Financial companies and online communities

A new report by ComBlu, titled “The State of Online Branded Communities”, yields some interesting (if limited) information regarding different industries’ success at building online social networking communities.

The report analyzes 45 large companies and 135 communities from nine industries and evaluates their effectiveness in:

1. Providing a meaningful experience for members

2. Integrating their brand strategies across multiple
communities and social media

3. Taking advantage of best practices to strengthen
customer engagement.

According to the study, the best performing brands facilitate conversations on topics that are interesting to the customer, and actually have a strategy for what to do with feedback and opinions. They use a thought-out, systematic approach to community building and integrating social media tactics. On the other hand, the brands that perform poorly are those that are still in the “experimental” faze, treat social media efforts as one-off tactics, offer few ways for members to engage, and fail to interact on personal or meaningful level. Basically, the brands that perform poorly lack strategy and planning.

So how are financial services doing? About average compared to the other industries studied. However, one must remember that the results for the financial industry are based on the analysis of only four monolithic banks and one credit card company. Therefore an inevitably limited picture is painted that doesn’t represent the diversity of the industry.

The report finds that: “Financial services takes a more focused and conservative approach to community. This disciplined approach seems to have curtailed innovation and activity within the various venues they have established.”

Banks take a conservative approach to most things, so this statement makes sense. They are generally uncomfortable with being the first at things, using untested methods, tackling new technologies, etc. The good sign is that the financial companies surveyed generally have cohesive strategies, and also exhibit decent levels of community activity and social media integration. However, I have a feeling that these five companies perform better than average. Many smaller banks or credit unions lack the knowledge and resources that USAA or Bank of America have. That is why this report, while informative, does not give the best picture of how effective the whole financial industry is at using social media.

Follow CBC and PSST! on Twitter

You may already be following our CEO Jeff on Twitter (http://twitter.com/jeff_stephens), but we’ve also created separate Twitter accounts for CBC and PSST! Get insightful updates on marketing, branding and financial industry developments by following us at: http://twitter.com/creative_brand and http://twitter.com/psst_marketing.

We’ll also let you know when new blogs are posted or if we find cool, relevant stuff online. But don’t worry, we’ll never update on what we had for breakfast or how bad traffic is.

Word of mouth brings people to Pabst Brewing’s rescue

Crowdsourcing works best when it’s for a cause/brand with enthusiastic supporters (duh). Budget beer label, Pabst Blue Ribbon, happens to be just such a brand. Pabst is not good beer, in fact, it’s terrible. But it’s cheap, and has gained a nation-wide hipster following, responsible for resurrecting the floundering brand: “The beer experienced a sales revival in the early 2000’s after a two decade-long slump, largely due to its increasing popularity among the 20-something demographic in cities such as Portland, Oregon and New York City. As a result, it has become popularly associated with the contemporary hipster counterculture.” (Wikipedia).

Now Pabst Brewing is up for sale, so two agencies pooled their resources and create the site buyabeercompany.com to find people to collectively buy Pabst… for $300 million. Who better to own the brand than the people who love it most? I doubt it will succeed, after all they still need to raise over $294 million. But it’s great word of mouth marketing for Pabst and the two agencies involved, (despite the fact that you have to look really, really hard to find their names on the site, every knows who produced it.)

Buyers can choose from different pledge levels, ranging from “Bottle Membership” at $5.00 to “The BrewMeister” at $250,000. If a person pledges now and the $300 million price is later actually reached, they will be notified and their pledge collected. In addition to getting simple bragging rights, each new Pabst owner will receive a crowdsourced certificate of ownership suitable for framing, and more importantly, enough beer to match their pledge.

So far news of the microsite has been spreading by word of mouth alone, and to my knowledge there is no advertising involved. Social media outlets have been important in the effort, as have other websites and blogs. I hope that the $300 million asking price is reached, because that would be an incredible accomplishment. But even if it isn’t, this is still a good promotion.

/Maija

Made you look

I recently saw these two great buzzworthy microsites passed around on Facebook. Both are not terribly disguised shameless self promotions, but because they’re both über fun, they’ve had no difficulty getting themselves forwarded from friend to friend. What better brand advocate than an eager army of volunteers?

The first is a microsite run by UK based design studio Young. It’s called “Learn Something New Everyday” and presents fun, fascinating (but overall useless) facts daily in bold, colorful hand-drawn graphics. Neat little tidbits such as “David Bowie has a spider species named after him” and “House centipedes prefer crawling on women than men” are so delightfully useless that one can’t help but share them with a friend. A tastefully placed link to the studio behind the magic on the “Learn Something” homepage gives the agency much more traffic as well as positioning it as creative and innovative.

The second viral mirosite is a fun little interactive game called “Zombify Yourself” that promotes the currently-in-theaters flick Zombieland. Through a few easy steps, you can turn yourself into a ghoulish zombie and then oh-so conveniently upload your picture to Facebook or Twitter. With hundreds of new profile pictures resulting every day from the “Zombify Yourself” site, word of mouth continues to spread about this low budget horror film.

Just to fun examples that show you don’t need a lot of money to reach a lot of people!

/Irina

Mashable: 18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer

Hat tip to our friend David Gerbino for posting about word of mouth marketing in banking, and pointing us to this article specifically. A couple of weeks ago, Mashable.com posted an article called 18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer, written by Clay McDaniel of social media marketing agency Spring Creek Group. Clay did a great job summarizing many truly key tools for word of mouth marketing.

Sure, you know all about Twitter, Facebook and probably Google Alerts, but are you leveraging BackType or Trendrr? Probably not. It’s a big world of social media tools out there, folks! This article is a great way to stay up on what social media tools are at your bank or credit union’s disposal.

One important point to make, here, though (and one that David and I elaborated on in the comments of his post) is that social media and word of mouth marketing are not one in the same. Social media is one of the many forms of word of mouth marketing. Yes, it’s become an absolutely indispensable and primary component of WOM for banks and credit unions, but it’s just one of the possibilities. Don’t forget that a comprehensive bank or credit union word of mouth marketing plan would involve many offline tactics as well as online. For a few important definitions, you may want to check out our word of mouth marketing glossary.

/Jeff

Community FirstBank launches buzzworthy and very smiley promotion

Community FirstBank in Charleston, SC recently launched ‘Have You Found Your Smile Today?’ – a fun and buzzworthy promotion where each weekday, October 8th through October 30th, $100 is hidden around the city and clues are given via radio, Facebook and Twitter as to where the money is located. Participants in this mini scavenger hunt must correctly decode the clues to find out where the day’s “smiley bank” is located. Inside the grinning yellow ball are instructions on where to pick up the $100. New clues are added each day until someone finds the smiley bank.

In addition to giving out a total of $1700 in prize money throughout October, anyone who opens a checking account at one of the bank’s six branches before November 4th gets a free gift and is entered to win $500. Considering the small size of the bank and the limited time frame, one’s odds in the drawing aren’t that bad.

The promotion is a good example of how word of mouth marketing / social networking and traditional media can complement each other. Clues are given out on four radio stations, in addition to the bank’s Twitter feed and Facebook page. Community FirstBank has over 400 fans on Facebook – pretty successful compared to most financial institutions. I’m glad to see that their page doesn’t just repeat the same information as their website. Instead, the information is value adding: daily clues, photos of winners, community news and events.

For a promotion, ‘Have You Found Your Smile Today?’ is pretty inexpensive and was executed with the limited resources of a small bank. Regardless, it seems to be getting a lot of people’s attention in the Charleston area. Hopefully in addition to generating excitement about free cash, it will also generate some new account openings.

Estee Lauder pimps your profile

I am a fan of Estee Lauder’s latest promotion, which I think will end up being a successful paring of social media and interactive marketing. The high-end cosmetics brand is offering free makeovers and photo shoots to women at select department store locations across the country, starting at Bloomingdale’s in New York. No purchase is necessary, but shoppers will have to approach the counter, chat with a representative, and wear the brand’s cosmetics to participate. After having makeup applied by an expert, a photographer takes pictures that the person can use on their social networking profiles. They will even touch up the photos before delivering printed and digital versions to the lucky lady. (Though considering this Estee Lauder photoshop disaster, I don’t know if you can trust them to properly use the airbrush tool.)

So how is this a successful use of social media? Well, each of the profile pictures will have Estee Lauder’s logo watermarked in the background, thus appearing on hundreds – if not thousands – of women’s social networking pages for free. (This is, of course, unless those women know how to photoshop the logo out.) The entire promotion plays to people’s vanity. Who doesn’t want to get a makeover and then have hot professional photos taken of themselves? It essentially allows women to play at being models – a very buzzworthy idea. I’ve told several people about it and am keeping tabs on if the promotion comes to our local Saks.

/Maija

Join us for our upcoming Word of Mouth Marketing webinar!

If you’ve been an avid reader of this blog and our sister blog, The Story, you know that we’ve been preaching the use of Word of Mouth Marketing tactics for years – but you still may not fully realize how your bank or credit union marketing department can use word of mouth to increase your results.

Well, reading this blog is a great way to start learning.

Another great way to learn is to join us for Jeff’s upcoming webinar, Bottle the Buzz: Word of Mouth Marketing for Credit Unions, hosted by the Marketing Association of Credit Unions on Weds, Oct. 21 at 1pm Pacific.

During this hour-long webinar, Jeff will discuss word of mouth basics and shed some light on how it can be more effective than traditional media, considering both cost and trustworthiness.

Word of Mouth marketing is an excellent method of gaining customer loyalty and reaching your target audience in a compelling way.

Check out Jeff’s webinar on October 21st to learn more about how you can put this effective form of marketing to work for your credit union or bank.

First Direct’s new microsite serves up transparency and honesty

First Direct, the UK internet/telephone bank and subsidiary of HSBC, is leveraging its positive word of mouth reputation with a new microsite that highlights people’s sentiments about the bank – both good and bad. The Marketing Communications Manager for First Direct, Natalie Cowen, says the microsite is, “a very open and transparent way of projecting the voice of our customers.”

The microsite gathers mentions of the First Direct brand from social media feeds, blogs and message boards, and displays them for all to see. Visitors can also post their comments directly on the site in the Talking Point area. There is no one else in the industry that is facilitating public conversation about their brand in such an honest and open manner. It is clear that First Direct is embracing the principles of social media and word of mouth marketing, and their forward-thinking approach to communication should do well to differentiate them from the masses.

First Direct understand that their new business comes largely from customer referrals, and that referrals are more believable when people hear both positive and negative testimonials. In addition to posting them on the microsite, the bank will be taking a selection of people’s comments and using them in a print, digital out of home and online campaign.

I admire First Direct for allowing the site to be a real-time aggregate source of positive and negative public feedback. It would be daring of any company to do this, but it’s especially so for a bank because the entire financial industry has received so much criticism over the past year. The First Direct brand is known for its exemplary customer service and for having a vocal fan base. This microsite is indicative of how much the bank trusts its customers to spread positive word of mouth. How many financial institutions can say that? Certainly not Bank of America.

/Maija

Newsflash: not having the same name as other companies will make you stand out

The financial services industry really needs to learn this. Today’s post on Andy Sernovitz’s blog, “Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That” reminded me of how many financial institutions share the same name. For example, Google search “First Bank” – you will come up with several banks on page 1 with that name. Hardly a recipe for standing out, is it? Besides just being forgettable, there are other issues associated with sharing a common name:

1. Only one bank gets to have a easy-to-remember URL of www.firstbank.com. The others have to settle for weird variations, which are more difficult to recall.

2. When a consumer is looking for the First Bank in their area, they are going to pull up a long list of results and perhaps have to go through several sites before they find the right one.

3. It’s hard to have a differentiated and uniquely positioned bank brand when your name, or similar variations of it, are shared by other financial institutions.

Could this literally affect the amount of business a bank gets? Perhaps. Sernovitz asks this of himself, “Does Andy Sernovitz get more referrals than social media expert Peter Kim because there are few more Kims than Sernovitzs out there?”. Something to think about!

You don’t have to name your bank anything super crazy to stand out, it just needs to be something that is:

1. Different enough that you’re the only one
2. Simple enough that everyone can say and spell it