Mediaboss Marketing

Adedeji Bankole

More Nigerian banks are investing in social media. But do they have a worthwhile experience? The tragedy is that most banks dont even know what to do when they are on social media platforms. Some go to the extent of outsourcing it and yet get nothing in return. The reason is that no objective was set before going social. Since there was no objective, there wont be a strategy.

The whole reason a bank joins the social media platform is to get customers patronage (get more deposits). How many banks allow customers to know what they stand to gain from the social media offers? For example, how can customers access loan, calculate charge on turnover and other fees? How many banks teach their customers financial intelligence? There is a shift from social marketing to social business. What is the value for your customers?

With more Nigerians signing up on different social media platforms every second, the competition is stiffer yet getting to customers is easier.

The first step is to measurably capture your customers attention and move them to engagement, conversion and retention stages. Surprisingly, Nigerian banks only create awareness on social media, which involves hyping a particular message for a few days. Some banks get to the engage stage and keep a conversion with its customers but none has yet got to the retention stage.

What is the essence of getting to a potential customer when you will be unable to actually get him or her to ask for more?

Nigeria is the second largest mobile Facebook user in the world, said Felix Erken, GM of Junk Mail. I read this and, behold, I saw customers. Customers are everywhere. They are all in one location social media.

It is amazing to know that GTBank has the highest followers on Twitter in the whole of Africa. Standing tall at 47, 675 followers, the bank has done quite well and there is still room for improvement. Studying the bank via the popular bank Twitter handle @MyBankPalava, which debuted in March 2013, you could say the bank has done well in awareness, engagement and conversation. However, much work needs to be done on its retention aspect of social business.

To get the right strategy for making Nigerian banks social media marketing successful, here are my views:

Real-time

Continue reading here:
Are you having issues with your bank?