When it comes to banks and financial institutions, social media is one of the most preferred mediums to connect with customers. It is very popular among all age groups and plays a huge role as an influencer. It helps businesses to connect with customers out of the sales process and also with existing customers. Social media can help in improving metrics like customer experience and sales processes, at the same time, driving customer values like loyalty, which in the long run help to retain the customers. It provides you with an opportunity to visualize and connect through personal stories.

Some more ways in which you can leverage social media are highlighted below -

• GAINING POTENTIAL LEADS

  Social media marketing helps to build brand awareness and recognition in the potential market thus getting the market interested in the product.  Apart from offering value directly to customers it also helps to attract potential buyers.

• GAIN ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS

  Social media helps to gain new insights, data, and preferences of customers by looking into what they follow more on the network. The gathered data can then be used to influence the trust and build loyal relationships with the customers, at the same time, influencing leads to turn into customers.

• INTERACTION THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS

  Customers usually interact with financial institutions like credit unions through multiple channels where they are able to consume the same knowledge and information, hence are able to get familiar with it. Hence by ensuring a consistent experience on every channel, the factor of the presence of multiple channels can help to build a trustworthy relationship.

• DEVELOP PERSONAL CONNECTIONS

  Through social media, a credit union can target its posts and videos to the right audience. For example, a lot of financial decisions are connected with the emotional tendencies of the audience(old age, family, children, etc).

It is important for marketing managers to build an effective strategy around social media and to be able to understand how they are performing and how the strategy is contributing to the end result.

Here are the Top Key Performance Indicators that marketing managers should be tracking in order to know and track their performance. We can identify them through the following four sectors-

1. ENGAGED
2. OUTREACH
3. NUMBER OF LEADS
4. NUMBER OF CONVERSIONS

ENGAGED

If as a bank or a financial institution you are posting and circulating content on social media, you would definitely want to keep track of the audience who is engaged with your platforms and is aware of the products and services you offer. Once the audience is engaged with your content, it will automatically help you in generating awareness and loyalty toward your brand. It will also help to generate word of mouth which is undoubtedly the cheapest medium and channel for marketing. Social media marketing also helps you to learn the preferences of the audience by directly engaging with them.

The indicators which you can use to measure the engagement of your audience on social media channels are as follows -

1. Number of Likes

The metric to measure the number of likes on your social media pages and content that is posted. The more likes on a particular post or page, the more it is easier to observe that the content is popular among the audience and is being flown down to the right audience. It also indicates that the post is connecting with the audience through relevant content.

Usually, the target for a number of likes is in the form of numeric digits for example 1200 likes.

2. Number of Comments

The more the number of comments on your content, the more likely it is that the audience is not just engaged but also promoting and spreading awareness about your product through referrals and tags. Comments can also be used to gain knowledge about the preferences of the audience by directly reaching out to them through the content. Relevant content can help to engage in conversations with the audience. The number of comments on a post indicates whether the content is reaching the right audience and if the audience is interested in what it sees.

3. Number of Shares

Sometimes, likes on a piece of content can be a passive reaction and may not be useful for assessing the actual response to the post. The more the number of posts that the audience is sharing, the more it can be analyzed by what margin is the post reaching out to an audience larger than it was intended for. For banks and financial institutions, advertising products in the form of videos can help in maximum outreach if the video is able to connect with the audience and receive the targeted number of shares. Sharing of content also indicates that the audience is personally recommending the post to their respective audiences.

4. Brand Mentions

If you want to know about the number of conversations that are happening about your brand across the internet, you should keep an eye on the number of mentions that your social media pages are having and the kind of conversations that are being built around the brand. You can use your content to articulate these conversations. The more the number of brand mentions, the more it will indicate your ability to stay in the audience’s mind.

5. Community Growth

When your audience is clicking on the ‘follow’ and ‘like’ buttons on your posts, it is agreeing to be a part of your community, which implies that they are eager to know what you are up to and keep a track of the services you are offering. But are you keeping a track of the new members of the community every week, month, quarter, or annually?  The rate at which you are getting new followers, increased likes, or new additions is the growth rate of your community and it helps you to measure the effectiveness of the social media channels you use for engagement with your community. It involves the calculation of the number of new additions to your community ( on different platforms) who have joined you in a given period of time. Community growth rate helps you to identify the rate at which you are able to grow your audience.

OUTREACH

It is extremely important to know that out of the content that you are frequently posting, how much of the content is actually traveling to the audience and is being maximized in its outreach? Outreach, though not as effective as engagement, is used to analyze how many people are actually able to see the content, if not engaged with it. Hence, if the outreach of a particular post can be seen, it can be used to design the type of content that the audience can be engaged with, through the data collected by this audience.

6. Impressions

The number of times your post has shown up in the newsfeed or timeline of the audience either owing to the fact that they have followed you on the website or through the posts of someone who has shared your content. It does not guarantee that the audience actually went through the content, but it definitely indicates that they had an opportunity to and with some adapting features in the content, it will be possible to engage the audience. The higher the number of impressions on social media the better it is.

7. Number of followers

The number of people who are currently following you on social media indicates the organic outreach of your content. Undoubtedly, since these followers have liked your pages, they will automatically be updated on any new content that you post. The number of followers does not ensure engagement, but they provide relevant data which can help to gain useful insights. The more the number of followers on your social media, the more outreach equal to the number of followers is ensured.

8. Number of Leads

The number of leads is a major focus area if you are actively using social media for your content. When you use social media frequently, the return on investment starts to matter considerably, and in this case, the return on investment would be the number of leads i..e the number of engaged audiences who might be or is interested in knowing more about or using the products and services of the institution. They are in the position of being potential customers, who with a little effort and input can be converted into actual customers. This phase can be used to inform and spread awareness among the leads about the product and how it is beneficial for them. In order to use the no. of leads as an indicator, it is always advised to keep a target of leads double than the target of conversions that are aimed through the social media campaign.

9. Conversion Rate

The end result of any social media campaign is the number of customers it has brought as new additions to the institution. Any social media campaign should aim at finding the right audience, keeping them engaged, and converting them into customers of the institution. Not all followers or leads become customers, it is only a specific few who become interested. The data that should be analyzed from this conversion is from where are these customers being generated, why are they choosing a particular product, or what attracts them to particular content on social media.

10. Lifetime value of customers.

The total profit that is generated from one customer is the lifetime value of the customer. Calculating and tracking customer lifetime value is important when it comes to social media marketing because it helps you to make decisions with respect to the investment and cost that needs to go into acquiring these new customers and the channels and mediums which should be used. The lifetime value of a customer should always be greater than the cost of acquiring the customer.

Lifetime value of a Customer: Annual Profit From the Customer X Number of Years the Customer is Associated - Cost of Acquiring the Customer.

CONCLUSION

Depending on the social media platform that is working out the best for you, you should use the key performance indicators that are best suited in order to make the most out of the platform. Also, the KPIs which are most relevant to your audience’s choice of social media platform they are more likely to use should be brought into practice and included in the mediums of social media communication. Social media reflects what the customer is thinking, however, the reflection might not always be true. Hence it is important to keep using quantitative methods of tracking customers alongside frequently tracking social media key performance indicators.