Marketing is vital to community banks, but they often lack the resources and staff that national banks do. As a result, community banks must focus on using the power of digital channels to expand their marketing efforts. This requires building a solid foundation with a digital plan that can create brand awareness and return value. The following are five ways to do so.
1. Define your target niche audience
The first step for a successful digital marketing campaign is to define the profiles of the ideal audiences you want to engage. Digital marketing is no longer restricted to demographic and geographic information. Instead, you can target by leveraging audience behavior. For example, you can target new homeowners living in a 25-mile radius around branch offices who have previously visited your website. Targeting niche audiences generates greater response rates and higher ROI.
2. Make your remarketing campaign a success
Remarketing targets people who have spent some time on your website by showing them your tailored ads while they are elsewhere on the web or social media platforms. For example, young professionals are checking your page on car loans. Using the tailored social media ads, you can remind such professionals in your community that you offer great rates and service by getting your auto loan ad in front of them while they’re surfing the web.
3. Make promoted posts work for your brand
Due to the decline in the organic reach of social media posts, community banks should invest in promoted posts to reach their target audiences. Promoted posts are not considered interruption media if your marketing team chooses a number frequent enough to get noticed but not so frequent to turn off potential customers. Tracking how many comments, likes, or shares the post received will let you know if your frequency and content were appropriate. Choosing a post with a history of success ensures it will be popular when promoted.
4. Create effective Google ads with a limited budget
Google Ads is an excellent tool for finding potential customers as your marketing team can target an audience at the time of intention. For example, if a car buyer is looking for auto loan types in ‘auto loans nearby’ and your bank’s ad appears at the top or side of the search engine results page, then you’re timing is perfect. Nonetheless, Google ad performance could fall short if you don’t set a clear objective and plan. It is imperative to use Google’s Keyword Planner to find the right and relevant keywords for your financial products and services.
5. Optimize your marketing message on the landing page
Your team might spend a good deal of effort creating targeted, even dynamic ads that speak directly to the needs of your target audience. But your effort will be unsuccessful if it directs clicks back to generic landing pages that fail to deliver the same targeted and relevant message. Make sure landing page content matches your ad copy and query intent. A good practice is to use similar words and phrases in your ads and landing page headlines, helping reassure visitors that they’ve navigated to the right place.
Conclusion
Community banks can build a successful awareness campaign when used together, remarketing, fine-tuned audience targeting, and other search engine tactics. While paid ads are a large part of every digital marketing strategy, your team must incorporate personalization, customer experience, customer outreach, and improved audience segmentation to improve digital advertising.
Key Takeaways
- Define your target niche audience
- Make your remarketing campaign a success
- Make promoted posts work for your brand
- Create effective Google ads with a limited budget
- Optimize your marketing message on the landing page
