As customer habits evolve, technology advances and challenger banks continue to disrupt the market, traditional high-street banks are increasingly investing in thought leadership.
An active presence across social media, media coverage, and events has become essential to restore confidence and protect banks’ reputations, which have shifted from what they once were.
In this article, we’ll delve into the challenges banks face today and explain how executives can become successful thought leaders themselves. Read on to discover more.
Thought leadership involves an executive putting themselves forward on behalf of their business comment on various industry topics or trends important to their stakeholders to cement their expertise.
Over time, this can help the executive and their business improve their credibility and profitability.
Fortunately for banks, there is a huge range of topics thought leaders can comment on, such as inflation, mortgage lending, retirement savings, ethical investing, and more.
While their are many benefits, most importantly, banks can showcase a commitment to their customers' needs to humanise their brand, set themselves apart from competitors, and improve their customer experience, which is currently the root cause for banks losing as much as 20% of their customers.
Usually, thought leadership involves executives adopting multiple channels to make their campaigns more impactful, including social media, online blogs, earned media coverage, and events.
However, while thought leadership can help banks and their customers succeed and make better financial decisions, if the insights shared by banks are unoriginal or too corporate, it's unlikely that their thought leadership efforts will resonate.
This makes it crucial for banks to provide tailored, personable, and distinctive insights that add a fresh and unique perspective to pique their audiences' interest.
For instance, a bank might make a new prediction about interest rates rising to help investors or explain in detail what a recession would mean for customers.
Customers are just one of a bank's many stakeholders. While they play a central role in its operations, banks depend on various other parties too.
Therefore, by positioning itself as a forward-thinking leader, a bank can benefit in numerous other ways.
A bank can better attract skilled professionals searching for best-in-class growth opportunities and the ability to make an impact.
Its successful strategies can set the benchmark for others, shaping how the industry evolves its risk management practices, cybersecurity, and customer service.
Investors can be more convinced to back a bank with a strong vision and growth plan.
A bank can anticipate and react to changes in the market much faster by staying in-touch with industry trends and audience feedback.
It can also outline its commitment to social and environmental goals to appeal to socially conscious consumers and contribute to positive change.
While there are many benefits banks can obtain from a thought leadership campaign, it’s important to keep each campaign hyper-focused.
Decide on an objective that is most important to the business at that time and ensure that content creation and planning align with it to have the best possible impact.
But before deciding on an approach, ensure that your communications team is in tune with what's being spoken about in the media.
This can give you a good idea of the issues you can and should be commenting on, improving the timeliness of your message, and increasing your chances of achieving media cut-through.
You should also think carefully about the spokesperson most qualified to comment on different issues. For instance, a Chief Technology Officer would be better suited to discuss AI than a bank's General Manager.
In this case, a CTO might use the AI debate to talk about the importance of cybersecurity and the precautions that their bank is taking to protect its customers.
Moreover, every campaign should incorporate high-quality video content to strengthen its message and achieve maximum outreach.
If you’re selected to lead a thought leadership campaign on behalf of your bank, injecting some personality into your content with videos and high-quality imagery can make you appear more genuine.
More journalists will want to hear from you if you're well presented while research shows that social media audiences are 52% more likely to share your content if it contains a video.
There are many trends banking executives can put their stamp on. However, one that is bound to be prominent over the coming years is open banking.
As a relatively new concept, open banking allows customers to take control of their data and use it to facilitate transactions without a bank card or gain access to various other services than their bank provides in a more efficient way.
Yet, because open banking involves customers surrendering their data to third-party providers, concerns regarding data misuse and cybersecurity have arisen.
This has left banks with an obligation to improve awareness of open banking concepts so that their customers can make better-informed decisions about the third parties they share their accounts with.
Without settling customer anxieties, banks open themselves up to a backlash from their customers whenever they face any issues, not to mention regulators who have remained eagle-eyed on the trend.
Hence, by investing in thought leadership, banking executives can can showcase much-needed transparency while championing the lesser-known benefits of open banking, such as improving financial inclusion by providing affordable credit to those facing short-term financial difficulties.
Ultimately, executives should follow the same formula to spin and lead media narratives every time.
Identify a trend.
Address misconceptions.
Educate and improve understanding.
Promote the banks activities, products, and services.
While the future of banking is uncertain, it's likely that it won't be long until we all face a cashless society.
This transition has already begun to take place. For instance, in the US, the world’s largest economy, as much as 84% of payments are being made digitally.
Yet, even despite this, there is still a prevalent lack of thought leaders on the topic.
With this in mind, executives have a great opportunity to take leadership and provide guidance on what a cashless society would mean for customers and other publics.
The media are bound to be receptive to any fresh perspectives, predictions, and ideas.
All executives should focus on targeting more niche trade publications to build their online profile over time.
This will gradually lead to better credibility, more followers, promotions, and greater opportunities at bigger banks.
After a while, having developed lots of media relationships and climbed the corporate ladder, executives will have the chance to contribute to a publication like the FT, where they can share their ideas with much larger audiences.
The key is to spend considerable time on media training at the beginning of any thought leadership journey to ensure journalists are spoken to professionally, executives say the right things, and the banks they work for avoid being pulled into a crisis.
Banking executives should also consider promoting themselves across less conventional platforms, such as by featuring on podcasts or speaking at in-person events.
These communications channels are more direct and personable, which can help executives resonate with more select audiences.
For instance, research shows that 75% of 18-24-year-olds listen to podcasts, the exact demographic banks risk losing to fintech banks, while events are more influential than TV ads.
So, if your bank pushes back on these additional activities, make sure you tell them otherwise.
For more advice concerning financial services thought leadership read here.