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Attracting younger demographic customers can be daunting for financial services.
For long-term sustainability, financial planners need to increase their efforts to attract a younger crowd.
You might not get an immediate return on your Millennial initiatives, but you need to start building for the future. Before you know it, many will become high net-worth prospects.
Millennials will become more sophisticated, acquire assets and have more borrowing needs. So it’s important to lay the foundation to create good relationships now.
Depending on the research you prefer, there is a myriad of reasons why Millennials are difficult to attract.
Certainly, a financial institution’s reputation for charging fees is a liability.
But it’s more than just offering the coolest free checking account.
The trick is to better understand the motivations of Millennials, along with implementing the right sales and customer-service training, and developing the right services and marketing strategies.
Millennials are, of course, digitally oriented. Many struggle with saving money because they’re under-employed and grapple with paying bills.
Whether or not they’re successful in their careers, Millennials want you to be relevant to their lifestyles.
They grew up understanding automated functionality but they want to control their finances, save time, and they want the right human connection at the right time.
Added to all of this, they want to be able to share good information and they’re quick to share about bad experiences.
In most situations, an organization’s advertising and word-of-mouth advertising must convey five positive messages before a consumer decides to buy.
However, even if you provide the best products in your industry, consumers will flee for the hills if they’re dissatisfied by your customer service.
Here are six tips to target Millennials:
1. Eliminate all negative customer-service experiences
The salient sure-fire way to attract and keep Millennial customers is to provide empathetic, relevant customer service. That requires good training for all employees.
Even just a few uncaring robotic-like responses to a Millennial’s question or concern will drive the person away.
Many are bright and dislike comments or questions that marginalize them as human beings. For example, employees should not ask this typical question: “What was that name?”
Cross-selling is an important part of business, but Millennials are turned off when they feel they’re repeatedly hammered to apply for a credit card or loan.
They want to easily deposit and withdraw money. And they want to be able to trust your employees with their money.
2. Provide digitally relevant services
Millennials like good app options. They want to do their banking how and when they want.
That includes a personalized financial dashboard that can be used on any device. Anticipate their desires – so they can look at their accounts, investments, make payments, and schedule an appointment with your staff.
3. Create helpful and relevant marketing content
Millennials do business with organizations with which they feel comfortable. That means educational but engaging and entertaining information.
You must deliver what your marketing messages promise.
Don’t merely succumb to the charm of state-of-the-art technology, especially online video. Be careful in choosing a medium. A conservative approach is best.
For them, it’s all about relevance and trust.
4. Vary your content
You need to strategize for evergreen, seasonal and meaningful topical content.
Evergreen content should include the right branding logo and three-to-five word slogan. It should also include in-depth information with articles, research, infographics and other visuals, and testimonials.
Supplement your evergreen content with seasonal topical information while using social media and short blogs.
5. Make sure you’re timely in producing marketing content
The marketplace is dynamic and ever-changing.
Determine who in your organization need to participate in the collaboration process. Use an efficient but modern approval-procedure and software.
Make certain the processes are easily repeated or fine-tuned if the content doesn’t yield results.
6. Include your legal team early
Your legal team should be involved from the outset of creating content. You’ll find it much easier to create ground rules and rapport, and you won’t be going over the same ground over and over again.
Make sure to document the ground rules that comply with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. A set of guidelines is important for your marketing folks to check as they create content to avoid unnecessary issues.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related tips:
Small Banks, Credit Unions – 5 Brand-Building Tips for Trust — Small banks and credit unions, alike, share at least one commonality. They have to be successful in branding, especially in building trust. Here are five strategies.
Choosing Best Web Sites to Advertise — ‘Medium is the Message’ — A study shows why Web sites with an authoritative image are often the most profitable.
How to Best Profit: Word-of-Mouth Advertising, Customer Service — To increase your sales revenue with word-of-mouth advertising, here are 10 tips.
“Ninety-five percent of Millennials say their friends are the most credible source of product information.”
-Jay Baer
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