID-19 pandemic has almost ravaged every fabric of society worldwide and all industries and businesses are affected directly or indirectly. It is therefore crucial that businesses take full advantage of the new revolution of the digital world by adopting marketing strategies that will help them weather the storm in the “new normal” of the new era.
There are many digital marketing strategies businesses can take advantage of such as:
- Leverage Content Marketing to hook up Customers
Content is king in digital marketing and vital to keeping people engaged, positioning your institution as a knowledgeable resource and provider of ongoing financial education. It also keeps your website fresh and interesting, a specialty search engine like Google would be proud of. Some content marketing strategies include:
Blogging – If you have a blog, plan your blog content strategically. With a little research, you can find out what people are searching for, what people are asking about in your branches, and what trends are hot. If you don’t have a blog, you should seriously consider investing in one. Don’t create a new, separate standalone site. Be sure that your blog is hosted on your domain to maximize its SEO value. And be sure to mix up the type of content you provide from articles and videos to infographics. Once your blog has great content, use channels like email and social media to drive traffic.
Third – Party Content – This can be a useful way to supplement your own proprietary content and a way to easily extend your library with purposeful content particularly if the vendor allows your institution to “white label” the material. Always look for ways to customize the content for your institution.
“In the world of Internet Customer Service, it`s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.”
———Doug Warner
2. Greatly improve Customer Service by leveraging your Website
Your website is essentially a digital branch. It’s critical that you maximize this channel to deliver customer service 24 hours a day for the entire year. Whether you love your current website or not, there are always opportunities to improve it. Focus on the things customers need the most e.g., banks help with online banking, finding your routing number, accessing current rates, finding a nearby branch or ATM, or asking a general question. These can be done through:
Investment in online chat – Today’s digital consumer expects online chat. They’ve learned it can help them get their questions answered quickly and efficiently. Think about how your service reps always talk to one person at a time on the phone and compare with how they can be fielding inquiries simultaneously from multiple people through an online chat platform.
Create of update FAQs – Many common questions that your members or customers ask can be addressed through a robust FAQ page. If you don’t have this on your site you should add it soon. Your customer service department is a great place to start to see how better information provided on your website can reduce unnecessary inquiries and streamline support operations. If you already have this information on your site, revisit the content to ensure it is accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date. Bonus points if you warehouse this information in a database and serve it up contextually next to relevant product pages.
3. Concentrate on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
This simply means focusing on increasing the percentage of visitors that take the desired action on any given webpage. You’re putting a lot of time, effort and money into marketing tactics and you need to understand what’s working well and what’s not. This can be done in any of these ways:
Landing Pages – A landing page is a dedicated page that specifically supports a specific desired action. This strips out all unnecessary elements, so that the visitor is entirely focused on your desired conversion. Every bank should have at least one landing page template as part of its website.
Usability Testing – Website redesigns are the perfect time to implement usability testing, but you can also implement usability testing on your current site, or a key campaign landing page. Usability testing allows you to confirm assumptions and fix items before it could cost you conversions.
4. Integrate your Marketing
With a lot of cooks in the kitchen, it’s easy to have disjointed messaging, or a single-channel campaign. The problem is that audiences are living in a surround-sound environment, where offline and online worlds continually collide and brand perception is often fragile. It’s better to do less, but integrate your marketing tactics, then spread yourself thin and confuse consumers. This can be carried out via:
Multichannel campaigns – Consider all of your channels when you have a promotion. If auto loans are a focus this period, plan backwards for success. Strategize your landing pages, then plot out your campaign tactics and determine your success metrics. Relying on organic SEO and paid search, ATM ads, as well as social media and email marketing, your campaign should be integrated, consistent and memorable.
Utilize the strengths of each platform – Integrating your marketing efforts does not mean doing the same thing across all platforms. Instead, play to the strengths of each platform, while you unify your message for more effectiveness and brand continuity.
5. Amplify your Analytics Data
You likely have Google Analytics. You might also be a bit bewildered when you look at the data, struggling to entirely understand what it all means. How you should be using the data? What’s the most relevant ways it should be leveraged? You are not alone because with the right data, you can help answer questions from your CEO and CFO about the ROI of your marketing efforts. Google Analytics will only tell you so much “out of the box,” but if you know how to utilize the raw data, it can be a tremendous resource. Here are a couple of ways you can maximize your analytics intelligence:
Google Tag Manager – Adding custom analytics code to your site can be a cumbersome effort involving web developers, and adding too much tracking code can slow down your site’s performance. Instead, creating a Google Tag Manager account and linking it to your existing site analytics account is a must. Once it’s up and running, all of your tracking code can be placed within that account, and you can then setup goals and dashboards to see the data’s performance.
Third-Party Tracking – Knowing that visitors are clicking on Apply Now is a nice start. Knowing that they actually submitted a loan application is a big victory. Adding tracking code to your third-party vendors’ sites will allow you to connect the dots between your marketing efforts, and provide you the knowledge you need to answer that persistent ROI question. You will want to contact each of your vendors to find out if they allow for tracking code on their sites. Then you will want to work with a vendor who understands custom analytics, so that you can be positive that everything is running properly, and that you have the dashboards you need in Google Analytics to understand the data.
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