SBI Retail Banking digital media marketing & Communication Strategy

Avinash Mekala, 1401085

Executive Summary:The last few years have witnessed a transition of banking from a predominantly transactional business to a customer centric one. To engaging the customer through the most relevant channels has become key to maximising customer value and creating newer and more innovative revenue streams for banks. I believe that digital platforms will impact the entire ecosystem of the banking industry by redefining the type of interactions while necessitating new innovative internal processes and employee skills to support these interactions. The digital platforms provide opportunity to interact with customers on a regular basis in a more personalised manner. State Bank of India (SBI) is the largest and oldest retail banking player in India. They position themselves as ‘the Banker to every Indian'. They have retail operations in 22 countries, largest global presence of any Indian bank offering a wide range of deposit and loans products and value added banking services.

Though it markets aggressively through traditional media, it presence in digital media is passive. In recent years SBI started to focus on digital media marketing to compete with other players. I found out that even SBI trying to market aggressively in digital media extant, it lacks in several areas while compared to other players in this platform. Late mover is one of the reason we can say but there are many things which can be in its control. So, I analyse each and every channel to verify it present situation and its lack of presence.

As SBI doing all the campaigns already , I designed a simple 6 step process to verify SBIs efficiency in each step and stated some of the uncovered approaches along with the recommendations in each step bases on the my secondary research.

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Client Brief 1 SBI has wide range of products in its retail banking business. Those include Term Deposits, Recurring Deposits, Housing Loan, Educational Loan, personal loan for Pensioners, Against Mortgage of Property, Against Shares & Debentures, Plus Scheme Medi-Plus Scheme, Rates of Interest and Debit/Credit cards. SBI has its presence all over India with 16,000 branches.

BackgroundDigital Media:‘Digital marketing’ is a tool for interactive marketing of products and services using digital technologies to reach customers. The marketers promote brands and increase sales through various digital marketing techniques. They mainly use the Internet as a core promotional medium.

Why Digital Media Marketing is important:Digital marketing differs from traditional marketing because it involves the use of channels and methods to analyse marketing campaigns and also can understand where they are lacking and what to improve. The growth of Digital media users has been rapidly increasing. Surveys showing that up to 2013 there are majority of traditional customers but from 2013 to 2019 period, the digital converts are the majority and 2020 and beyond digital native customers dominate the market ( Apendix1).

Digital Media in BFSI space:Digital Media especially Social Media, today is playing a significant role in Indian banking sector. Every brand is there on one or the other platform and trying to engage with consumers online. The most important performance indicators a BFSI Brands must keep in mind is Engagement Ratio. The 5 social media platforms which are best suited for BFSI Brands keeping in mind the nature of the business would beFacebook: To Engage with the usersGoogle Plus: To Build communityYouTube: Video is the best form of expression so expressLinkedIn: To create engagement with their brandTwitter: To create buzzword

The main reason for the necessity of social media banking is the opportunity for interacting with customers and also obtaining required data for analytics to serve them better. Social data analytics could also provide banks with information about potential defaulters on loans. Another reason for banks to have a presence in Social media is to obtain positive reactions to customer service.

1 Www.sbi.co.in

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Secondary Research & Findings:Need for Research:It is important for SBI to be a active player in digital media and able to compete with other players who are doing good job in this medium from considerably longer period than SBI.

Analysis of SBI’s presence in Digital Media:2

SBI is making all efforts to connect with its customers on social media. It is trying to strengthen its social media presence with the launch of its channel on video social networking site YouTube and has launched its presence on Twitter. Initially YouTube channel have information about the bank’s products and services and its legacy to begin with and will gradually include philanthropic initiatives. At the moment the day old YouTube page has got a handful of subscribers and 9 videos uploaded on to it. The videos that have been uploaded are showcasing the legacy of the bank. There are videos especially to assist customers to bring knowledge about their services and give guidance for example SBI freedom app installation etc. The official twitter account has 260 followers whereas SBI card account has 43.3 followers and has 31.8 tweets. The news of the new launch comes on the heels of the launch of its Facebook page. The Facebook page today has more than 3.7 million fans and has been quite aggressive in sharing informative content with the fans. However, the page has blocked fans from posting on it.

SBI has introduced six digital branches across the country to offer banking solutions to its Internet and mobile customer base. The SBI In touch branches are currently operational in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad with the Kolkata branch expected to be opened shortly. It has tied up with Accenture for this initiative, which helped the bank in designing the branch layouts, implementing the digital processes and provided back-end integration, including employee training. These digital branches are apparently equipped with interactive wall and info tables to allow customers plan their finances.

SBI launched ‘SBIePay’ a new payment solution for merchants. SBIePay offered real-time credit card, debit card, net banking and mobile payment transaction validation processes. It had also launched a prepaid mobile wallet service called ‘Mobicash Easy’ that allows users to transfer funds and make bill payment among others. It also partnering with e-commerce players like Amazon and snap deal to fillip to e-commerce and brings lots of value to their retail business.

2 http://www.medianama.com/2014/07/223-sbi-digital-branches/ http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/sbi-launches-youtube-channel-twitter-is-next/article5609936.ece

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SBIs position in comparison with other players3:

Though the industry leader in revenue and digital media coverage of Share-of-Voice lost to HDFC, ICICI and other 3 players in Social Media Quotient (according to data available till 2014)(Refer Apendix-2).SBI don’t have its presence in blogs, Google plus and Pinterest. The SSI score for SBI is 43 as compared to HDFC’s 80 is very poor. (Refer Apendix-3). Owned media and earned media split up, it stood 5th and 4th position respectively (Refer Apendix-4). Comparing overall buzz in social media including owned and earned, it stood 5th position with 9% of share (Refer Apendix-5). It has very less share of fans 3% on Facebook, very less compared to other players like ICICI, Axis and HDFC (Refer Apendix-6). SBI has 260 k followers whereas Yes bank has 556 k followers. But it is observed that there was a drastic increase in the count compared to last year (30K) due to its active approach in twitter.

Comparing it’s customer service, the major service required in SBI card_connect. It is observed that in twitter it is lacking in retweets and pro-active tweets where Yes Bank is doing a good job here hence it is able to get better presence in twitter than SBI(Refer Apendix-7). To respond to their queries, most of them ask their customers to contact them via DM, Email or a contact over phone. Here is it observed that SBI don’t communicate much with the customers through email (Refer Apendix-8). Analyzing time taken to respond the queries SBI has poor performance as it has more percentage greater than 1 day time replies (Refer Apendix-9).

The analysis of sentiment about the brands by analyzing the positive posts and negative posts on facebook, SBI has neutral sentiment but where as in twitter it has some negativity (Refer Apendix-10,11).

Apart from Social media there are other channels like Search Engine Optimization /Marketing, pay per click ads, online banner advertising are some of the other important digital media tools that should be concentrated. I found SBI, especially in retail banking is not doing a good job in terms of Search Engine Optimization because when searched regarding banking in Google search engine (widely used famous search engine) , the results for SBI are coming after HDFC,ICICI and Axis which shows less popularity in ranking or web site content designing (not applying optimization techniques) (Refer Apendix-12). When searched about loans and credit/debit cards its appearance in the page in far below which represents poor page rank for those key words.

It has greater visibility in IRCTC in terms of display Ads and there is scope of many other website which would be discussed in the campaign part. So , the overall SBI especially in retail banking has presence in digital media but lacking in several aspects. The campaign part is designed in such a way to address the problem or develop its presence throughout all parts of digital media.

3 http://simplify360.com/

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Campaign Design and Scope of improvement:

First to start with basic design of the campaign let us analyze 6 step process of the design

STEP 1 SEGMENTATION: Which understand the market, accounts and buyers and ensures the strategy is differentiated from the competitors.

STEP 2 PLANNING: Which leverage the segmentation findings to develop revenue, budget, product/solution, campaign and content.

STEP 3 ENGAGEMENT: Which Define the processes for how the marketing team is going to interact with prospects and customers.

STEP 4 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE: Make sure the organizational structure is set up correctly so the right people are in the right roles to execute the processes.

STEP 5 EXECUTION: Executing the core strategy

STEP 6 CUSTOMER SUPPORT: Engage with customers in problem solving.

Though SBI has followed the same design to implement digital media strategy, there is need to be an improvement in all the steps especially in Execution and Customer support part. In segmentation step the geography based and psychographic based segmentation is not clearly visible because the professional news sites and shares related sites, you don’t find SBI ads related specifically related to loans, pensions etc. I felt a proper segment wise targeting is necessary in up-front. Coming to the Engagement and Org parts, SBI has now partnered with Accenture to obtain proper technology support and development in their digital processes and partnering with amazon to fillip into e – commerce space which has done by other players relatively earlier. It should focus more on these partnerships to develop and expand its digital processes.

Planning & Engagement:

Efficient planning and engagement can improve customer acquisition and onboarding. Growing customer base is top priority for every business. So taking advantage of richer, cheaper data access is the best option to plan further. One of the advantages of digital boom is the availability of data for lower costs. The objective is to not only acquire the contacting potential customers, but to go a step further and accurately measure the possibility of lead conversion through analytics. Banks utilize social data to profiling customers and to understand their individual requirements. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing also the best tools to acquire the potential customers. Target news blogs , professional sites for suitable customer for the some of the retail business products would be a great option.

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Partnership with e-commerce sites and aggregators:

Partnering with other online market spaces is another strategy for customer acquisition. With phenomenal boom being observed in the e-commerce space in India, SBI can use these channels as a means to reach out to new customers, including those in smaller cities. Apart from exploring regular advertising strategies on these websites, joint product offerings could be a better opportunity Ex: HDFC partnered with snapdeal .SBI should leverage its scope by partnering all majot ticket booking sites like ticketdada, bookmyshow, redbus etc.

Leverage smart phone capabilities to improve app functionality:

With the huge increase in the number of affordable smartphones being launched in the Indian mobile market through aggressive pricing strategies, device penetration is expectedto experience sizable growth. According to an eMarketer report, by 2016, India will have more than 200 million smartphone users, overtaking the US as the world’s second largest smartphone market4. But if we analyze the availably of apps for SBI is less compared to others. It recently launched SBI freedom app and there is huge scope for increasing apps foe each service makes easier to access.

Improve Search Engine Optimization/Marketing:

As observed in the analysis part the page rank for sbi sites is less due to improper Search Engine Optimization. So, improve in Search Engine Optimization/Marketing is very necessary SBI to be efficient in digital media and to compete with others.

Some ways to improve Search Engine Optimization:

1. Publish relevant content. Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content.

2. Update your content regularly

3. Use Metadata

4. Have a link-worthy site

5. Use alt tags.

6. Use text more than multimedia as keyword number is necessary to improve page rank

Customer Support/Servicing:

Keeping your customer connected to your brand:

4 eMarketer. (2014). 2 Billion Consumers Worldwide to Get Smart(phones) by 2016. Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com

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This can be achieved through efficient utilization of social media. As we have seen in the analysis part the share of voice /share of quotient values are less compared to other major players. The overall buzz and SSI index is also very less for SBI. So, the first step to keep the customer connected to the brand by creating buzz in the social media. Though it has good presence and following in the facebook it has scope to improve in twitter by creating buzz. For example take low interest rate for student loans. It can make buzz about it by creating hashtag #kamsepadojyadapado or it can target the special days like father’s day by giving more discounts on that day and crate hashtag #mydadisahero (obviously dad has to give surety and has to repay in worst scenarios). Create some creative videos with the same concept and upload it in youtube channel to make the channel more interesting.

Create separate page for each and product in the retail business channel. And allow them to post as SBI doesn’t allow users to post on its walls. It is kind of gives a negative impression on brand and challenges its commitment towards customer service. Improve youtube channel by making more creative ads which looks channel interesting and also create videos just for to assist the customers to solve their issues / giving any information.

Improve its presence through all available digital platforms making available in google plus, Pinterest etc also.

Efficient customer problem solving:

As discussed in the analysis part SBI is taking comparatively more time to respond to the customer problems. The percentage of retweets taking more than one day is higher for SBI. This is very bad part on SBI because customers expect immediate reply especially in the mediums like twitter. It has to improve in this part. It is also not reaching customers much through email especially in assistance based scenario which can also be leveraged some far.

SBI doesn’t allow its consumers to post it on the walls in some pages. It has to be changed to give proper assistance in customer problems.

Create official SBI blogs for discussions and addressing the customer problems.

Conclusion:

SBI operated in retail banking sector has improved its digital media presence in the recent years but still in lack compared to other major players like HDFC, ICICI and Axis. Some are

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under the scope and control of SBI which can easily turn over and improve its presence in the digital media. Hence I suggested a campaign which includes all basic steps to design a digial media campaign and in each step I proposed how to execute and scope of improvement.

On concluding the to sum-up all the recommendations, To develop its digital media strategy by improving

1. Search Engine Marketing : Through content strategy and SEO or through Paid Search Advertising (Adwords)

2. Social media promotions – Paid advertising on Facebook, promotion on Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

3. Mobile market promotions – Development of native apps and submission to the Google Play and Apple Store

4. Email marketing – Promotion of products or services through email marketing campaigns

Appendix1: Expected growth of digital natives

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Appendix2: Social Media Quotient and SOV of SBI compared to others

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