4 Tips to Acquire Banking Customers Purely Via Your Branded Site

By Heather Fletcher

While financial services marketers are omnichannel, there’s no shame in admitting the appeal of having a marketing mix percentage aimed at click-to-convert efforts to acquire banking customers completely via the branded sites.

Sometimes, that attribution is handy. Other times, it’s just nice to have everything in one place.

Regardless of the reason, tips published yesterday on BankInnovation.net by Everfi are here to help.

Here are four tips for converting consumers to banking customers online:

Establish Trust Via Site Design

Yes, trust seals help. Yes, customer reviews (more on that below) help. And yes, having the right colors — Target Marketing blogger Jeanette McMurtry says blue and green for banks — helps.

McMurtry writes:

“Blue is solid in banking, as it’s the color of trust and intelligence. Green also does well in the financial services industry as, in our country, it represents wealth, money, stability and balance.”

But even colors aren’t as hard-and-fast of a rule as others. For instance, she says red makes people in the U.S. anxious and agitated, with an urge to leave a situation with that color. But they still invest in Santander, which has bright red branding.

McMurtry says:

“In other countries and cultures, color meanings and influences can change.”

(Hence, Santander.)

But even in the case of colors, there’s something more important.

The most important aspect of a bank’s site is looking professional, Everfi says.

“Not spending time on design will make your institution look less reputable. With the increase in fraud and data breaches, customers shy away from anything that looks less than professional. To give potential customers confidence in your bank, invest in a well-designed and striking website.”

As I wrote in 2011 — so consumers may have even less patience now — this is what site visitors expect:

“[Tim] Ash, author of ‘Landing Page Optimization,’ says marketers need the word ‘professional’ to pop into viewers' heads within the first 1/20th of a second of landing on a page.”

Have a Mobile-First, Responsive Site That’s Fast

On top of not being “cheesy,” as Ash put it, bank marketers have to have a professional-looking mobile site that loads fast.

Google now lists mobile sites first on search engine results pages.

So Everfi says bank marketers need to have responsive site design, so pages render well on any device.

“Potential customers, especially Millennials and Gen-Xers, rely more on smartphones for web searching than ever. In 2017, the average Millennial spent 223 minutes a day on their device. In order to capture the attention of younger users, your website needs to be optimized for mobile use.”

Content Marketing

Sure, marketers can benefit from having customer testimonials and reviews — both for SEO and trust. But this is just one aspect of a third and essential possibility — content marketing.

In 2016, Yahoo found websites converted consumers better than apps, and provided content marketing advice for credit card marketing, tax preparation, insurance and banking brand messaging.

Everfi says the content sometimes works best as a video:

“Meaningful content is the way to attract and keep customers on your website rather than having them move on to the next one. Content that interests, informs and inspires is the best way to attract customers.

“Customers are concerned about themselves, not you. This means that your content should be about what concerns them. Content about securing a home loan, building a retirement plan, getting a small business loan, etc. interests and engages customers and shows that you care about their concerns.”