TECH TOPICS I ONLINE & SOCIAL MEDIA

How to get noticed online"Search," "Surf" and "Social" strategies for community bani<s BY ERIC COOK

one are the days when you could count on thelure of online banking to produce the type oftraflSc a bank needs to grow its online customerbase. Community banks especially must developa strategy to ensure that consumers have plentyof opportunities to find their bank when they goonline. The big guys are all doing this—banksand nonbanks—and there's no reason smaller,local players can't do likewise, and capitalize ontheir strong local presence.

But first, what are consumers doing online?And, more importantly, how can a communitybank seize opportunities to get in front of thesevaluable eyeballs? Typical online consumerbehavior can be categorized into three distinctsegments: Search, Surf, and Social. In this arti-cle, we'll discuss all three from the 10,000 foot

level, and then go into greater detail on each ina series of online blogs on ababj.com.

SEARCH: paid vs. organicWhen consumers go online searching for"mortgage loans" there's a good indication theyhave an interest in learning more about whatthey are searching for (or maybe are even readyto buy). Why wouldn't a community bank wantto "step in front of" this potential customerand at least present an opportunity for them tolearn more? You can either rely on the searchengine to determine your site is the best fit(what's referred to as "organic" results—we'llcome back to that in a minute), or you can optto pay the search engine to present an adver-tisement. With paid search marketing, you pay

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based on the number of "clicks"(actual site visits) that take place.This is often referred to as PPC(pay per click) and you'll find theseads in the tinted section across thetop as well as down the right of asearch results page.

With today's metrics and onlinetracking capabilities you can moni-tor what visitors do when they get toyour website, if they contact you viae-mail, or even call the office. Nowthat elusive ROI for your market-ing dollars is much easier to track.Plus, you have full control over yourad budget, keywords, and even geo-graphic coverage, so that you know"clickers" are relevant and in yourmarket area. No sense in paying fora visit from someone looking for amortgage in Florida if yovir bank islocated in Texas.

Now, back to the term, "organ-ic" rankings. No, we're not talkingabout some new type of Ag Lend-ing program. When a search enginefinds your bank's website and deter-mines it's the best "fit" for a searchrequest, you'll find your site link inthe center of a search page, for free(well, sort of). Depending on thesearch terms and competition, itmay be hard to get No. 1 on Googlefor certain products and servic-es—mortgage loans being a goodexample. Considering there are mil-lions of pages indexed in Googleand there can be only one No. 1, thecompetition is tough.

One of the reasons why the com-petition is so tough is somethingcalled Search Engine Optimization.SEO is the science of working withwebsites to ensure the greatest pos-sible chance of getting favorableorganic rankings. While the ele-ments of SEO go well beyond thescope of this article (there are bookson it), some of the factors that asearch engine takes into consider-ation are:

• How frequently you add content

With re-marketing technology (including the use of "cookies"), community bankslike northern Indiana's MutualBank can get their message across on high-trafficcontent sites like Yahoo Sports, but just in their market area.

to your site;• Whether the site is technical-

ly up-to-date, making it easy forsearch programs to crawl the site,;

• What other sites link to yoursite, etc.

Basically, if your site is poorlydesigned, hard to navigate, and hasstale information, it likely will beuninteresting to a human, so there'sa good chance a search enginewon't care about it either.

Whether you embrace a paidadvertising strategy, give your sitean SEO makeover, or do both incombination, it's important to takea proactive approach to being foundwhen customers go online search-ing for the products and servicesyou offer. Stop being the best keptsecret on the 'net!

SURF: target of one from many

There's no doubt that consum-ers are spending more time surf-ing around the internet to gettheir news and information.

To put a figure on this. JuniperResearch reports that more than40% of media consumption takesplace online now, and that num-ber continues to increase. Of thosegoing online, a majority of timespent is surfing around to contentsites reading news, getting the lat-est sports scores, watching videos,and taking in information that onlya few years ago had to be done"offline."

To be where the customers are,community banks need to supple-ment traditional media advertis-ing with online banner (or display)advertising to present their messageon content sites like Yahoo, Money,CNN, and BusinessWeek. The goodnews is that community banks haveflexibility to specify where their adwill show and also in what regiontheir advertisement will appear.

There's also a bit of magic thatcan make your online advertise-ments much more relevant (andeffective). Though most bank-

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ers are probably familiar with theterm "cookies"—the little snippetsof code that sit in your browserproviding sites with informationto personalize your online experi-ence—they may not be aware ofall that this technology enables for

their own marketing. Cookies canbe used to tell a content site likeYahoo Sports if someone comingto check the latest scores has vis-ited your bank's website recently.A community bank can tell Yahoo,"If you see such and such cook-

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ie, then run our ad." Further, theycan indicate where geographicallythe ad should appear, to coincidewith their markets. This allows high-ly targeted marketing, and meansthat a customer in northern Indianawho goes to Yahoo Sports, will notonly see a banner ad from FidelityInvestments, running nationwide,but also an ad from MutualBank, alocal community bank, because thecustomer had earlier been to thebank's site. Web marketing agencieswork this out with the big contentsites on behalf of the bank. Yahooand other major sites are interestedin accommodating these requests toget the business.

So, next time you're surfing aonline, pay attention to the messag-es that are being presented to you.Chances are, they're not as randomas you may think.

SOCIAL: share and build relationshipsHave you ever gone to a cocktailparty or Chamber mixer and actu-ally walked away with a signedloan application or a new checkingaccount? Probably not, but that'snot why you attend those types ofnetworking events. You do it to helpbuild relationships with the hopethat one day it will generate busi-ness. The same can be said of socialnetworking. Instead of measuringa hard-dollar ROI, it's suggestedthat you look more at your ROE—Return on Engagement.

Sites like Facebook and Linkedinare more about staying connected;sharing interesting information; andnetworking with customers, pros-pects, and community membersthan they are about selling productsor services. With these sites, bankscan quickly (and inexpensively)share information that has a chanceto be seen many times over.

One of the best ways to shareinformation is with the use of video.When you consider that YouTubeis the No. 2 search engine on theinternet (right behind Google, which

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owns YouTube), consumers havespoken that they want to be enter-tained and educated at the sametime. This creates a tremendousopportunity for community bankersto share what they know about theirindustry, and position themselves asa trusted source of information—set-ting the stage for business down theroad. If you're not using video to tellyour story, what are you waiting for?

Coming down the roadIt's been said that the mobile devicewill be the No. 1 tool for browsingthe web by 2013. With its "alwayson" internet connectivity andGPS capabilities, consumers usemobile devices even more in theirdaily lives than traditional comput-ers. Location-based services likeFoursquare and Facebook's Placesare now making it possible to tellyour friends where you're locatedand what you're doing. One pos-sible banking application: Next timeyou have a "shred day" to promoteidentity protection, or celebrate abranch opening or remodeling, con-sider using these services to helpyour customers spread the wordabout your event.

Additionally, consumers are rat-ing all types of businesses online,even banks, using "star ratings" andonline reviews. Have you checkedto see what others are saying aboutyou (or your competition) online?Is it negative, positive, or—maybeworse than negative—completelyvoid of any feedback? You can checksites like Google Places, Yahoo Local,Yelp, and CitySearch to see what'sbeing said and then put together astrategy to either be present, or ifnecessary, combat any negative com-ments that may be there.

One thing is for sure: Changemay be the only constant in thebanking industry for the foreseeablefuture, and that goes for how weare going to connect with, and mar-ket to, our customers. While banksstill have to be aware of traditional

banking issues such as regulatorychanges and compliance concerns,the ever-expanding world of search,surf, and social interaction presentscommunity banks with even moreopportunities to promote and buildrelationships. Recognizing these

opportunities is just the first step inthe process. •

Eric Cook, a community banker for 15

years, is a consultant with WSI (We Simplify

the Internet), a provider of online marketing

solutions, eric@pozueredbyivsi.com

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