Driving Sales, Nurturing Journeys: Unveiling the Power of SOCi for Financial Services Companies

  As a financial services company, two main goals are to win new clients and retain existing ones. A research study by Salesforce found that customers want businesses to understand their requirements and expectations, while 66% feel they are often treated as numbers.    Many firms don't have the time and resources to put extra effort into marketing strategies that can boost ROI. Marketing technology (MarTech) solutions like SOCi can help make the marketing process more manageable for the financial services industry, increasing customer satisfaction.    It's a win-win! This blog explains what makes a strong digital marketing strategy, why it's essential, and how SOCi can help your firms get there.   

The Key Components of a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy 

  A successful digital marketing strategy has three main components: search, social, and reputation management. While many companies may focus on their social media efforts or online reputation individually, optimizing all three elements to form a solid customer experience is more impactful    Regardless of when a customer starts their journey with your firm, they should be able to find important information about your firm easily and feel seen and heard.   

1. Improve How You’re Found 

  In a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, SOCi found that 80% of people search for online businesses weekly, with 32% doing so daily or multiple times a day.    

    Do you have a pulse on how you appear in relevant online searches? Your firm's top-notch social media and reputation management count for little if your company isn't visible online.   If your firm isn't easily discoverable online, you risk losing business opportunities, hindering growth, and overlooking potential clients. How can you ensure your firm's online visibility?   Updated and accurate local listings and local pages are the best way to improve your financial services companies' online presence.    If you're unfamiliar, local listings are your firm's online profiles. They often include business information like your name, address, phone number (NAP), and a link to your website, as seen in the example below. Our guide to optimizing your local listings provides additional details on developing a solid strategy for your local listings.   

  Local pages are search-optimized brand pages at the local level that deliver a consistent presence across your business locations and improve your local search visibility — our definitive guide to building local pages shares more details.       

How SOCi Can Help With Search

  So, where does SOCi come into the picture?    SOCi has solutions like SOCi Listings and SOCi Local Pages that can help you manage your listings and local pages at each branch or for every agent!    Combined, these tools allow financial services companies to deliver a search-optimized and localized experience, resulting in the following: 

• Improved local search rankings 
• Brand consistency across locations
• Local conversion funnel optimization  
• Increased local foot traffic and revenue 

 

2. Communicate With Clients Regularly 

  While ensuring your financial services company is visible is one part of the marketing equation, connecting with your target audience online is equally important. Your firm can do this through social media, especially at the local level.   Consider what your social media presence looks like today. Which social platforms is your firm most active on? Do you have individual accounts for each business location? What kind of content are you posting regularly?    Reflect on your social media strategy to pinpoint your financial services company's strengths and areas for improvement.When it comes to social media, localized content performs 12x better than non-localized content — emphasizing the need for brands to post content at the local level.    While the type of content you post is important, how you interact with your audience on social media is also important. The same survey we mentioned earlier found that 82% of consumers say they sometimes post comments and questions on online profiles for businesses.    Surprisingly, only 31% say the brand responded quickly to their last comment or question, and only 57% got any response at all.  

    Our Localized Social Content Guide for Financial Services Companies provides a more detailed look at how to create a strong local social media strategy.    

     

How SOCi Can Help With Social

  SOCi's social solution is the most comprehensive compliance solution financial services companies can leverage to scale social media management.    SOCi Social allows financial companies to: 

• Decrease potential compliance risk with keyword-based policies and real-time alerts
• Save time with automated content and brand supervision
• Streamline auditing with a complete record of social media activity across every location

 

3. Remain Reputable 

  Ninety-eight percent of consumers feel that reviews are essential when making purchase decisions. Similarly, reviews influence 85% of consumers in discovering a local financial institution. Even if your firm is easily found online and engages with customers on social media, a weak reputation management strategy can still cost you clients.   While many think of a brand's reputation as its average star rating on local listings, a comprehensive reputation management strategy must go beyond that.    When considering reputation management, financial services companies must consider the following: 

• Volume of reviews
• Review response rate
• Review response time 
• The personalization of review responses 
• Average star rating over time

  Encountering negative reviews is inevitable. However, it's vital to view them as opportunities for improvement. How your firm responds and utilizes the feedback is what truly matters.``   Ensure clarity within your financial services firm. Know who is responsible for monitoring and responding to reviews and discuss expectations.    Our Multi-Location Marketer's Guide to Online Reputation Management provides more detail on creating a robust reputation management strategy.       

 

How SOCi Can Help With Reputation Management 

  SOCi has a tool to help your financial services company manage its online reputation at scale. SOCi Reviews allows brands to manage, monitor, and personalize review responses in one place.    It also provides sentiment analysis and trends, allowing your business to make informed improvements based on feedback from your reviews.     

How SOCi Supports Financial Services Companies

  Understanding which areas of localized marketing your firm must focus on to win both current clients and those in younger generations is critical. As you can see, SOCi is here to help you every step of the way.    We've helped financial services companies like Mutual of Omaha increase their leads from Google by 300%+ since implementing SOCi. First Montana Bank saw similar success, increasing their clicks on listings and calls to local branches by 20% YoY after using SOCi.     SOCi is the CoMarketing Cloud for multi-location businesses. SOCi empowers regulated brands, like financial services companies, to drive more business to independent branches and agents — all while adhering to your compliance needs and regulatory guidelines.   We're layering our CoMarketing Cloud with SOCi Genius, which uses advanced data science, best-in-class generative AI, and "on-brand" training models to bolster your localized marketing strategy.    SOCi Genius is your data scientist and marketer in one platform for each location.   With this cutting-edge technology, you can increase local brand visibility and engagements to drive more traffic and clients to your local branches and agents.    Request a demo today to learn how SOCi can help your firm master its digital marketing strategy, resulting in increased sales and more happy clients!