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3 Ways to Grow Traffic to your Bank or Credit Union’s Website

By on August 20th, 2018 in Marketing

Your bank or credit union’s website is not just a tool for your current account holders to utilize. It is also a marketing tool that can help you reach new customers and increase investments in your products and services. Your website is where you can really establish your brand identity and the type of experience account holders will have doing business with you. It is also where you can post the most current information about your financial institution.

Driving traffic to your website should be an important part of your marketing efforts. But it can be difficult and sometimes overwhelming to know where to start. Here are some strategies to help you get started.

Online Advertising

Purchasing online ads is an excellent way to bring in immediate traffic to your website. By advertising on search engines like Google, you can purchase which keywords you’d like your ads to show up for. Then, set how much you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad, as well as how much you’re willing to spend per day.

You’re choosing where to send those customers to on your website, what your ads say, and even what time of day or which days to run your ads. With so many ways to control your ad campaigns, it’s easy to keep your costs in line with your budgets and your messaging consistent.

In the financial industry, this is an excellent marketing avenue to take. Especially for branches in rural locations where competition is less, which means costs can be lower. For those located in more populated areas, it’s still a smart strategy to use because your competition in organic rankings may be a lot tougher. So, you can offset what you’re losing organically with sponsored ads.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Now let’s go over how your website can show up in search engines without ads. Anytime someone clicks on these organic, natural listings, that’s free traffic coming into your website.

To loosely put it, your website needs to meet some criteria to be listed in the top positions. These criteria are different for every website, search engine and the keyword you’re trying to rank for. There are, however, many commonalities and strategies that work from site to site. You just need to adjust them or do some search engine optimization to fit your site’s specific needs.

Adjust things like your website’s programming to be modern, efficient, and fast. Your site should be mobile-friendly and designed with a good user experience. Ask for a technical SEO audit to make sure your site meets these criteria and the dozens of others that can help improve your site.

It should also have solid, informative content that helps your website visitors understand more about your bank or credit union and its services and products. It should educate and inform on many levels. Simply having a page that lists your services and products is not enough. You need to dig further and go in depth on the topics people are researching. Your site should be built up as a whole to reflect these topics.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is an excellent way for your financial institution to connect locally with your community. It can be used to build up traffic to your website and it’s really effective for building up brand awareness, which is equally important.

Using Facebook’s various advertising options, you can target people based on their location, interests, languages and other options. By defining your customer personas and using these tools to target them with specific messaging, you can reach new and existing account holders with the right ads when they need to see it most.

Over the years, Facebook has made a strong effort to ensure user’s timelines only see the posts they are most interested in. That’s why when you follow a page, you may not always see its posts or even posts from certain Facebook friends. It’s become difficult for brands to get their own followers to see their posts. This is where Facebook ads or boosted posts can help. By targeting your own followers with your best marketing messages, you can build up likes and engagement. This can help your regular posts get more exposure over time without the need for ads.

Ads are really helpful, but you really need to have a page that is engaging and relevant. Get creative with your posts, invest in well-designed graphics, and test which types of posts your followers like the most. Eventually you’ll find the right formula that works specifically for your local audience.

Keep Learning & Growing

If you’d like to dive further and learn even more, here are three simple ways to do that.

One: Check out our webinar on digital marketing to explore even more strategies you could be using to increase traffic and account holder investments!

Two: Subscribe to our blog and get one monthly update from our team of design and marketing pros. We cover a lot of great topics from digital marketing to statement processing and best practices. I guarantee you’ll pick up at least one new thing each month that will help your bank or credit union improve and grow.

Three: Digital marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all type of deal. So talk to someone who can customize this for your financial institution or business. Feel free to contact us for more strategies tailored to your goals and budget.