A recent study of challenger bank marketing tactics caught my attention since it highlights the digital disruption in the financial services industry. What can businesses learn from this challenge in a situational analysis of their own environment, and how can marketers optimize their financial services marketing using this research?
If you're a marketer in the finance sector right now, you will have witnessed huge changes in the industry in the last 12 months alone, with more customers making financial decisions online leading to increased competition and challenges for financial services and banking industry marketers in both the macro and microenvironment.
Therefore, using research such as the challenger banks case study below can help you structure a winning marketing strategy. As we know, the first stage in a marketing plan is a situational analysis, so let's apply the findings in the context of external competitor benchmarketing and internal capability analysis.
We know that customer experience is a crucial element of all financial services marketing. But did you know how much the digital experience changes between competitors?
The research below considers the entire integrated customer journey from non-customer to active bank account owner. Interestingly, It took 5x as many clicks to open an account with First Direct, than it did with Revolut.
Benchmarking your competitors isn't just about the number of clicks it takes to open a bank account. In fact, all key factors that affect your commercial performance should be regularly assessed and reviewed against competitors.
The RACE Framework can guide your planning here, since this step-by-step process supports you to break down the customer journey for more meaningful analysis through Reach, Act, Convert and Engage.
Strategic benchmarking to plan and optimize your financial or bank marketing performance is crucial at this time in particular with competition so high. That's why we recommend our dedicated competitor benchmarking with RACE module, this module sits in the Plan dashboard in the RACE Practical Digital Strategy Learning Path for Business Members.
Our benchmarking tool covers benchmarking at each stage of RACE by the following metrics:
The Plan dashboard within the RACE Practical Digital Strategy Learning Path has resources to help you in every stage of planning your bank marketing strategy, with modules including:
The RACE Growth Process is a tried-and-tested methodology with tools, templates and training to support the growth of your financial services organization. Start today.
With so much competition, you need to stand out. Use the RACE Growth Process to win more customers
Get started now
How long does it take to open a bank account? Research shows there is a great discrepancy in this process for banks.
Look at the difference between the 10+ days for an account to be active from existing banks in comparison to the 2-3 days for an account to be active from challenger banks like Monzo, Starling and Metro.
Kudos is due to the traditional banks like Barclays and Lloyds who have revised their back office process using STP (straight-through processing) so that they offer a 2-day turnaround process.
Slow internal processes and system management in the financial services industry can cause barriers to improving customer experience. Our Digital Capability Maturity grader, below, highlights the digital steps involved whilst you develop your CX marketing to fully optimized.
Our bespoke digital capability maturity grader, which can be found in the situational analysis dashboard in our Digital Transformation Learning Path for Business Pro Members, is designed to support financial services and other similar sectors in transforming their business to offer customers true value online.
The Digital Transformation Learning Path has tools and training designed to support you in tackling barriers through developing and implementing digital strategies to achieve your CX and wider business goals. Recommended modules include:
The RACE Growth Process is a tried-and-tested methodology with tools, templates and training to support the growth of your financial services organization. Start today.
With so much competition, you need to stand out. Use the RACE Growth Process to win more customers
Get started now
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the 100+ templates, ebooks and courses in the digital marketing resource library created by our team of 25+ digital marketing experts. Our resources are used by our Premium members in more than 100 countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
This blog post has been tagged with:
Challenger banksDigital disruptionDigital Marketing BenchmarkingDigital Marketing for financial servicesDigital transformationOnboardingTurbocharge your results with this toolkit containing 12 resources
The Digital Marketing Strategy And Planning toolkit contains:
Start your Digital Marketing Plan today with our Free membership.
Recommended Blog Posts
An introduction to best practices for using buyer web personas to create more customer-centric websites Creating personas of website visitors is a powerful technique for helping increase the usability and customer-centricity of a website as part of a user-centered design …..
Our recommended free online tools for understanding your customers, competitors and campaign, and how you should use them – across 8 marketing analysis activities I find that when running training courses, the tools I recommend to help marketers are always …..
Our recommendations of the best global online marketing consumer adoption and marketing benchmark statistics Online marketers love statistics about digital marketing. We do too since they enable us to use a more data-driven approach to inform our future investments. They …..
