BFSI brands ditch the dry and boring image on social media platforms!

Gone are the days when financial services were either for the elite, sold door to door or were confined to the basic deposit-withdraw once-a-month cycle. BFSI brands on social media have the world at their feet if they get their SM game right.

Common misconceptions dictate that BFSI brands on social media can never be fun, or engaging with their customers for the fear of coming off as juvenile and untrustworthy, which is a grossly mistaken outlook. Instagram is one such platform to be seriously underutilized by BFSI brands.

On the other hand, Facebook, although significantly popular with brands across sectors, so often finds its true potential to be underutilized. A stellar Facebook marketing activity saw Aegon Life script one of their most successful social media campaigns in India.

Here’s how BFSI brands on social media can alter their approach, fine-tune their marketing strategy and emerge triumphant with improved engagement and targeting and reap the benefits of low-cost lead generation, meaningful relationship building with customers and brand awareness.

You can never go wrong with Facebook

Facebook is not only the world’s largest social media platform, but it’s comprehensive and extremely advanced advertising options backed up by a valuable wealth of data make it possible for brands, regardless of their revenue status or category to reach an astonishingly well-defined target audience.

That’s exactly how Aegon Life Insurance repositioned their brand through Facebook, communicating their distinction from other insurance brands, that of simplicity, through Facebook’s Video Ads. Achieving a 2X brand awareness, coupled with an 87% low CPL using Lead Ads. Aegon Life CMO Shamik Banerjee swears by Facebook Ads that helped the brand achieve their objectives.

"Our challenge was reaching a specific market segment defined by demographics with our core brand messaging of “Simple Makes Sense”. Facebook Ads helped us in terms of brand relevance as well as performance marketing. We’re looking forward to even more successful Facebook campaigns in the future.” - Shamik Banerjee, Chief Marketing Officer, Aegon Life

Instagram - different gun, same bullets.

Another member of the Facebook family that employs the same wealth of data but offers a distinct mode of visual communication absent on most social media platforms.

First off, it’s aggregated towards images and videos, making it a much more fun and engaging place to be. Agreed, brands in the BFSI sector don’t have the same liberty as other brands on social media do, but there is certainly some room to manoeuvre.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HDFC Bank (@hdfcbank)

Like how HDFC Bank capitalized on their partnership with Jumanji, a Hollywood film, and promoted their mobile wallet app, Payzapp. The brand added a funny and contextual caption to a scene from the film.

YouTube is seriously underrated and underutilized

YouTube isn’t confined to music videos, pranks and other pop-culture paraphernalia, but is one of the best places for BFSI brands to work their magic and forge a connection with their consumers.

What is the one thing that consumers find off-putting about banking, investment and other financial procedures? Confusion.

The formalities and paperwork do deter many from availing your brand’s services and just like a smartphone, or even makeup, ‘How To’ tutorial videos on YouTube are extremely popular.

Further, BFSI brands can indulge in rich storytelling, leveraging the video platform to its optimum level. Given, there must be a number of content creators catering to this specific niche but when it comes directly from a brand, the trust factor is highly decisive. DBS Bank’s award-winning Chilli Paneer campaign was highly appreciated by the audience for their insightful creativity.

LinkedIn is the real deal

If you’re looking for like-minded professionals in the same industry, subordinates and prospective acquaintances, or to be specific, agents, advisors and people, knowing whom, would do a great deal of good to your brand are all on LinkedIn.

Way back in 2012, Citi was one of the first brands to execute something so innovative that it could be termed no less than revolutionary. Teaming up with LinkedIn, Citi took the initiative to highlight and address the concerns and problems faced by women at the workplace by creating Connect, an alternative platform for professional women to share and discuss their thoughts with each other.

Source - 5 creative LinkedIn campaigns every marketer needs to know

With LinkedIn now pushing towards keeping their core intact whilst pushing for more social-ness, it is a great time for you to start leveraging the world’s largest social media platform and start connecting with professionals, uncovering new leads and opportunities.

People read reviews

Consumers read, trust and believe reviews from people like them more often than they might admit, and the abundance or lack of good reviews WILL affect your brand. True, the word of mouth about a brand is constituted not only by their social media acumen, but by the actual end product, but addressing the concerns and complaints of your consumers on social media goes a long way.

77% of potential customers will conduct a background check on your business and what they read will determine their action since 88% of them trust what they read.

Connect through Video

First off, video is the preferred mode of content dissemination on social media among brands and the number is as high as 81% in 2018. Second, for financial institutions, a certain degree of trust is necessary for customers to place their faith in a company.

Combining these pearls of wisdom earn you the valuable insight that can enable you to build trust through visual storytelling and forge an everlasting bond with your customers.