August 24, 2021

3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

Different World:
Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

Social Selling Strategy

Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

Landing Page Builder

Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

Onboarding Engagement Platform

So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

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August 24, 2021

3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

By
Doug Wilber
CEO, Denim Social

The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

Different World:
Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

Social Selling Strategy

Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

Landing Page Builder

Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

Onboarding Engagement Platform

So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

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The effects of economic disruption and uncertainty have many families facing tough financial questions they are not sure how to answer. 

Unfortunately, financial literacy rates remain startlingly low. A recent study showed three quarters of Americans say they do not feel confident about their personal finances. When a  another survey asked over 1,000 American adults who they turn to for trusted financial advice, almost 25 percent said they had no one to turn to. Providing financial education has always been a core purpose of banks, but the financial turmoil of recent years has made financial literacy even more important.

Financial professionals have an obligation to educate their customers, and today, social media is one of the most effective ways to do so. Luckily, social media-driven education already aligns with consumer preferences:  Pew Research Center reports  that more than half of U.S. adults get their news from social media, and 79% Millennials or Gen Zers have gotten financial advice from social media.

Many financial institutions are already capitalizing on this by using social media to connect with their customers and communities, but there’s still ample opportunity to provide financial education to current and prospective customers. Here are three tips:

1. CURATE RELEVANT AND TRUSTWORTHY NEWS

Social media is flooded with misinformation and misleading data, and your audience members know this. To become a trusted source, be highly selective in choosing accurate, useful and relevant news to post on your branded social media pages. You can take several steps to ensure that the information you share comes from trusted sources before distributing it to your followers.

Established news organizations, such as CNBC and ABC News, seem easy enough to identify, but be wary of illegitimate sites trying to mimic them. The source’s domain and URL will help you identify whether the reference is credible. For instance, sites with URLs that end in “.com.co” might be cause for concern. If you’re still unsure, investigate the site further for more information. The “About” page should provide plenty of verifiable information about the organization’s staff and leadership team. If you’re still unsure, choose another source.

It’s also important to be aware of news bias and how it impacts your ability to build a healthy news diet that protects your brand reputation. Seek out resources (like this one) that help visualize where certain media outlets fall on the political spectrum. Armed with this information, you can help your institution’s brand avoid bias. You can also be sure you’re not resharing information that’s deceiving, one-sided, or untrustworthy.

2. EMPHASIZE YOUR TEAM’S THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Credible news updates draw in social media users searching for financial news, but rather than simply sharing links, weave in original insights to make the information more digestible and jargon-free. Remember: Your employees are financial experts, so empower them to share their knowledge through a strong social selling strategy.

In doing so, you’ll not only educate your followers, but also humanize your brand and build trust with your audience. After all, people trust people more than brands, and research bears this out:  Nearly three-fourths  of social media users say they are more heavily persuaded by posts shared from employees rather than brand pages. Engage team members to share their knowledge in original content like blog posts, social media posts and short videos.

3. BE ENGAGED

Social media is a two-way communication channel. A survey by The Manifest revealed that  74 percent of consumers follow brands  on social media, and of that group, 96 percent said they directly interact with those brands. To make the most of your social media presence, your team needs to be engaged and respond to questions, comments and concerns in a timely manner. Stay connected with your followers and you’ll build stronger, more meaningful relationships within your community in the long term.

Financial literacy is an acute need. By using social media to educate current and prospective customers, banks can improve financial literacy, be a good steward for their customers and serve as a trusted source of information.

Whether you love or loathe social media's infiltration into every element of our personal and professional lives, there's no denying that this powerful medium is never going away. Social networks are growing bigger and stronger by the day. Forward-thinking achievers in every industry understand this and have responded by leaning all the way into social selling.

For the unaware, social selling is using social media to sell a product or service by showcasing authenticity, strengthening relationships with clients and prospects, and building thought leadership. In social selling, advisors use their own social pages to promote content about their brand and services, but with a personal spin.

Everyone from dog groomers to financial advisors are utilizing multiple social networks to build a following and bolster their personal brands, and those who fully embrace social media's ubiquity outperform their competitors and win more business. It's as simple as that.

The key, though, is finding a way to stand out from the competition online. There's a big difference between "doing social media" and doing it well.

The difficulty with differentiation

As we all know, the internet is more than likely the first place individuals go to get advice these days — financial, familial, and absolutely everything in between. So when people go online to search for guidance on money matters, they won't find you if you aren't there, actively promoting your expertise and services.

There's no stronger business case for social media (and social selling) than that: It's where your potential customers are. Meet them there and give them what they need. If you don't, someone else will.

To set yourself apart as a financial advisor, you need to be able to sell yourself — not just your firm. Sure, many financial advisors are intermediated and you likely don't have free rein to post everything you might want to on social channels, but that shouldn't be a deal-breaker. There's still plenty to say without risking any backlash or drawing the ire of regulators.

Put your fears aside

Though some in the financial industry might feel wary or daunted by interacting directly with clients or prospects, online exchanges matter in today’s market. Brands that use a more generic social-media strategy can end up sounding too promotional, focused more on boosting the brand to a broad audience instead of forging real connections. Rather than creating original content that speaks to their particular audience, financial institutions treat these social channels as glorified billboards instead of networking opportunities for each individual advisor.

That’s too bad because there’s real power behind social selling today. When comparing the social media potential of brands vs. individuals, one study found that employees have 10 times the reach and double the engagement of the brands they speak for. The best sellers in large companies, meanwhile, were the ones who regularly used technology to foster connections with new prospects or existing clients. Building genuine relationships pays off for both advisors and brands.

So, how does someone improve their social-selling efforts? How can financial advisors use the power of their individuality to differentiate themselves from their peers? Here are five tips to help you better accomplish social selling on your personal pages:

1. Ask an expert

Even if you’re on board with tapping into the potential of authentic relationship-building through social selling, you still need the right tools and training for the job. After all, your area of expertise is in the valuable services you provide to your clients, not online marketing.

An excellent move for advisors is to seek advice from your firms’s marketing or branding team. Not only can they help you develop an effective social-selling strategy, but they can also provide you with the resources and tools you need to more effectively and efficiently create, plan, and schedule your posts. Compliance experts can also educate you on the rules that govern social media in the financial services industry. Ideally, your firm provides continuous training and tools to ensure you stay on the right side of regulations.

2. Be real

The type of posts that most people see on their social-media feeds are at least partially determined by an algorithm. These algorithms are generally designed to serve up content that users are most likely to engage with in one way or another. This can be a huge advantage, but it also means that you can’t expect to stay on people’s minds if you deliver bland, uninteresting content that isn't relevant to your audience.

That doesn’t mean you should go posting clickbait or try to shock people (there’s definitely such a thing as bad engagement). Instead, the best way to get and keep people’s attention is to be your real self. Post about what matters to you and do it in your own voice, not just copying/pasting brand posts. Post about local happenings that people in your area might care about. Speak to the challenges you hear clients ask about most. In social selling, authenticity is the fastest way to start building deeper and more lasting relationships.

3. Consistency is key

How much engagement your posts garner will often depend on when and how often you post. Not only does each channel (like Facebook or LinkedIn) tend to have different times when engagement is at its peak, but your specific audience may also have their own preferences. A little research here can go a long way.

Build a sustainable cadence and stay the course. Consistency is crucial. If you post more than once a day, make sure that each has a few hours to shine on its own. And if a post is getting a particularly high response rate, wait a while before potentially drowning it out with something new. Remember: Algorithms are looking for engagement, not frequency.

4. Mix it up

Another way to ensure better engagement (and a better response from the algorithm!) is to mix up the type of content you share. Your online presence should be a healthy medley of brand, industry, and personal and community content.

You will need to figure out what the right balance for your own audience is. Think about what they care about, the questions they ask when you work together, or specific local concerns. The bottom line in every case is to make sure you’re maintaining a variety of relevant content in your social selling strategy.

5. Give and take

Approach social media as a conversation, not a bullhorn. Social selling is about more than just getting engagement — it’s also about engaging with your audience in return. This give and take is how relationships are made and strengthened, whether they be prospects or clients you know and love.

Don’t just be reactive by responding only to comments or likes on your posts. Take time to respond to others’ posts as well, whether they’re customers or other thought leaders in the industry. This doesn’t always have to be through comments, either; a simple like can let people know you’re paying attention to what they have to say.

Social selling is a powerful tool that can help financial advisors bring in new prospects and keep old clients coming back for more advice through the power of relationship and trust building. However, in order to rise above the noise, you can’t lean on your — or your firm’s — reputation. Instead, you need to establish an authentic presence for yourself that showcases exactly what makes you the right person for the job.

Learn more by downloading our Social Selling Guidebook for Financial Institutions.

Digital transformation means that social media has become an integral part of everyday life.  It has changed the way we communicate and connect with others, and it has also transformed the way financial professionals operate. Loan officers, insurance agents, and financial advisors will find that social media networks like LinkedIn have immense potential in terms of building connections, establishing thought leadership in the industry, and supporting their business. 

LinkedIn has quickly become a need for financial professionals: in fact, 9 out of 10 financial advisors are currently using LinkedIn for their business, and other industries can show similar numbers, too. To leverage the full potential of LinkedIn, intermediaries should create a strong social media content and post strategy. Here’s how to get started:

Define Your Target Audience

Before creating any content or posting anything on LinkedIn, it is essential to define the right target audience. By knowing this audience, it’s easier and more effective to craft content that resonates with them, and to also tailor any message to their needs and preferences. For the financial services industry, understanding clients and prospective clients is crucial to growing connections on social media.

Develop a Content Strategy

Once the target audience is identified, the next step is to develop a content strategy that aligns with business objectives. The content strategy should focus on creating value for the audience and positioning oneself as an expert in the financial industry, be it insurance, mortgage, banking, or wealth. It’s always helpful to create a mix of content, including articles, blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts, depending on current events and what the target audience would prefer.

Some themes to consider using in the content strategy are:

  • Industry news and trends
  • Tips and advice for financial planning and investments
  • Case studies and success stories
  • How-to guides and tutorials
  • Thought leadership pieces on industry-specific topics

Optimize The LinkedIn Profile

A LinkedIn profile is the first thing that potential connections will see. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the profile to make a good impression and establish credibility. Some tips for making a LinkedIn profile stand out are:

  • Use a professional headshot
  • Write a compelling headline that reflects expertise
  • Craft a well-written summary that highlights skills and experience
  • Add relevant keywords to the profile to make it easier for people to find in search results
  • Include media such as videos, infographics, and presentations to showcase work

Engage With Connections

LinkedIn is a social media platform, and like any other social network, engagement is key. Engaging with connections demonstrates real interest in building important relationships and sharing valuable insights. Some meaningful ways to engage with connections might include:

  • React to and comment on posts
  • Share posts with existing network
  • Send personalized messages to build rapport and establish connections
  • Participate in LinkedIn groups relevant to industry

Measure and Refine Your Strategy

Finally, it is crucial to measure any LinkedIn strategy's effectiveness and refine it over time. Using social media analytics is a smart way to track an audience's engagement with posted content, such as views, likes, shares, and comments. Based on this data, it’s simple to refine an existing strategy, identify what works and what doesn't, and adjust the tactics accordingly.

In conclusion, creating a social media content and post strategy for LinkedIn can help financial professionals build connections, establish thought leadership, and support their business. By defining the right target audience, developing a content strategy, optimizing the profile, engaging with connections, and measuring and refining the approach, anyone can leverage the full potential of LinkedIn and make social media a priority.

Ready to start building your social selling game plan? Check out this Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.

The world of social media marketing can be complex. While social media marketing isn’t new, many company leaders in regulated industries are still getting up to speed on best practices and even vocabulary. This can pose issues. When you confuse important terms, for instance, you jeopardize your goal of deploying marketing messages that will truly resonate with your customers and prospects.

Such is the case with social sellers and social influencers. Though they’re two distinct strategies in marketing, they’re often misconstrued. So let’s clear up the confusion once and for all so you can choose the best strategy for your financial institution as you head into 2024.

Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of associates’ relationship-building skills online.

Social influencers, on the other hand, are outside personalities who are paid by a company to represent the brand on social media. Social influencers are often appealing because consumers have perceived them as trustworthy advocates, but increasingly, brands are realizing that consumer trust is waning and that influencer marketing isn’t a viable long-term strategy.

An Obvious Choice

It’s tough for financial institutions to hitch their wagons to social influencers. Influencers might work well for fashion or other retail brands, but most don’t have the intimate industry knowledge necessary to be a resource to clients. Furthermore, the financial services industry is especially vulnerable to consumer mistrust. To use social media to its full potential, you need to use it as an educational, connective tool, rather than a commercial canvas. 

Social selling, on the other hand, is the difference between thought leadership and promotion, content and commerce. By amplifying your financial institution’s message through your own employees, organic reach increases and your team’s representatives become trustworthy figures.

Maximize Your Social Selling Strategy

In order to set your social sellers up for success, it’s important to take a few key steps — not the least of which is offering a library of approved content. Due to regulations surrounding financial instutions, approaching social media with an “anything goes” attitude is not wise. In fact, it can result in devastating fines from Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Everything your army of social sellers posts must be grounded in compliance. This is where having a library full of approved, relevant content is super important.

It’s also critical to match personal posts with an effective cadence by establishing a social media workflow. This means plotting the ideal journey from idea to post and making clear to each member of your team his or her role in that journey. This should also protect you from compliance issues while making everyone feel engaged and involved.

If social selling still sounds daunting, it might be time to seek help of a social media management platform like Denim Social. Our solution can schedule, monitor, and organize your team’s social posts — and it can deliver data to help you make sense of how it’s all working together.

With inflation still looming, clients and prospects remain cautious about spending and investments. This is especially evident in how today’s investors choose which financial advisors to work with (and how your brand acquires new prospects). As clients’ financials become even more vulnerable during market volatility, they need to know that their financial advisors are ready to build plans to help them meet their financial goals.

Current and potential investors are looking for trustworthy advice—and building strong relationships is key to that. To truly cultivate financial advisor and client relationships that will lead to client acquisition and retention, bank financial advisors can be very effective through social selling.

The importance of social selling for financial advisors

Social selling is precisely what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing clients and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to more accounts opened.

It’s understandable that people might feel afraid and confused during market volatility, which is what makes social selling a critical trust-building opportunity. With social selling, financial advisors meet investors online in meaningful ways.

Marketers now recognize the modern power of social media, and in today’s market your financial advisors can use social to reassure clients. When 73 percent of clients who work with financial advisors feel more prepared for a recession, it’s essential that financial brands proactively discuss the value of advice. But to do that successfully, advisors need to be at the center of the conversation.

However, a social media brand presence does not equal a solid social selling strategy. You need your advisors to meet prospects throughout the buying journey, which requires investing in comprehensive social selling campaigns to connect with investors and build trust. When deciding who handles their investments, people don’t choose institutions; they choose people. So, help your advisors build those relationships online.

How to build trust with potential clients using social selling

This should go without saying, but prospective clients are already getting financial advice on social media. In fact, Gen Z is five times more likely to get financial advice on social media channels than people age 41 and over.

To stay visible and competitive, your brand’s financial advisors can use social selling to become financial micro-influencers in their local communities. At its core, social selling is about the human element of one person’s relationship with another. Not just client to bank.

Here are four ways to empower financial advisors to build impactful relationships with clients and new prospects:

1. Post consistently

If an advisor is new to using social selling, don’t worry. The first key to using social media to build trust and relationships is simple: consistency. Advisors should post often to stay top-of-mind with investors and build algorithmic preference. Consistency ensures that advisors are providing value to clients and prospects on a regular basis.

And remember, every post counts. Not every post will get the engagement marketers hope for (or even the same amount), but each post should feel intentional and authentic to the advisors publishing it. Also, when your advisors post, they need to make sure there is a goal and specific audience for each one.

2. Upload quality content to favor the algorithm

Consistent posts are crucial, but you also have to ensure that advisors are posting high-quality content. One hot tip is to include a video or image (social media posts with images tend to garner more engagement). Also schedule posts for the ideal time for target audiences. After all, it doesn’t matter how great a post looks if no one sees it.

Marketing teams can also help intermediaries craft copy that opens the door to conversations with their audiences, such as asking open-ended questions, soliciting responses, or featuring polls that can be answered on the spot. Social posts are at the top of any new client’s journey, so helping your social sellers craft posts with interactive elements will lead to more engagement and conversions.

3. Source content from trusted third parties

To facilitate advisors’ trust-building with clients and prospects, it is critical to ensure they only share information from credible third-party sources. There’s a lot of bad financial advice and misinformation out there. If the audience suspects that an advisor is full of baloney, the brand risks losing a lot of trust.

Social content libraries can help ensure social sellers have access to trustworthy, fact-checked third-party content. It’s essential that financial advisors add personal commentary to make third-party content more authentic and personable.

4. Encourage authenticity

It seems simple to say, but trust hinges on authentic relationships. Today’s investors want to work with real people who connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s so important to instruct and encourage advisors to be themselves when social selling. Suggest that they put some of their personality into their social selling posts, talk about things that are important to them, or ask their networks questions. (If this keeps you up at night from a risk perspective, know that approval tools can help ensure compliance.)

When people interact with your advisors through social selling, they’ll see how much reliable value those advisors provide to their lives and will be more likely to trust your brand with their livelihoods. Authenticity is even more crucial when it comes to attracting prospects at the top of the funnel who haven’t gotten the chance to meet (and befriend) advisors yet.

While the current economic climate poses many potential challenges, remember that gaining and keeping investors’ trust is the key to acquiring and retaining clients (even in tough times). Lean on social selling to tell the bank brand’s story, build thought leadership online for intermediaries, and gain more followers who convert into new clients. Let them get to know your institution and your intermediaries, and they’ll want to work with you, too.

*This article was originally published in ABA Banking Journal.

People buy from people. It’s an old adage in business that still holds true today: Trust and relationships are the bedrock of insurance. A deeper agent-customer relationship means more products sold over a longer period. It’s crucial to understand that trust extends to the world of digital, especially social media.

In today’s environment, it’s not enough to release content from your carrier’s social accounts and hope that consumers will connect with it. Your strategy needs to include agents, the advisors building customer relationships in their communities. Enabling agents to leverage social media to engage and form bonds with existing and potential customers opens the door to agent-centered digital sales. As part of a bigger digital strategy, a social selling program for intermediaries helps establish their presence within the digital landscape, showcasing thought leadership, building relationships, and ultimately growing business.

Why Is Social Selling Important for Building Trust in Insurance?

As digitization continues to be a hot topic, one thing has remained steady: the agent’s role. Although many customers are accustomed to buying auto coverage online, for example, that isn’t the case as their needs mature. Just because a customer is digital-first doesn’t mean they don’t want human guidance, especially when protecting their futures.

Social selling is a powerful addition to an agent’s toolbox (and your marketing toolbox!). After all, most consumers spend roughly two and a half hours online daily. So, agents who engage their online networks through social media are more likely to expand their prospect and customer relationships.

However, it’s not enough to show up in digital spaces. “Being there” is a great first step but doesn’t ramp up trust-building in a systematic, measurable way. Instead, you need to establish digital marketing strategies that lean on social media and social selling as powerful sales tools (which they are!).

Here are some key steps:

1. Identify your agents’ social maturity.

There will always be varying levels of social media experience from the agent perspective. From naysayers to dabblers to experts, evaluating and segmenting your agent group is critical before constructing a social selling program.

The agents most comfortable and active on social media often become early adopters and champions of internal social selling programs and digital marketing strategies. With some education and profile optimization, this elite team is an incredible tool for securing more buy-in. Getting them started on social selling before their peers allows them to gain experience with the process, build interest, and better advocate for the strategy.

2. Educate agents on the value of social media as a sales tool.

Agents might assume that because they have social accounts for their business, they must be social selling. They’re not. Social selling is much more than “keeping up” a social media account. It’s consistently posting organic content, strategically weaving in paid advertising, and engaging with an audience. Just like in-person relationship building, the value comes in the conversations and connections. Agents should continually engage and turn those conversations into digital-first relationships to grow their business.

It’s worth the effort to teach your agents about the unique benefits social selling can bring to their roles. Patience and demonstrating value are key. One way to demonstrate that value is by sharing a striking social selling statistic: 80% of salespeople who hit at least 150% of their goals say they’ve leveraged technology consistently to connect with consumers. That statistic is hard for ambitious, high-performing agents to ignore. More agents will be willing to get on board with social selling when they believe it can directly affect their paycheck, promotions, and commissions. (And it can!)

3. Invest in a comprehensive social selling platform.

Social selling at scale can seem overwhelming for even the most seasoned leaders. Understanding that not all social media management tools are created equal is the best place to start. Finding a platform dedicated to social selling, especially one that’s industry-specific, is key.

A solid social selling tool should do several things. It should enable a small and mighty team of marketers to manage a robust content library, analyze the broader story of the value of agent social selling, and monitor and archive from a compliance and regulatory perspective. Most of all, it needs to be easy for agents to use.

After choosing a social selling platform that does all these things, it’s good to run some test drives with your expert social media users (the agents who were first identified as being active on social media). Beginning with a concentrated group of agents allows everyone involved to learn the social selling tool’s nuances before scaling. After the initial user group is up and running, it’s easy to fold more agents into the process.

4. Collect data and optimize over time.

Getting your agents to believe in social media as a powerful relationship-building tool is the foundation of any successful social selling program. Building a content library to help position them as thought leaders within their social networks is the next layer. Once agents have adopted the concept of social selling and are posting regularly, you can establish benchmarks for what social selling means for your organization.

It’s important to track social selling like any other marketing or sales program. You can set general KPIs to start, such as agent adoption, basic content usage, and engagement. More KPIs can be added to the mix later, such as return on ad spend and leads generated.

Finally, it’s essential to make sure agents know social selling is a slow-and-steady process. The power of social selling grows over time — the way trust and good relationships do. When done correctly and patiently, it can move the sales needle in trackable ways.

Whether in person or online, consumers will always value the guidance of a trusted advisor. Building that trust and providing value through an effective social selling strategy with the above steps is crucial to establishing your agents’ positions within the digital landscape. Some things change in business, but others never do: “People buy from people” will always be true.

*This article was originally published in Digital Insurance.

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GUIDES

3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

Different World:
Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

Social Selling Strategy

Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

Landing Page Builder

Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

Onboarding Engagement Platform

So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

GUIDES

3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

Different World:
Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

Social Selling Strategy

Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

Landing Page Builder

Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

Onboarding Engagement Platform

So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

Download the Guide

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Download Guide
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Download Guide
ALL GUIDES:

Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.

When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.

Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.

Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.

Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.

It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.

This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.

It’s called social selling and it works.

The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.

As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.

Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.

Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.

BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.

In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.

As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.

Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.

Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.

Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.

To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.

The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.

In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.

As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.

It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:

  • Scale your social selling program
  • Plan your content strategy
  • Train your loan officers

AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.

As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.

So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.

Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.

Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves

Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:

  • Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
  • How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
  • What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?

In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.

Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves

Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram

Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.

How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media

Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.

Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.

Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:

  • Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
  • Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
  • Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
  • Build trust within the community

Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:

  • Who does what
  • The right structure to execute strategy
  • How compliance software can help

Enjoy!

ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media

See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:

  • Is it important to equip your sales personnel with social media accounts?
  • Does your bank measure the impact of your social media use?
  • COVID-19 & Bank Social Media

    Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.

    Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.

    GUIDES

    3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

    The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

    That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

    What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

    Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

    If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

    Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

    Different World:
    Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

    Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

    Social Selling Strategy

    Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

    A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

    Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

    Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

    Landing Page Builder

    Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

    You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

    Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

    Onboarding Engagement Platform

    So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

    Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

    You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

    When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

    This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

    Download the Guide

    Thank you! Your submission has been received!
    Download Guide
    Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
    Download Guide
    ALL GUIDES:

    Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.

    When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.

    Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.

    Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.

    Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.

    It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.

    This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.

    It’s called social selling and it works.

    The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.

    As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.

    Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.

    Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.

    BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.

    In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.

    As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.

    Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.

    Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.

    Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.

    To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.

    The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.

    In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.

    As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.

    It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:

    • Scale your social selling program
    • Plan your content strategy
    • Train your loan officers

    AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.

    As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.

    So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.

    Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.

    Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves

    Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

    Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:

    • Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
    • How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
    • What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?

    In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.

    Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves

    Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

    Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram

    Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.

    How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media

    Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.

    Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.

    Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:

    • Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
    • Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
    • Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
    • Build trust within the community

    Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:

    • Who does what
    • The right structure to execute strategy
    • How compliance software can help

    Enjoy!

    ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media

    See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:

  • Is it important to equip your sales personnel with social media accounts?
  • Does your bank measure the impact of your social media use?
  • COVID-19 & Bank Social Media

    Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.

    Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.

    GUIDES

    3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

    The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

    That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

    What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

    Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

    If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

    Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

    Different World:
    Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

    Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

    Social Selling Strategy

    Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

    A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

    Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

    Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

    Landing Page Builder

    Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

    You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

    Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

    Onboarding Engagement Platform

    So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

    Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

    You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

    When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

    This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

    Download the Guide

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    ALL GUIDES:

    Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.

    When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.

    Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.

    Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.

    Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.

    It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.

    This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.

    It’s called social selling and it works.

    The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.

    As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.

    Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.

    Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.

    BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.

    In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.

    As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.

    Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.

    Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.

    Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.

    To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.

    The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.

    In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.

    As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.

    It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:

    • Scale your social selling program
    • Plan your content strategy
    • Train your loan officers

    AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.

    As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.

    So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.

    Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.

    Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves

    Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

    Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:

    • Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
    • How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
    • What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?

    In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.

    Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves

    Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!

    Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram

    Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.

    How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media

    Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.

    Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.

    Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:

    • Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
    • Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
    • Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
    • Build trust within the community

    Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:

    • Who does what
    • The right structure to execute strategy
    • How compliance software can help

    Enjoy!

    ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media

    See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:

  • Is it important to equip your sales personnel with social media accounts?
  • Does your bank measure the impact of your social media use?
  • COVID-19 & Bank Social Media

    Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.

    Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.

    RESOURCES

    NEWS
    August 24, 2021

    3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

    By
    Doug Wilber
    CEO, Denim Social

    The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

    That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

    What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

    Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

    If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

    Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

    Different World:
    Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

    Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

    Social Selling Strategy

    Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

    A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

    Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

    Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

    Landing Page Builder

    Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

    You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

    Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

    Onboarding Engagement Platform

    So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

    Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

    You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

    When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

    This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

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    OTHER NEWS:

    The effects of economic disruption and uncertainty have many families facing tough financial questions they are not sure how to answer. 

    Unfortunately, financial literacy rates remain startlingly low. A recent study showed three quarters of Americans say they do not feel confident about their personal finances. When a  another survey asked over 1,000 American adults who they turn to for trusted financial advice, almost 25 percent said they had no one to turn to. Providing financial education has always been a core purpose of banks, but the financial turmoil of recent years has made financial literacy even more important.

    Financial professionals have an obligation to educate their customers, and today, social media is one of the most effective ways to do so. Luckily, social media-driven education already aligns with consumer preferences:  Pew Research Center reports  that more than half of U.S. adults get their news from social media, and 79% Millennials or Gen Zers have gotten financial advice from social media.

    Many financial institutions are already capitalizing on this by using social media to connect with their customers and communities, but there’s still ample opportunity to provide financial education to current and prospective customers. Here are three tips:

    1. CURATE RELEVANT AND TRUSTWORTHY NEWS

    Social media is flooded with misinformation and misleading data, and your audience members know this. To become a trusted source, be highly selective in choosing accurate, useful and relevant news to post on your branded social media pages. You can take several steps to ensure that the information you share comes from trusted sources before distributing it to your followers.

    Established news organizations, such as CNBC and ABC News, seem easy enough to identify, but be wary of illegitimate sites trying to mimic them. The source’s domain and URL will help you identify whether the reference is credible. For instance, sites with URLs that end in “.com.co” might be cause for concern. If you’re still unsure, investigate the site further for more information. The “About” page should provide plenty of verifiable information about the organization’s staff and leadership team. If you’re still unsure, choose another source.

    It’s also important to be aware of news bias and how it impacts your ability to build a healthy news diet that protects your brand reputation. Seek out resources (like this one) that help visualize where certain media outlets fall on the political spectrum. Armed with this information, you can help your institution’s brand avoid bias. You can also be sure you’re not resharing information that’s deceiving, one-sided, or untrustworthy.

    2. EMPHASIZE YOUR TEAM’S THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

    Credible news updates draw in social media users searching for financial news, but rather than simply sharing links, weave in original insights to make the information more digestible and jargon-free. Remember: Your employees are financial experts, so empower them to share their knowledge through a strong social selling strategy.

    In doing so, you’ll not only educate your followers, but also humanize your brand and build trust with your audience. After all, people trust people more than brands, and research bears this out:  Nearly three-fourths  of social media users say they are more heavily persuaded by posts shared from employees rather than brand pages. Engage team members to share their knowledge in original content like blog posts, social media posts and short videos.

    3. BE ENGAGED

    Social media is a two-way communication channel. A survey by The Manifest revealed that  74 percent of consumers follow brands  on social media, and of that group, 96 percent said they directly interact with those brands. To make the most of your social media presence, your team needs to be engaged and respond to questions, comments and concerns in a timely manner. Stay connected with your followers and you’ll build stronger, more meaningful relationships within your community in the long term.

    Financial literacy is an acute need. By using social media to educate current and prospective customers, banks can improve financial literacy, be a good steward for their customers and serve as a trusted source of information.

    Connecting with customers and prospects on social media is a natural extension of the financial services industry becoming more digital. Consumers expect the businesses they patronize to be on the same social platforms they use — and they expect those brands to be ready to interact with them. Case in point: A survey of over 500 social media users found that nearly three-quarters follow organizations on social platforms, and the vast majority of them interact with those brands on social.

    Social media is the perfect tool for financial institutions to build brand awareness, meet the demand for greater digital engagement, recruit prospective customers, and drive referrals.

    While social media is a great way to connect with customers and prospects, it’s not without its risk. It’s essential to use social media tools that will keep your team in compliance. 

    1. START WITH A SOCIAL SELLING STRATEGY.

    There are few limits to how you can connect with customers and prospects on social media, but it needs to be about more than posts from a brand page. Direct messaging is always an option for private communication, but to reach more people at scale, social sellers (i.e., agents, loan officers, financial advisors, intermediaries, etc.) should also be posting original content, resharing educational articles, responding to comments and questions, and liking others’ posts. With so many options, it’s important for marketers to craft a social selling strategy that guides social sellers in their social interactions on behalf of the institution.

    A well-thought-out strategy can ensure effective social selling. For instance, rather than posting on channels at random and hoping for the best, social sellers can determine which social media platforms suit them best based on audience engagement and follower counts; then they can focus their efforts there. Consider also equipping intermediaries with a library of branded content they can mix in with their personal posts. This strategy will inform your all-important social media policy moving forward.

    2. TURN YOUR STRATEGY INTO A DETAILED POLICY.

    In a heavily regulated industry, it’s essential for firms to have a comprehensive social media policy. This is a package of brand messaging in a detailed policy to help ensure consistency when social sellers post on your behalf.

    Take the plan you mapped out in your strategy and turn it into a documented policy that intermediaries can access easily. Social media and the way people use it continues to evolve, which is why your social media policy should always be a work in progress. Make updates periodically to account for shifts in your approval workflow, changes in messaging, and general social media best practices. As social sellers become savvier, your policy will grow more detailed.

    3. MAKE TRAINING AN ONGOING EFFORT.

    Intermediaries who are new to social media will require initial training — but it shouldn’t be a one-and-done initiative. Hold regular social selling workshops to keep all social sellers up to date on your social media policy and messaging.

    You can also use workshop time to walk your team through any tools you invest in to fuel social media efforts. Denim Social, for example, offers live product demos you can share to show them how to use the technology and get the most benefit. 

    Demonstrate how the software streamlines the approval process for posts and automatically archives them for future reference. The more they know, the more comfortable they’ll be using such tools to facilitate social selling efforts. The great news is, our customer success team is here to help get your team trained and ready.

    Social media opens up a world of opportunity for financial institutions to reach and engage customers and prospects, but that doesn’t mean you should set your team free to do as they please. The right strategy and social media management software can make it a lot easier to avoid mistakes and create a successful social selling strategy. Want to see how Denim Social can help your team up their social media game? Schedule a demo today!

    If you didn’t want to believe it before, digital banking is here to stay. While most were on the path toward digital, COVID vastly accelerated digital adoption. That behavior is unlikely to change:  84 percent of banking customers polled said they plan to maintain the same level of digital banking services post-pandemic. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for traditional banks.

    The good news is that the key differentiating factor for traditional banks remains the same: human relationships with customers.

    The challenge is that maintaining strong relationships in a digital environment can be difficult for traditional banks. And without strong anchoring relationships, banks miss out on valuable cross-selling opportunities and lose customers to competitors that offer better digital services. Customer defection can be costly, as it’s five to 25 times more expensive to acquire than retain customers—but increasing customer retention rates by a mere 5 percent can boost profits by 25 to 95 percent.

    Banks that turn their focus toward strengthening digital customer experience can solidify relationships for the long term, secure more business with new and existing customers, and thrive well into the future.

    HOW TO CREATE AN EXCEPTIONAL DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

    Delivering high-quality digital experiences is two-fold challenge for banks. First, traditional banks tend to struggle to design meaningful and emotional experiences in digital ways. Second, they struggle to deliver those experiences impactfully due to internal and external digital transformation hurdles.

    With these two challenges in mind, bank marketers can lead their organizations to success by first focusing on their teams’ willingness to evolve and openness to the larger concepts of digital transformation. Without widespread buy-in, even a million of the fanciest bells and whistles on the market won’t help a bank evolve to meet and exceed consumers’ digital expectations.

    Marketers must ensure an overall understanding of these four digital transformation initiatives and how they can help improve digital customer experiences and strengthen human relationships:

    1. Continual tool improvement and refinement. Most financial institutions likely accelerated the pace of their digital transformations in recent years and they need to keep up the momentum. In fact, the primary goal behind digital transformation for 79 percent of respondents in one survey was to improve customer experience. You can’t improve experiences without continuous transformation efforts.

    Gather data to show how customers are using your digital tools and continually evaluate how to improve your tools to create better and better experiences. Seeking strong and strategic partnerships with fintech vendors is an excellent way to stay on top of the latest innovations in technology and continue providing the best digital services.

    2. Optimal onboarding. Your team and fintech partners might put a lot of time, money, and effort into building new and impressive digital widgets—but if your customers don’t know how to use them, they won’t bring any value. That’s why part of any bank’s digital transformation strategy should involve onboarding customers to ensure the adoption and use of new digital services.If new account openers don’t engage within the first month of opening an account, they likely never will. Encourage frequent and continued engagement by clearly demonstrating the value customers can find in your digital services and tools. Provide convenient and accessible customer support to keep the value stream flowing without interruption.

    3. Transferring relationships to digital. Preserving human connections in the virtual world can be a challenge for banks accustomed to old ways, but with the right approach, digitization can actually help banks build and maintain stronger relationships. That’s why 72 percent of business leaders who responded to Harvard Business Review Analytics Services researchers said they expected the digital shift to create closer relationships with customers.

    Take social media as one example. With an active social media strategy, loan officers can keep up with past customers and even get new prospects’ attention. And with the right social media management tools, marketers can help loan officers pull off social selling campaigns at scale. Ensure that customers also have a direct line to access employees who can facilitate customer service so that they always have a resource to answer questions and guide them along the digital journey without a hitch.

    4. Constant value with content and data. The more value a financial institution can offer, the less likely customer defection will be. Provide useful information to customers through frequent social media content, blog posts, landing pages and more. Use targeting strategies such as paid social media advertising and create personalized content based on data. The more relevant the information is to your customers’ specific needs, the more valuable it will be. Personalize landing pages and gate information behind contact submission forms. When visitors exchange their contact information for the content they need, you can reach out directly to primed leads to continue the conversation with human-to-human touchpoints.

    No matter the state of digital transformation, strong customer sentiment around digital banking is unlikely to wane. In fact, consumers are likely to expect better and better digital experiences from financial institutions as technology becomes an even bigger part of everyday life. Traditional banks that focus on creating exceptional digital customer experience based on human connection will thrive.

    This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.

    Instagram stands out as the shining star of social media platforms. While Facebook still reigns supreme and TikTok grows, Instagram is quickly catching up fast with more than 2 billion users worldwide.

    With users under age 34 making up nearly 60 percent of this user population, financial services marketers looking to reach younger generations should take note. And with an estimated sum of $68 trillion in wealth expected to transfer from Baby Boomers to Millennials in the next couple of decades, Millennials are a worthwhile target.

    Studies predict that, after inheriting wealth, 80% or more young heirs will seek out a new financial advisor. Considering that 9 in 10 accounts follow at least one business on Instagram and 8 in 10 users find new products and services in the app, it’s a safe bet that Instagram will be a place to influence many Millennials. Wise financial services marketers will meet them where they are with strong Instagram marketing strategies, and the following tips can help:

    1. Focus on paid ads

    Instagram is a visual platform for sharing photos and videos, so it’s important for brand pages to populate their profiles with organic posts. While this presence is important, organic content isn’t what will move the needle on business goals. Financial services aren’t exactly visually interesting, and organic posts tend to have low reach as they only show up in the feeds of a brand’s current followers. Without the ability to include hyperlinks in captions, they also won’t drive any traffic back to your site. If you want to build the type of following needed to generate new business, including paid advertising in your Instagram marketing strategy is your ticket.

    With Instagram advertising, institutions and advisors can target ads to land with exactly the right audience — even outside their follower base — and include links in posts to drive more traffic to the brand. With a specific call to action that directs consumers to learn more about a topic, Instagram ads offer a straight-line path to giving customers the valuable information they desire — in their own time and at their own place. What’s more, Instagram advertising is seamlessly integrated directly into Instagram feeds and stories, creating a smoother user experience all around.

    2. Connect with consumers on a local level

    Instagram marketing on the corporate brand level is a great starting point, but advertising on behalf of your individual advisors can take your strategy to the next level. Think of it this way: If a consumer sees a well-known brand on social media, they might recognize the name, but they won’t feel an intrinsic connection beyond initial familiarity. In contrast, they’ll feel familiarity and an immediate connection when they see a post from an advisor in their own community. Consumers want to build relationships with brands, and a shared community is a great starting point.

    Of course, most advisors and other financial services employees are not experts on how to market the business on Instagram. And marketers know they must keep all social media marketing for their financial institutions compliant to avoid heavy regulatory reprimands. To keep posts compliant, save employees time, and help them build relationships with consumers in their physical communities, financial services marketers can set up and run ads on their behalf.


    3. Micro-target content to your audience

    As big-name brands like Amazon continue to elevate the digital customer experience with seamless customer service, purchasing, and delivery, customer expectations are higher than ever before. When customers evaluate a financial institution, they compare it not only to other organizations in the industry, but also to tech giants in any industry that give them exactly what they need when they need it.

    They expect a high level of personalization and convenience, and Instagram marketing with paid advertising can help you give it to them. Match basic behavioral and geographic data to potential customers on Instagram to target ads, and then track clicks, engagements, and post-click actions. These data points don’t indicate much on their own, but together they offer a rich story about what consumers want. Continually refine your strategy with these data points in mind to deliver the kind of highly personalized experiences your audiences want on Instagram.

    With a large Millennial user base that engages actively with brands online and the ability to target highly personalized ads to exactly the right audiences, Instagram is a must-have in any financial services marketing strategy. To learn more about how Instagram marketing can work to drive your business forward, download our guide to building stronger customer relationships on Instagram for free today.

    In a time where it's important than ever to maintain and build existing customer relationships, financial professionals like loan officers, insurance agents, and financial advisors should look to LinkedIn as a primary means of communication and an essential part of everyday communication.

    Today, meeting customers where they are means being active on social media. Aptly named "the professional network", LinkedIn is prime territory for boosting thought leadership, crafting an online presence, and creating authentic, lasting relationships that will stand the test of time (and economic ups and downs).

    Whether you're just getting started on social media for financial professionals, or you're a seasoned LinkedIn veteran looking to make the most of the network, it's time for financial institutions to take LinkedIn seriously in 2024.

    LinkedIn Can Help Build Trust & Credibility

    It seems simple to say, but trust hinges on authentic relationships. Today’s customers want to work with real people who connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s so important to be yourself when using social networks like LinkedIn. Put some of your personality into their social  posts, talk about things that are important to you, or ask your networks questions. (If this keeps you up at night from a risk perspective, know that approval tools like Denim Social can help ensure compliance.)

    When people interact with you through LinkedIn, they’ll see how much reliable value you provide to their lives and will be more likely to trust your brand with their livelihoods. Authenticity is even more crucial when it comes to attracting prospects at the top of the funnel who haven’t gotten the chance to meet (and befriend) you yet.

    While the current economic climate poses many potential challenges, remember that gaining and keeping customers’ trust is the key to acquiring and retaining clients (even in tough times). Lean on social media networks like LinkedIn to tell the your brand’s story, build thought leadership online, and gain more followers who convert into new clients. Let them get to know your institution and you, and they’ll want to work (and stay) with you for years to come.

    LinkedIn Is A Winning Choice

    It's hard to hear, but if you aren't on LinkedIn already, you're already behind. In fact, 9 out of 10 financial advisors are using LinkedIn for their business, and other industries see similar usage numbers. The same way that email and text messaging have become routine modes of communication, so will social media like LinkedIn.

    You can bet that your audience will be there, too. Over 16% of LinkedIn users log on every single day, and this number continues to grow as the networks becomes more and more popular among the groups that financial professionals target most frequently, like young professionals and business leaders.

    Being active and sustaining a regular presence can have some serious payoffs. For example, pages that post weekly instead of just monthly have almost 6 times as many followers.

    The future is bright for those that use LinkedIn to their advantage. It's clear that there's no slowing down its momentum as a primary social network!

    LinkedIn Can Help You Educate

    Are there certain points you are always trying to get across with your customers, or questions you are routinely asked? Look no further than LinkedIn. Use this powerful network to create and share posts that will position you as one of the top expert in your field and in your community.

    There are currently over 27 million people that look to LinkedIn as an educational tool. When someone comes looking for an answer to their question, you want to be the go-to source of truth for them.

    With LinkedIn, you can share graphics, videos, documents, photos, and more. It's easy to diversify your content to make your profile a wealth of knowledge for your customers and prospects. If you are looking for more ideas on how to make the most of LinkedIn, check out Denim's Social's Best Practices For LinkedIn.

    In sum, LinkedIn is basically your new business card. Use it well! Don't let your opportunities on LinkedIn pass you by. Start prepping now to get your strategy in order so you find success on LinkedIn in 2024. Interested in other social networks, too? Try downloading our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions. Happy posting!

    The world of social media marketing can be complex. While social media marketing isn’t new, many company leaders in regulated industries are still getting up to speed on best practices and even vocabulary. This can pose issues. When you confuse important terms, for instance, you jeopardize your goal of deploying marketing messages that will truly resonate with your customers and prospects.

    Such is the case with social sellers and social influencers. Though they’re two distinct strategies in marketing, they’re often misconstrued. So let’s clear up the confusion once and for all so you can choose the best strategy for your financial institution as you head into 2024.

    Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of associates’ relationship-building skills online.

    Social influencers, on the other hand, are outside personalities who are paid by a company to represent the brand on social media. Social influencers are often appealing because consumers have perceived them as trustworthy advocates, but increasingly, brands are realizing that consumer trust is waning and that influencer marketing isn’t a viable long-term strategy.

    An Obvious Choice

    It’s tough for financial institutions to hitch their wagons to social influencers. Influencers might work well for fashion or other retail brands, but most don’t have the intimate industry knowledge necessary to be a resource to clients. Furthermore, the financial services industry is especially vulnerable to consumer mistrust. To use social media to its full potential, you need to use it as an educational, connective tool, rather than a commercial canvas. 

    Social selling, on the other hand, is the difference between thought leadership and promotion, content and commerce. By amplifying your financial institution’s message through your own employees, organic reach increases and your team’s representatives become trustworthy figures.

    Maximize Your Social Selling Strategy

    In order to set your social sellers up for success, it’s important to take a few key steps — not the least of which is offering a library of approved content. Due to regulations surrounding financial instutions, approaching social media with an “anything goes” attitude is not wise. In fact, it can result in devastating fines from Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Everything your army of social sellers posts must be grounded in compliance. This is where having a library full of approved, relevant content is super important.

    It’s also critical to match personal posts with an effective cadence by establishing a social media workflow. This means plotting the ideal journey from idea to post and making clear to each member of your team his or her role in that journey. This should also protect you from compliance issues while making everyone feel engaged and involved.

    If social selling still sounds daunting, it might be time to seek help of a social media management platform like Denim Social. Our solution can schedule, monitor, and organize your team’s social posts — and it can deliver data to help you make sense of how it’s all working together.

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    August 24, 2021

    3 Tools Financial Marketers Can Use to Strengthen Digital Experience

    By
    Doug Wilber
    CEO, Denim Social

    The concept of “infrastructure” goes beyond its hotly debated political meanings. It applies to organizations as much as municipal structures and facilities. In fact, it’s a quite relevant subject for financial marketers to consider.

    That’s because the basic organizational structures needed to keep a financial institution competitive are rapidly transitioning from physical to digital. It’s a change accelerated by the pandemic, as has been well documented.

    What this means for financial marketers is that digital infrastructure demands more attention — and investment, and Marketing plays an essential role in this. If your customers are in the virtual world, you need the right tools and strategies to reach them there.

    Building Digital Marketing Infrastructure

    If your institution’s marketing efforts are pieced together with standalone technologies, you’re likely to need an upgrade. Marketers need to build strategies and digital business infrastructures that can speak to one another. Otherwise, digital marketing for financial institutions can become overly cumbersome and negatively impact both brand reach and interactions with the target audience.

    Look for technology solutions that integrate across social media management software, marketing automation tools, CRM, and even reviews and reputation management platforms. This will lead to systems that can help map and meet the needs of prospects across all stages of the customer acquisition journey — rather than simply buying tools for various purposes or touchpoints.

    Different World:
    Digital technology has made it much simpler to switch financial institutions than in the past. The barriers are almost nonexistent.

    Digital marketing in financial services is an essential element of digital business infrastructure. If your organization doesn’t reach consumers virtually and provide a strong digital customer experience, consumers are likely to turn to a provider that will. To ensure your organization has the digital infrastructure capable of building customer relationships and growing revenue, focus on the three investments in particular.

    Social Selling Strategy

    Most bank marketers recognize that an active social media presence is no longer optional, but posting from brand pages alone won’t entice many consumers to engage. With 69% of consumers today actively avoiding advertisements, according to Edelman, brands must rethink social media messaging with the human element in mind.

    A social selling strategy, when branded messaging comes from an organization’s individual employees, is the most effective form of social media marketing because people relate to other people more than to big brand names.

    Individual employees posting brand-related content on their own pages, however, can increase the risk of compliance missteps without the proper tools. Social media management software that allows marketers to have a holistic view of employee activity on social media can safeguard your brand reputation.

    Such tools can house digital libraries of preapproved content so employees can share ready-to-go posts with ease. Software can also automate the approvals process on new employee posts to ensure that no content ever goes live without proper review.

    Landing Page Builder

    Think of landing pages as your website’s personalized welcome mats. Rather than landing on the homepage and having to stumble around looking for the information they need (and people have little patience for this), prospects and customers can land right where the information is. For example, if a social media post or digital ad offers tips for first-time mortgage seekers, the message can include a link to a landing page on your website that houses more information about mortgages.

    You can gate guidebooks and other downloadable resources behind an information capture form on the landing page, prompting consumers to insert their name and email to receive the download. Considering that more than three-quarters of consumers are willing to provide their personal information in return for more personalized services, according to Accenture, landing pages are an excellent tool to provide relevant, valuable content to consumers while capturing data that can help you target outreach efforts to those who are most likely to convert.

    Few institutions have the resources available to create landing pages for each promotion, however. And most financial services marketers don’t have the coding or website design expertise to build whole web pages from scratch. That’s where “landing page builders” come in. Such platforms provide prebuilt, customizable templates that allow marketers to quickly and easily build landing pages at scale to capture valuable data while providing customers with more value.

    Onboarding Engagement Platform

    So you’ve created a suite of digital customer experiences and infrastructures to serve customers and capture prospects in a virtual world. Your tools offer remote deposit capture, peer-to-peer payments, rewards programs, financial education, and more. But what if people don’t use them?

    Sometimes, simply putting the options in front of them isn’t enough. Digital banking, though on the rise for some time, can still be a new concept for many. Even if someone is a regular user of mobile check capture, they may not grasp the concept of a digital wallet.

    You need to engage customers in an educational way to help them see the value in these tools and understand how to make the most of digital experiences. Onboarding engagement platforms can help your customers adapt to new products and allow you to get more from your digital investments.

    When someone opens a new account at your institution, for example, an onboarding engagement platform can walk them through the mobile app the first time they sign on, showing them where and how to deposit checks, transfer funds, redeem rewards, contact customer service, and more. Doing this strengthens the digital customer experience and builds trust along the way.

    This article was originally posted on The Financial Brand.

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    The effects of economic disruption and uncertainty have many families facing tough financial questions they are not sure how to answer. 

    Unfortunately, financial literacy rates remain startlingly low. A recent study showed three quarters of Americans say they do not feel confident about their personal finances. When a  another survey asked over 1,000 American adults who they turn to for trusted financial advice, almost 25 percent said they had no one to turn to. Providing financial education has always been a core purpose of banks, but the financial turmoil of recent years has made financial literacy even more important.

    Financial professionals have an obligation to educate their customers, and today, social media is one of the most effective ways to do so. Luckily, social media-driven education already aligns with consumer preferences:  Pew Research Center reports  that more than half of U.S. adults get their news from social media, and 79% Millennials or Gen Zers have gotten financial advice from social media.

    Many financial institutions are already capitalizing on this by using social media to connect with their customers and communities, but there’s still ample opportunity to provide financial education to current and prospective customers. Here are three tips:

    1. CURATE RELEVANT AND TRUSTWORTHY NEWS

    Social media is flooded with misinformation and misleading data, and your audience members know this. To become a trusted source, be highly selective in choosing accurate, useful and relevant news to post on your branded social media pages. You can take several steps to ensure that the information you share comes from trusted sources before distributing it to your followers.

    Established news organizations, such as CNBC and ABC News, seem easy enough to identify, but be wary of illegitimate sites trying to mimic them. The source’s domain and URL will help you identify whether the reference is credible. For instance, sites with URLs that end in “.com.co” might be cause for concern. If you’re still unsure, investigate the site further for more information. The “About” page should provide plenty of verifiable information about the organization’s staff and leadership team. If you’re still unsure, choose another source.

    It’s also important to be aware of news bias and how it impacts your ability to build a healthy news diet that protects your brand reputation. Seek out resources (like this one) that help visualize where certain media outlets fall on the political spectrum. Armed with this information, you can help your institution’s brand avoid bias. You can also be sure you’re not resharing information that’s deceiving, one-sided, or untrustworthy.

    2. EMPHASIZE YOUR TEAM’S THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

    Credible news updates draw in social media users searching for financial news, but rather than simply sharing links, weave in original insights to make the information more digestible and jargon-free. Remember: Your employees are financial experts, so empower them to share their knowledge through a strong social selling strategy.

    In doing so, you’ll not only educate your followers, but also humanize your brand and build trust with your audience. After all, people trust people more than brands, and research bears this out:  Nearly three-fourths  of social media users say they are more heavily persuaded by posts shared from employees rather than brand pages. Engage team members to share their knowledge in original content like blog posts, social media posts and short videos.

    3. BE ENGAGED

    Social media is a two-way communication channel. A survey by The Manifest revealed that  74 percent of consumers follow brands  on social media, and of that group, 96 percent said they directly interact with those brands. To make the most of your social media presence, your team needs to be engaged and respond to questions, comments and concerns in a timely manner. Stay connected with your followers and you’ll build stronger, more meaningful relationships within your community in the long term.

    Financial literacy is an acute need. By using social media to educate current and prospective customers, banks can improve financial literacy, be a good steward for their customers and serve as a trusted source of information.

    Connecting with customers and prospects on social media is a natural extension of the financial services industry becoming more digital. Consumers expect the businesses they patronize to be on the same social platforms they use — and they expect those brands to be ready to interact with them. Case in point: A survey of over 500 social media users found that nearly three-quarters follow organizations on social platforms, and the vast majority of them interact with those brands on social.

    Social media is the perfect tool for financial institutions to build brand awareness, meet the demand for greater digital engagement, recruit prospective customers, and drive referrals.

    While social media is a great way to connect with customers and prospects, it’s not without its risk. It’s essential to use social media tools that will keep your team in compliance. 

    1. START WITH A SOCIAL SELLING STRATEGY.

    There are few limits to how you can connect with customers and prospects on social media, but it needs to be about more than posts from a brand page. Direct messaging is always an option for private communication, but to reach more people at scale, social sellers (i.e., agents, loan officers, financial advisors, intermediaries, etc.) should also be posting original content, resharing educational articles, responding to comments and questions, and liking others’ posts. With so many options, it’s important for marketers to craft a social selling strategy that guides social sellers in their social interactions on behalf of the institution.

    A well-thought-out strategy can ensure effective social selling. For instance, rather than posting on channels at random and hoping for the best, social sellers can determine which social media platforms suit them best based on audience engagement and follower counts; then they can focus their efforts there. Consider also equipping intermediaries with a library of branded content they can mix in with their personal posts. This strategy will inform your all-important social media policy moving forward.

    2. TURN YOUR STRATEGY INTO A DETAILED POLICY.

    In a heavily regulated industry, it’s essential for firms to have a comprehensive social media policy. This is a package of brand messaging in a detailed policy to help ensure consistency when social sellers post on your behalf.

    Take the plan you mapped out in your strategy and turn it into a documented policy that intermediaries can access easily. Social media and the way people use it continues to evolve, which is why your social media policy should always be a work in progress. Make updates periodically to account for shifts in your approval workflow, changes in messaging, and general social media best practices. As social sellers become savvier, your policy will grow more detailed.

    3. MAKE TRAINING AN ONGOING EFFORT.

    Intermediaries who are new to social media will require initial training — but it shouldn’t be a one-and-done initiative. Hold regular social selling workshops to keep all social sellers up to date on your social media policy and messaging.

    You can also use workshop time to walk your team through any tools you invest in to fuel social media efforts. Denim Social, for example, offers live product demos you can share to show them how to use the technology and get the most benefit. 

    Demonstrate how the software streamlines the approval process for posts and automatically archives them for future reference. The more they know, the more comfortable they’ll be using such tools to facilitate social selling efforts. The great news is, our customer success team is here to help get your team trained and ready.

    Social media opens up a world of opportunity for financial institutions to reach and engage customers and prospects, but that doesn’t mean you should set your team free to do as they please. The right strategy and social media management software can make it a lot easier to avoid mistakes and create a successful social selling strategy. Want to see how Denim Social can help your team up their social media game? Schedule a demo today!

    If you didn’t want to believe it before, digital banking is here to stay. While most were on the path toward digital, COVID vastly accelerated digital adoption. That behavior is unlikely to change:  84 percent of banking customers polled said they plan to maintain the same level of digital banking services post-pandemic. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for traditional banks.

    The good news is that the key differentiating factor for traditional banks remains the same: human relationships with customers.

    The challenge is that maintaining strong relationships in a digital environment can be difficult for traditional banks. And without strong anchoring relationships, banks miss out on valuable cross-selling opportunities and lose customers to competitors that offer better digital services. Customer defection can be costly, as it’s five to 25 times more expensive to acquire than retain customers—but increasing customer retention rates by a mere 5 percent can boost profits by 25 to 95 percent.

    Banks that turn their focus toward strengthening digital customer experience can solidify relationships for the long term, secure more business with new and existing customers, and thrive well into the future.

    HOW TO CREATE AN EXCEPTIONAL DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

    Delivering high-quality digital experiences is two-fold challenge for banks. First, traditional banks tend to struggle to design meaningful and emotional experiences in digital ways. Second, they struggle to deliver those experiences impactfully due to internal and external digital transformation hurdles.

    With these two challenges in mind, bank marketers can lead their organizations to success by first focusing on their teams’ willingness to evolve and openness to the larger concepts of digital transformation. Without widespread buy-in, even a million of the fanciest bells and whistles on the market won’t help a bank evolve to meet and exceed consumers’ digital expectations.

    Marketers must ensure an overall understanding of these four digital transformation initiatives and how they can help improve digital customer experiences and strengthen human relationships:

    1. Continual tool improvement and refinement. Most financial institutions likely accelerated the pace of their digital transformations in recent years and they need to keep up the momentum. In fact, the primary goal behind digital transformation for 79 percent of respondents in one survey was to improve customer experience. You can’t improve experiences without continuous transformation efforts.

    Gather data to show how customers are using your digital tools and continually evaluate how to improve your tools to create better and better experiences. Seeking strong and strategic partnerships with fintech vendors is an excellent way to stay on top of the latest innovations in technology and continue providing the best digital services.

    2. Optimal onboarding. Your team and fintech partners might put a lot of time, money, and effort into building new and impressive digital widgets—but if your customers don’t know how to use them, they won’t bring any value. That’s why part of any bank’s digital transformation strategy should involve onboarding customers to ensure the adoption and use of new digital services.If new account openers don’t engage within the first month of opening an account, they likely never will. Encourage frequent and continued engagement by clearly demonstrating the value customers can find in your digital services and tools. Provide convenient and accessible customer support to keep the value stream flowing without interruption.

    3. Transferring relationships to digital. Preserving human connections in the virtual world can be a challenge for banks accustomed to old ways, but with the right approach, digitization can actually help banks build and maintain stronger relationships. That’s why 72 percent of business leaders who responded to Harvard Business Review Analytics Services researchers said they expected the digital shift to create closer relationships with customers.

    Take social media as one example. With an active social media strategy, loan officers can keep up with past customers and even get new prospects’ attention. And with the right social media management tools, marketers can help loan officers pull off social selling campaigns at scale. Ensure that customers also have a direct line to access employees who can facilitate customer service so that they always have a resource to answer questions and guide them along the digital journey without a hitch.

    4. Constant value with content and data. The more value a financial institution can offer, the less likely customer defection will be. Provide useful information to customers through frequent social media content, blog posts, landing pages and more. Use targeting strategies such as paid social media advertising and create personalized content based on data. The more relevant the information is to your customers’ specific needs, the more valuable it will be. Personalize landing pages and gate information behind contact submission forms. When visitors exchange their contact information for the content they need, you can reach out directly to primed leads to continue the conversation with human-to-human touchpoints.

    No matter the state of digital transformation, strong customer sentiment around digital banking is unlikely to wane. In fact, consumers are likely to expect better and better digital experiences from financial institutions as technology becomes an even bigger part of everyday life. Traditional banks that focus on creating exceptional digital customer experience based on human connection will thrive.

    This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.

    Instagram stands out as the shining star of social media platforms. While Facebook still reigns supreme and TikTok grows, Instagram is quickly catching up fast with more than 2 billion users worldwide.

    With users under age 34 making up nearly 60 percent of this user population, financial services marketers looking to reach younger generations should take note. And with an estimated sum of $68 trillion in wealth expected to transfer from Baby Boomers to Millennials in the next couple of decades, Millennials are a worthwhile target.

    Studies predict that, after inheriting wealth, 80% or more young heirs will seek out a new financial advisor. Considering that 9 in 10 accounts follow at least one business on Instagram and 8 in 10 users find new products and services in the app, it’s a safe bet that Instagram will be a place to influence many Millennials. Wise financial services marketers will meet them where they are with strong Instagram marketing strategies, and the following tips can help:

    1. Focus on paid ads

    Instagram is a visual platform for sharing photos and videos, so it’s important for brand pages to populate their profiles with organic posts. While this presence is important, organic content isn’t what will move the needle on business goals. Financial services aren’t exactly visually interesting, and organic posts tend to have low reach as they only show up in the feeds of a brand’s current followers. Without the ability to include hyperlinks in captions, they also won’t drive any traffic back to your site. If you want to build the type of following needed to generate new business, including paid advertising in your Instagram marketing strategy is your ticket.

    With Instagram advertising, institutions and advisors can target ads to land with exactly the right audience — even outside their follower base — and include links in posts to drive more traffic to the brand. With a specific call to action that directs consumers to learn more about a topic, Instagram ads offer a straight-line path to giving customers the valuable information they desire — in their own time and at their own place. What’s more, Instagram advertising is seamlessly integrated directly into Instagram feeds and stories, creating a smoother user experience all around.

    2. Connect with consumers on a local level

    Instagram marketing on the corporate brand level is a great starting point, but advertising on behalf of your individual advisors can take your strategy to the next level. Think of it this way: If a consumer sees a well-known brand on social media, they might recognize the name, but they won’t feel an intrinsic connection beyond initial familiarity. In contrast, they’ll feel familiarity and an immediate connection when they see a post from an advisor in their own community. Consumers want to build relationships with brands, and a shared community is a great starting point.

    Of course, most advisors and other financial services employees are not experts on how to market the business on Instagram. And marketers know they must keep all social media marketing for their financial institutions compliant to avoid heavy regulatory reprimands. To keep posts compliant, save employees time, and help them build relationships with consumers in their physical communities, financial services marketers can set up and run ads on their behalf.


    3. Micro-target content to your audience

    As big-name brands like Amazon continue to elevate the digital customer experience with seamless customer service, purchasing, and delivery, customer expectations are higher than ever before. When customers evaluate a financial institution, they compare it not only to other organizations in the industry, but also to tech giants in any industry that give them exactly what they need when they need it.

    They expect a high level of personalization and convenience, and Instagram marketing with paid advertising can help you give it to them. Match basic behavioral and geographic data to potential customers on Instagram to target ads, and then track clicks, engagements, and post-click actions. These data points don’t indicate much on their own, but together they offer a rich story about what consumers want. Continually refine your strategy with these data points in mind to deliver the kind of highly personalized experiences your audiences want on Instagram.

    With a large Millennial user base that engages actively with brands online and the ability to target highly personalized ads to exactly the right audiences, Instagram is a must-have in any financial services marketing strategy. To learn more about how Instagram marketing can work to drive your business forward, download our guide to building stronger customer relationships on Instagram for free today.

    “If you build it, they will come.” 

    While this advice may work in fictional baseball movies, it’s a bad strategy for building your Facebook business page following. 

    Successfully growing your page likes and follows requires ongoing attention, but it pays off. 

    More followers indicates greater popularity and trust in your brand and also means more eyeballs on your content.

    Follow these tips to start growing your following today. 

    1. Share meaningful content. Before posting anything on your page, make sure it provides value to your audience. When you do this consistently, your existing followers will share it with their friends, attracting more followers. As you plan your content strategy, think about the topics you can speak to with authority. Then look for gaps in the content already being shared with your audience. Where these two intersect is a great place to focus your thought leadership efforts. 

    2. Be consistent. It goes without saying that consistency in voice, tone and style should be inherent in any marketing message. As you work to grow your Facebook page following, it’s also important to aim for consistency in when and how often you post content. When your content quality, quantity or schedule isn’t consistent, it can confuse your audience. Staying on a schedule will improve the experience you deliver and build your business’s credibility and reputation. Use a tool like Denim Social’s Analytics to test and monitor when engagement is at its highest, and design your content schedule accordingly.

    3. Invite friends. One of the quickest, most efficient ways to start driving awareness and growing your audience is to invite your friends to follow your page. Remember, your friends have friends, and they might be interested in following your business and your new page.

    4. Run ads. A surefire way to grow your following is to run Facebook ads. Ads are an effective tool for promoting your page, boosting your posts, getting more leads, increasing conversions and performing a number of other actions. Keep in mind, however, that it may not always be in your best interest to grow your following just for the sake of a bigger number. You want to attract people who are interested in your products and services (and, in turn, more likely to engage with your content). Using audience targeting strategies will help you reach the right consumer with the right message.

    A Facebook business page is an easy and effective way to grow your brand awareness and credibility. Although it’s not as simple as set-it-and-forget-it, if you follow the tips outlined above, you will be well on your way to growing your Facebook fan base. ‍If you need help engaging your audience on social media, get in touch with us today.

    Known as the professional social networking platform, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for social selling, allowing your team to foster strategic customer relationships and build credibility. An important part of your online brand, your LinkedIn profile is a key source of information for people looking to learn more about you.

    A strong LinkedIn profile creates opportunities for meaningful connections and interactions with other professionals. But how do you make LinkedIn a successful part of your marketing strategy? Well, for starters, you need to build trust. Use the following best practices to do just that.

    1.) Add professional profile and cover photos. According to LinkedIn, a professional headshot makes your profile 21x more likely to be viewed, and profiles with photos get a 40% better message response rate. For best results, upload JPEG or PNG images sized as follows:

    • Profile photo: 400x400 pixels
    • Cover photo: 1584x396 pixels

    Pro Tip: Bookmark our Up-to-Date Social Media Sizing & Resource Guide to optimize your images on every social media platform.

    2. Write a compelling headline and summary. Your headline and summary should clearly and succinctly state who you are and why someone should connect with you.

    • Headline: More than simply your job title, your headline should answer these two questions: 
    • Who do you help?
    • How do you help?
    • Summary: Use the following framework to write a compelling professional summary:
    • Paragraph 1: In three sentences or less, what is your value prop to your prospective customers? Reiterate your purpose from your headline.
    • Paragraph 2: In three sentences or less, how do you help customers achieve results?
    • Paragraph 3: In three sentences or less, what is your call-to-action for the prospective customer?

    Pro Tip: In your headline and summary, be sure to include keywords prospective customers might search for.

    3. Engage frequently and consistently. Every week, apply consistent effort to LinkedIn to build credibility and keep content relevant and valuable for customers. Below is checklist of activities we recommend performing on a weekly basis:

    • Post relevant content: Check your content library or search for trending topics in the LinkedIn search bar. You can find some great recent inspiration from others in your field.
    • Post/schedule content at the right time: Generally, the best time to post on LinkedIn is Tuesday through Thursday between 10 and 11 a.m. Content posted in the evenings and on weekends tends to get less engagement. Check out this guide in our Help Center for more information on when to post on various social media channels.
    • Seek recommendations from customers and share success stories: What’s better than telling your networks how great you are? Someone else saying it for you! Positive testimonials, endorsements and reviews go a long way in building your credibility.
    • Check likes, follows, shares, hashtags and comments. Be sure to engage and respond as appropriate. Set weekly or monthly goals for growth and track progress.
    • Grow your network: Join relevant groups in your industry to gain customer insights about needs and interests, follow influencers and connect with others.

    Pro tip: Add a 30-minute weekly recurring event on your calendar to go through the above checklist.

    LinkedIn should be an essential part of your team’s social selling strategy. Stay visible and build trust with consistency and an optimized profile. 
    Looking for a quick reference for all of this information? Check out this infographic.


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