Here’s What Credit Unions and Banks Should Look Out for In Digital Marketing

Since its initial emergence, digital marketing has taken over the advertising industry by storm. This is evident by the budgets set aside for digital and TV ads, the former enjoying a bigger share of the marketing budgets in various institutions including credit unions and banks.

While the power of digital marketing cannot be underestimated, its effectiveness is debatable depending on the task at hand.

This article dives into the various potholes . Read on to find out why digital marketing should be merged with other marketing tools for the best results.

1.    Digital Marketing Isn’t Always Right for Every Job

Digital marketing is a powerful tool. There’s no doubt about it. However, it’s not always right for all jobs. Just as there’re numerous tools in a toolbox, digital marketing is only one of many. You still have digital media, conventional media, events, direct mail and many other tools you can use in your marketing plan.

The tool you settle on should align with your current needs and goals. Who is your target audience and how do they access this information? You see, there’s what is called a customer’s journey which you can tap into by using a mixture of radio and TV, both of which are conventional media.

On the other hand, you have social media which works well to get a customer into the purchase stage from the interest stage. However, this journey will vary depending on the product, the audience and the category. Therefore, you need to internalize this journey lest you end up spending money with no tangible results.

There are instances where digital marketing works well. For example, if customers already know about your brand and have a positive perception about you, you can trade this to get actual purchases for your products.

There are also other scenarios where digital labors are effective to achieve certain goals. One such scenario is the brand building which requires you to establish an emotional connection with a potential customer. Apart from TV, it’s quite difficult to build such connections through banner ads and the like. Therefore, digital should be part of a bigger strategy which includes other forms of marketing for quality results.

2.    Digital Takes Up More of Your Budget Than Required

When digital advertising first hit the scene, everyone wanted a piece of it. Yet before then, no one used it. However, with time, this method of marketing took a nosedive in terms of bargaining power.

This is why.

Once credit union, online lenders and credit matching options like nation21loans.com , started using digital for their marketing, bank Z also followed suit and allocated a significant amount of money toward digital. After sales in credit union X fell from the sky, they went back to conventional media, but you’ll never hear of it.

You can track the amount used on digital marketing and compare that against the returns to see whether it makes sense. However, digital tends to receive more money than is required.

The question that arises at this point is: how much should you allocate toward digital? The answer is simple. Take time to understand your goals, the intended audience, and which media they use.

The exact amount will vary from one institution to another since the customers and goals differ. Overall, if you spend over 70 percent on digital, then you might want to review your budget.

3.    You Aren’t Reaching Everyone

Are you really reaching everyone you think you are? Well, all indications suggest that you aren’t. In fact, you’re reaching way fewer potential customers and these are the reasons:

✓    Click or impression fraud

✓    Ad blocking

According to data from The Financial Brand, the number of consumers using ad blocking software rose by at least 38 percent in 2017. Click fraud, which is the use of auto-bots to generate clicks, takes credit for this rise.

Companies which use automated techniques face the highest risk. Research shows out of the $27 billion used on programmatic advertising worldwide in 2016, about 29 percent of the figure was due to fake traffic. This represents about $7.8 billion in wasted money.

One of the solutions to this problem is for advertisers to work with advertising sites instead of dealing with programs and advertising agencies. However, this is out of reach for a number of financial institutions which have restricted budgets.

4.    Potential Damage to Reputation and the Brand

Artificial intelligence has brought a lot to the marketing industry. However, it lacks a human touch in terms of relevance and context. For example, you wouldn’t want your ads displayed on a porn website, would you?

For this reason, some advertisers have resorted to using a black-label and white-label approach to sift through the various potential advertising sites. Some have slashed their advertising portfolios by almost 80 percent, yet they’ve experienced no decrease in their sales.

5.    Ineffective Intrusive Marketing

While a huge number of potential consumers spend a significant amount of time on their devices, a number of advertisers fail to understand their consumers by settling on annoying pop-up ads. Most of the time, the ads are out of context and irrelevant to the consumer.

It is not always that consumers go online to buy products. There are varying reasons including research, socializing with friends and much more. This is the same thing fueling the rise of ad blockers. Google announced plans of blocking annoying ads with ad blockers in the Chrome browser.

Marketers need to enhance the ad experience and make it interesting to consumers. Give the customers what they need and want, but this will only happen once you understand your target audience.

This is where creativity comes in. Create engaging content so that the consumer can interact with it and even share within their circles.

Nevertheless, the bottom line remains: you should strive to be creating content which is within the context and relevant to the consumer.

In a Nutshell

With advancements in technology, conventional media can no longer meet the growing demand. On the other hand, the digital space alone cannot meet the set marketing goals of any company.

The best way to go about marketing is by combining both methods. However, the most important element is the relevance and context of the message as well as how it is delivered to the consumer that will determine the uptake of the brand.

On top of that, seek the services of professionals in the industry and focus on building a brand which people will relate to and like. Figure out your audience and then give them a reason to choose you over your competitor.