Historically, community banks have built their foundations on personal relationships and word of mouth referrals, but these traditional forms of interaction with clients are quickly changing location. With the rapid and pervasive development of online communities, businesses are, in a sense, scrambling to find out how those community bank relationships will change to be reflected online. Community banks must be forward-thinking in order to develop their service by determining what that value proposition, the reliance upon relationships and word of mouth, will look like in the online arena. The good news is that both relationship building and word of mouth marketing are possible in a significantly more scalable way than ever before—banks have the potential to reach considerably more people than in the past, and establish more broad and stable networks of relationships—but only if they are willing to jump in now and with both feet.
Investing in establishing an online presence will provide community banks new ways to connect with their customers and continue those relationships in three notable ways:
1. Customer Service: Using Twitter and Facebook as real-time customer service desks.
Twitter and Facebook exist as continuously available sources of communication, enabling banks to respond immediately to the increasing number of customers who engage online. Customers may tweet a problem or concern about the bank, or post a Facebook status update commenting on a recent bank-related issue. The bank can react, engage, answer questions and explain solutions in real-time, eliminating delays that cause customers stress and frustration.
2. Client Acquisition: Creating content that ranks highly in search when prospective customers seek banking information.
Potential customers frequently use social networking sites and search engines to search bank-related topics such as interest rates, promotional offers, and past customer experiences when making banking decisions. For example, last month over 53,000 customers searched for the term “CD rates” in the state of Texas alone. Additionally, banks frequently run promotions to incentivize clients to open new accounts, such as free giveaways with the opening of a specific type of account. Pay per click advertising, display advertising, search engine optimization, and email marketing are all valid channels that to market these promotions to a wider audience.
3. Reputation Management: Promoting feedback from customers with positive experiences and preventing negative sentiment from escalating by responding more quickly and directly.
In any B2C industry, customers of the same business may give glowing remarks or biting reviews of how they’ve been slighted. Companies must balance so encouraging the former, appeasing the latter and finessing all reputation- related commentary. If a customer has issues with the service they’ve received, a bank will want to step out in front of that and make it clear that they are doing something in response as soon as possible. Banks thrive on relationships, soand if a bank lacks the ability to pay attention to customers’ needs, those people will take their business elsewhere. Banks can differentiate by providing a medium for customers to directly express pleasure or displeasure, where the bank can respond to and take care of both promptly.
