Financial brands are often overly focused on their products and services, so they overlook a key opportunity to build customer relationships that will last a lifetime. Financial education opens up a world of possibilities when used correctly by banks and financial service brands. This content helps build strong relationships, reinforces brand value, creates top of mind awareness, keeps customers engaged and most importantly – builds loyalty, leading to lower attrition rates.
A strong financial education program should be woven into all aspects of your marketing from paid media campaigns to the brand’s web and social media presence to internal marketing programs. Use your built-in team of financial experts to create blogs, checklists, infographics, calculators, interactive tools, polls, quizzes, downloadable resources and whatever other creative ways you can package the information.
It can be daunting to take your brand’s universe of financial knowledge and start packaging it in bite size pieces for customers. One way to tackle this challenge is by customizing the information according to your target audience. But go beyond a typical banking customer profile and look at customers by life stage.
Young Banking Planners – Your current customers have children that will be your next generation of banking customers if you foster relationships early. These tools and financial education resources should be developed for parents to use to help educate their children on financial literacy topics.
- Create branded educational resources for parents that are kid friendly, arming them with the tools they need to start teaching their kids.
- Offer specialized products that allow kids to open up a savings account and begin a relationship with the brand while learning the ropes.
- Develop online tools to show kids how to start managing their money and keep building the relationship with the brand.
First Time Bankers – As young consumers get their first jobs and start to establish their financial independence, this is a key opportunity for banking brands to engage these first time bankers.
- Find creative ways to share best practices on budget basics
- Create interactive tools like calculators and apps that will appeal to this young audience and empower them to manage their finances.
- Start introducing them to new products. At first this will be different types of checking and savings accounts but as they get older it may transition to mortgage loans and CD’s.
Seasoned Customers – Don’t let their experience fool you. While they may have a long standing relationship with the brand and have their finances well in order, this group of customers still places a high value on the expertise, guidance and tools your brand can offer.
- Provide specialized advice on topics like “How to save for a child’s college education” that lead back to a product offering of the brand.
- Empower them with robust toolkits for complex financial challenges like “How to start planning for retirement”
- Reinforce the value of the products and services by providing checklists and even free analysis on how to make the most of all the financial tools offered by the brand.
Throughout each life stage, customers will be loyal to the brand that understands their needs and provides the tools and financial education to thrive.
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