As more people rely exclusively on social media channels to find financial services, digital platforms’ have grown as an effective channel for two-way communication.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social avenues offer various opportunities to businesses operating in the financial sector. It’s easier than ever to collect and analyze the data from candid and trackable customer feedback.
And this is why social listening has become a viable service for customer support and digital marketing for financial institutions. A robust social media monitoring strategy helps you operate accurately and not on assumptions or guesswork. It allows brands to gauge real consumer data and analyze it to maximize ROI.
However, many financial institutions have capitalized on social media as an analytical and engagement instrument that benefits both parties.
Creating a useful and engaging plan for social media forums for financial institutions can be challenging because many consumers depend on yet are hesitant to trust banks.
Banking is positioned as second to last when it comes to reputation as compared to 15 other industries. Trust is the second-highest influencing factor for customers when they want to choose a bank. Therefore, it is crucial to leverage the power of social media with a solid strategy.
Here is what social media monitoring is and how it can benefit financial institutions.
What Is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring allows you to gauge your digital platform and give you insights into your brand’s perception, your competition, and industry.
In short, you can know about the following things:
- Know what people say about your business/brand and its services.
- Track mentions on social media on key digital channels.
- Identify ongoing market trends.
- Identify and deal with the crises beforehand.
- Analyze the key metrics that valuable to your company.
- Share customized performance reports with stakeholders and clients.
Ultimately, social listening lets you find conversations and discussions that occur almost every day on different social media platforms about your business. They also provide insightful information about your brand and products to your communication and marketing pros.
After all, ample discussions are happening digitally. Thanks to the technology, you can track all these talks and identify those important to you and your financial institution.
Why is it Important for the Financial Institutions?
Many industries have increased their digital ad spend, and financial service providers are no different. Financial institutions have increased their digital ad spending by 9.7%, which makes it up to 19.62 billion dollars.
Organic social media has also become progressively imperative to financial services companies. More and more people have started to utilize financial services. The Digital 2020 data reveals that Baby Boomers embrace both mobile payments and social media like never before.
This makes it paramount for the financial sectors to develop a well-versed strategy for their social media channels and gauge their impact and effectiveness. Financial service providers need to leverage the social media data effectively.
Here are some of the ways how social media monitoring can benefit financial institutions.
Strengthen Relationships with your Clients
Building relationships is a strategic way to use social media monitoring for your financial institution. And when it’s about money, customers want to deal with the financial service providers they trust and know.
Essentially, social media helps you maintain relationships with your audience and clients, especially when it’s challenging to get in touch with them in person.
Monitoring your digital platforms allows you better to understand your customers and the industry as a whole. You learn about your customers’ opinions as they express their thoughts on social media candidly and speak their minds.
According to the Putnam Investments survey, 74% of consultants said they used social network’s direct messaging to communicate with prospects and clients. 94% of them have started to gained new assets.
From a financial institution’s standpoint, they get to evaluate their audience’s goals and challenges without the need to ask them explicitly or make them fill time-consuming polls or surveys. For instance, LinkedIn is an effective medium to learn about an individual’s career changes.
Similarly, following client’s and prospect’s business pages can provide you valuable insights into their experiences as well as annoyances. You can create meaningful relationships with them by addressing their concerns and prioritizing your clients’ needs over making a sale.
Track Innovations and Trends
Smart financial businesses pave the way by bringing innovation in how they serve their customers. This means that they make significant investments in transformational technologies and projects. But this is the iceberg’s visible part.
Financial institutions must identify critical advancements to build credibility and inspire their clients and the market.
Inspiration begins with the capability to provide a seamless customer experience. For financial institutions, this also indicates to master the latest technologies to ensure that their clients’ loyalty and trust in them.
Social listening and monitoring tools notify you in real-time about the current market trends so you can stay ahead of the competition and the topics that interest your audience.
Identify, Gauge, and Leverage Opportunities
Sponsoring events is a strategic way to increase awareness about your brand, especially for FinTech startups. However, it is vital to ensure that you invest your money, time, and resources in the right events and target the right audiences.
One way to make sure that you target the right people is to see how your competitors have sponsored their past events and analyze what can work best for you and your company.
Additionally, you can also measure and quantify the impact of past events that can interest your intended audience and analyze its digital impact. Does the event content resonate with your company values? And is it targeted towards your core audience?
With social media monitoring, you are able to identify and gauge the impact of critical events before the competition, which gives you a heads up to get in touch with and build a relationship with the planners.
Better Competitive Analysis
The data from social media monitoring reveals the percentage of discussions on digital channels about a specific company or brand compared to the competition. It also shows how people perceive your brand compared to the competitors’ and what they say about it.
Social media monitoring enables financial firms to perform and gauge sentiment analysis and see how it differs from other brands. Moreover, you can also know about your audience’s locations, languages, and social media sources.
Besides, if you are a new startup in the financial sector, social listening tools make it considerably easier to comprehend your brand’s performance in comparison to other FinTech startups.
Social media analytics lets you know better about the customers’ preferences and the reason for other brands’ services. That way, you can invest your time and efforts to work on the elements such as upgrading your banking apps and gauge how to get customers interested in your innovative offerings.
Leverage Influencer Marketing
Influencers or content creators on social media platforms cater to a niche business or market. They usually compensate by some monetary benefit or other incentives to promote a specific brand. Many financial institutions already leverage influencer marketing. It’s an effective strategy that helps you:
- Build and maintain trust.
- Gain credibility.
- Reach out to diverse audience groups.
- Share inspiring stories.
90% of marketers generate better or comparable revenue than other digital channels.
In 2019, businesses spent more than $8 billion to partner with influencers and promoted their products or services through social media, which is predicted to grow by $15 billion by 2022.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Each brand appeals to different types of customers. This implies the importance of having a well-rounded strategy – specifically on social media.
This indicates the importance of being aware of critical discussions and conversations. Use the resulting data to be accessible to address customers’ complaints or concerns and stay connected to a global audience.
Social media analytics make it easy for you to amend your strategies accordingly. You can track the customers’ reactions and get to know about their interests and preferences. As with social listening, you can measure almost anything, even the consequences of your social media actions.
When it comes to financial institutions, they cannot afford to compromise their customers’ satisfaction levels and experience. Besides, they need to gain the trust and credibility that their clients place in their offerings and the brand.
And digitalizing their customer service aspect is one of the most impactful ways to deliver them an exceptional experience. More than ever, customers leverage social media channels to gauge how a brand treats its customers.
Get the Most out of the Online Reviews
94% of consumers check the reviews online before they subscribe to a particular service or decide to purchase something. This is also known as social proof. However, not all reviews regarding a brand are positive.
That said, financial institutions need to make the most of their brand’s online reviews, both good and bad. For instance, if it’s a negative review, you can instantly look into the matter and resolve the specific customer’s complaint.
Essentially, social media monitoring helps you gauge multiple sets of data and its aspects, enabling you to enhance your brand’s service and performance.
Turn the social media data to your advantage by:
- Promptly addressing your customers’ concerns.
- Taking full responsibility for your actions.
Ready to Monitor your Social Media Platforms
Social media has evolved for businesses and individuals alike. Today, brands leverage it to connect and interact with their customers effectively. It’s an excellent way to get in touch with and exchange valuable information. On the other hand, customers also know about their preferred brands’ products and services.
In some cases, people will mention your business in discussions and might not be satisfied with your brand. Other times, they may request assistance or, perhaps worse, start to rant about your brand.
When you identify these messages and take action proactively, you potentially turn the irritated whistleblowers into the customers who feel heard, which ultimately increases your customer retention rate.
An all-inclusive social media monitoring tool like Mentionlytics allows you to comprehend your brand’s overall image and its performance on various digital platforms. Additionally, it helps you gain valuable insights into your customers’ preferences and pain points and incorporate a more customer-centric approach to grow your company.
Mentionlytics, an AI-powered tool, also enables you to gauge your standing among the competition and align your strategies accordingly.
Along with social media forums, you can also track your websites’ performance and effectiveness with precision. Public opinion, brand mentions, smart data collection, reviews, feedback, and more – Mentionlytics is a comprehensive platform that lets you do it all.
Get exclusive insights into your social media platforms with Mentionlytics.
Gather and analyze all Web & Social mentions of your brand
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