Financial WOM is More than Just Bank-Bashing
by Steve Thomson, Managing Director, Keller Fay-UK, August 1, 2011Tags: Banking, Face-to-face, Financial Services, Keller Fay Group, offline, online, Social media, Steve Thomson, TalkTrack® UK, WOM, word of mouth
Banks and bankers have not had a good press over the last few years, with politicians, media commentators, and the general public seemingly having little good to say about them. For other financial services brands the picture is not quite so dire, but even so, brands in this sector appear to be tolerated rather than loved. Brand relationships are strictly platonic.
Added to that, who wants to talk to friends about boring old banking and insurance brands? So surely there must be very little positive word of mouth in this sector?
Well, it’s true that financial services comes towards the bottom of the list of categories which people talk about – but not the very bottom. 29% of Americans had a conversation about this category in the past 24 hours, and among UK consumers considerably more – 43%. That’s millions of conversations every week. And buzz is not limited to middle-aged and older consumers – in the US the peak age group for financial-related conversations is 20-29, and money matters concern most income groups.
So, it’s possible to get people talking about financial services. For sure, banks and banking is the main discussion item (on both sides of the Atlantic), but credit cards and savings/investments both feature heavily. Insurance is the Cinderella topic, with only 5-10% of category conversations covering it, but even this low level still represents a lot of word of mouth.
And it’s not all rants about bonuses and poor service. For sure, WOM about financial services brands is less glowing than for many other categories. But even here positive sentiment outweighs wholly critical talk – by roughly 3 to 1. Think it doesn’t seem that way based on all those gripes on Facebook? You might be right – sentiment in online conversations is more negative. But regular readers will know that most conversations – in this category as with others – tend to be face-to-face or on the phone; offline, the tone is more balanced.
Hence financial services brands should resist the temptation to keep a low profile even during somewhat hostile periods, and instead be encouraged that positive WOM can be generated from vigorous marketing activity and strong customer service. During the past year, brands such as NatWest (UK), Vanguard, and Fidelity (US) have managed to outperform their peers and generate significant amounts of goodwill. Understanding what differentiates brands, and triggers buzz in a supposedly “difficult” category, is the key task.
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