More
Template is not defined.

A Concise Guide to Marketing Strategies for Banks & Financial Institutions

Read our comprehensive guide to inform your marketing team about the best marketing strategies for banks and financial institutions in 2024.

Share
A demand gen marketer discusses marketing strategies with a bank colleague.

Home / Solutions / Financial Services / Banking / A Concise Guide to Marketing Strategies for Banks & Financial Institutions

Chapters

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Understanding Marketing for Banks

Chapter 3

Crafting a Marketing Strategy for Banks

Chapter 4

Audience Building for Banks

Chapter 5

Leveraging Technology and Analytics

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

As financial institutions vie for customers, marketing remains a crucial driver of success and growth in the competitive banking industry.  

For banks seeking to gain a competitive edge by optimizing their marketing strategy, this guide will explain:

  • The benefits of marketing for banks
  • How to develop a data-driven marketing strategy
  • The role of technology in marketing

Chapter 2

Understanding Marketing for Banks

Marketing for banks encompasses tactics aimed at building trust, educating customers, and driving engagement within the highly regulated industry. Examples include:

  • Content marketing, like educational blog posts and infographics
  • Social media marketing, promoting banking services and providing customer support
  • Email marketing, containing personalized updates and promotions

A challenge for bank marketing is the need for strict legal compliance. Banks must adhere to guidelines set by federal and state regulators to ensure the accuracy and transparency of their marketing materials. This includes regulations on advertising, data privacy, and fair lending practices.

Benefits of Marketing for Banks

Effective marketing can bring numerous benefits to banks, including:

  • Attracting and retaining customers
  • Building trust and credibility
  • Enhancing brand recognition and loyalty
  • Differentiating in a competitive market

Chapter 3

Crafting a Marketing Strategy for Banks

A marketing strategy involves a series of steps designed to maximize your efforts and meet your goals. This can be used for banks, credit unions, online lenders, and other financial institutions. In addition, if your firm has operations within fintech and financial advising, we also have fantastic guides to fintech marketing strategy and financial advisor marketing

Step 1: Market Research and Competitive Analysis

Gather comprehensive information about your target audience, like:

  • Market trends within the financial industry
  • Customer needs and pain points
  • Customer preferences and expectations
  • Customer behaviors and decision-making processes

Additionally, analyze competitors’ marketing strategies to identify both gaps and opportunities in the market.

This research can be done through various methods and tools, including:

  1. Using your company database to identify businesses that align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Evaluate detailed information to filter and pinpoint organizations matching specific criteria.
  2. Using an intent data provider like 6sense that uncovers accounts actively researching banking solutions. Intent data reveals which businesses are displaying buying signals, indicating readiness for engagement.
  3. Using a sales intelligence platform to track significant news or events related to target accounts. These technologies offer real-time alerts regarding changes that could impact target accounts’ readiness to buy.  

Step 2: Identify and Target Customer Segments

Segment your target market into distinct groups and develop campaigns for each segment. The goal is to create messaging that deeply resonates with each group, fostering stronger connections and engagement. 

Helpful for segmentation is identifying in-market prospects — those that are exhibiting strong buying signals that indicate their intent to seek banking solutions. Engaging this segment enables you to allocate resources more effectively.

A platform that supports dynamic segmentation is a huge advantage because it allows you to automatically enroll accounts into segments based on your pre-set criteria. For example, if an account starts searching for a keyword related to your solution, you can quickly enroll them in a campaign focused on that keyword. This leads to a more personalized customer experience, more trust, better engagement, and a higher chance of landing deals. 

Step 3: Setting Marketing Objectives

Establish clear marketing metrics that align with organizational goals. These should be:

  • Specific, outlining what you aim to achieve
  • Measurable, allowing you to track progress and success
  • Achievable, ensuring they are within reach
  • Relevant, directly contributing to business growth
  • Time-bound, providing a timeframe for achievement 

Step 4: Choosing Your Marketing Mix

Develop a cohesive marketing mix tailored to your target audience that touches on:

  • Product: Articulate the range of services you offer and highlight their unique value propositions.
  • Price: Build out pricing that aligns with your audience and positions you competitively. Consider factors such as interest rates, fees, and value-added services to keep pricing attractive to potential clients while maintaining profitability.
  • Place: Identify the most effective distribution channels for reaching your target audience, such as digital content, industry events, or business partnerships.
  • Promotion: Use advertising, content marketing, thought leadership, social media, and more to promote your services.

Step 5: Budget Allocation

Analyze marketing metrics to discern where and how to invest budget for maximum impact. Evaluate which efforts:

  • Generate high-quality leads
  • Foster audience engagement and trust
  • Drive conversions and new business opportunities

By understanding which channels, campaigns, and messages are having the most impact, you can make informed adjustments.

Chapter 4

Audience Building for Banks

Growing your audience requires building trust and reliability with potential clients. Proactively share industry expertise, financial advice, and educational resources without gating them behind forms. Position yourself as a trusted advisor and thought leader by using various channels like email, social media, blog posts, and webinars.

Critically, to serve prospects and improve win rates, all of these communications should be personalized. By using intent data to understand and segment accounts, you can enroll them in campaigns that are aligned with their interests and decision-making stage.

By integrating your intent data with other marketing tools, you can deliver:

  • Dynamic content: landing pages, chatbot conversations, and blogs and eBook recommendations 
  • Personalized Emails
  • Targeted advertising

Chapter 5

Leveraging Technology and Analytics

Here’s how technology can benefit your bank: 

Data Security

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) solutions offer many advantages for building business accounts and deposits, but — as with all data — security is a paramount concern. 

Key considerations include: 

  • Compliance with regulations such as GDPR
  • Data encryption in transit and at rest
  • Strong access controls to limit data access
  • Secure data storage and retention practices
  • Secure data transfer protocols
  • Well-defined incident response plans
  • Employee training on data security best practices. 

By addressing these concerns, banks can ensure the protection of customer data and mitigate risks associated with implementing an ABM solution. Here’s a look at how 6sense handles data, privacy and security.

Enhance the User Journey

MarTech solutions like customer relationship management (CRM) systems and marketing automation tools:

  • Streamline marketing processes, saving time and reducing errors
  • Manage client relationships better by making conversation and activity histories visible for all team members
  • Deliver personalized experiences through audience segmentation 
  • Track engagement and performance

Personalization and Targeting

Collecting a lot of data about your target accounts is only part of the battle. The more important step is converting that data into insights, and making those insights actionable.

6sense helps you: 

  • Quickly build audience segments based on keyword research, location, industry, company size, and similar factors.   
  • Use these segments to create omni-channel campaigns that deliver personalized experiences.
  • Quickly launch ad campaigns through our display network, as well as through integrations with popular ad platforms including LinkedIn, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads. 

Chapter 6

Conclusion

By implementing tailored marketing strategies powered by technology and data, banks can effectively connect with their target audience. Stay ahead of the competition by 

  • understanding customer needs, 
  • personalizing messages, and 
  • using the most effective channels to deliver compelling content. 

Achieve sustainable growth through data-driven, strategic marketing initiatives.

Ready to see 6sense in action?

The 6sense Team

The 6sense Team