How to Effectively Position a Banking Mobile App in the Market
Mobile banking app market was projected to generate $693 billion from downloads as per some statistical reports — in 2020, the total payment value generated by using mobile devices reached $503 billion.
Increasing numbers of mobile users has also incited the growth of mobile payment services worldwide.
With such increasing numbers, financial institutions have moved beyond traditional marketing channels and try to leverage mobile technology as an important sales channel.
Banks are going digital to take advantage of technological innovations, becoming better, stronger, and more trusted by their customers. By now, the most competitive banks offer their clients mobile banking — the ability to complete the financial transactions via their smartphones or tablets. In order to keep up with growing demands of clients, both digital and legacy banks must continue to adapt to mobile market trends.
BUSINESS BENEFITS OF MBANKING
Mobile banking is more secure than online web banking due to multiple layers of authentication and protection.
Clients tend to handle more transactions via mobile phone, thus the result may be an increase of your bank revenue generated by mobile.
Paperless benefits to mobile banking not only help to protect the environment, but also reduce postage costs for banks.
Banking apps reduce human errors and let your clients manage their own finances in a smarter way while you will have better visibility of bank processes and address service issues instantly.
Mobile provides push and in-app notifications which significantly improves the communication. Those notifications are personalized alerts notifying users about certain actions (paying the bill, etc.) and should be used as a way of passing on key information. Notifications can improve customer relations with the brand if used properly.
Mobile is the best way to leverage technologies for improving user experience since you can offer personalized and tailored insights for users based on their preferences resulting in smoother customer experience.
If banks want to learn more about their customers’ habits and preferences, the mobile is the right way to go. Mobile banking apps enable banks to collect feedback thus improving the overall customer experience.
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR MOBILE BANKING
If you want to drive adoption you need to raise awareness of the benefits, educate and onboard your clients and give them a reason to change now.
Motivating mobile adoption requires you to explore the barriers standing in customers’ way. Is it difficult to sign up, are they unsure how to use the app and similar will help you to perceive your product from their standview.
If you want your mobile app adoption to be effective, you should implement both online and in-branch tactics.
What’s in it for the consumer?
Think about why would anyone pay attention to your app?
People usually need a slight push, so think about the perks of giving a mobile app a try.
You should try to figure out what to offer in order to meet the requirements of your audience — such a strategy can result in success when promoting your banking mobile app.
Pay Attention to Your Audience
Some research showed that certain banks and financial institutions are more prone to younger, more tech educated people who already have a good knowledge of mobile technology.
But do not forget about older people — many older people are actively engaged or interested in mobile apps and technology. Carefully choose a plan that includes this demographic group and you may be surprised.
If you want to attract both younger and older generations, make sure that your offers are valuable to your targeted audience. It will be difficult to attract or retain people if the app is slow or complicated — the whole point is convenience and ease of use, so make sure your app delivers exactly those features.
Empower Your Frontline
A great chance to promote your mobile banking app is when the clients visit your banking branch. Once they finalize their service, you can walk them through how to complete their transactions via mobile.
That means that your frontline staff must be confident using your mobile app while recommending it to your clients.
Your staff that interacts with your customers regularly must be familiar with your app and able to use it and help customers with any issues that customers may reveal.
If you want to cover all angles, you can offer help to people to download your app or set it up physically in your bank, while online you could provide a tutorial on your website.
Onboarding users and showing them the simplicity of your mobile banking app is the best way to drive them to use your app.
Create a resource centre on your website
One of the major obstacles to adopting your banking mobile app is the confidence and know-how level when using your mobile app. If clients do not believe they can complete their transactions correctly and securely, they will not use it.
You can overcome this issue by providing product simulations on your website. Such an approach will properly onboard your users and give them a chance to educate themselves on how to use your apps without any difficulties.
Any mobile app needs an onboarding section, so providing various forms like tutorials, step-by-step guidelines or FAQ section or chat will surely help in educating people and supporting the adoption.
Run an Interactive Marketing Campaign
Interactive campaigns are a great way to promote your mobile banking app. You can raise awareness, educate your clients and incentivize mobile app adoption all within a single experience.
Interactive campaigns create engaging experiences that encourage people to stick around — you can also combine experiences (e.g. games) with awards that customers will care about.
Engaging techniques will give your customers a reason to engage with your app in a long run building their usage habits and getting insights into their preferences.
A Single-Feature Emphasis
The biggest mistake of many sales reps and marketers is to try to explain ALL benefits at once. Highlighting specific features at a time will allow customers to focus only on one feature and more easily process the information.
If you send marketing emails promoting your banking mobile app, always highlight only the most important details to engage users to keep reading.
Step-by-step guidelines and checklists will help with this approach but remember to stay clear of heavy text in your emails or newsletter.
Social Media for Promotion
Today’s consumers want to be able to manage their own accounts, spendings or savings and that is the reason why financial institutions focus a lot on mobile technology. They tend to make their brand stand out in their social media ads with value propositions.
A new approach would be to promote mobile banking as a lifestyle itself — such an approach will create a better sense of integration between the bank’s products and their mobile apps.
Social media can be used for SEO purposes as well — you can target your physical stores and use keyword phrases like ‘bank near me’ or rely on product specific keywords like bank accounts.
However, be careful with social media and ads so as not to trigger a counterffect. Step into their shoes and give them a good reason to download your new app — once you perceive things this way, consider adding it to your strategy.
If you want to differentiate your mobile app from your competitors’, your marketing team should translate/convey the value proposition of the mobile app into the messaging that will support the lifestyle of their customers and end users.
MOBILE BANKING TRENDS
Some of the most in-demand features of mobile banking apps as per industry analysts are as follows:
Account Management
Such tools enable users to perform basic banking tasks in-app while helping banks to establish a single-channel experience. A hassle-free digital experience demands flawless mobile management capabilities.
Security and control
Security functionalities enable customers to overview their personal information — such a need was accentuated in the pandemic.
Security is the utmost factor when talking about consumers’ confidence in banks’ digital means.
Security features today are becoming more and more advanced with technologies like biometric authentication, facial recognition and voice recognition.
Alerts
Alerts or notifications are one of the most important ways for banks to reach their customers — they are the best approach if being in easy-to-use and interactive format.
Banks can gain a competitive edge by investing in less common alerts like password changes or purchases above the previously set amount.
FINALLY, WHAT DO CUSTOMERS EXPECT?
Mobile banking is definitely the future of the banking industry.
If you wish to increase adoption, try to figure out the reasons why your clients hesitate and help them with the onboarding — only if you offer them unique value, will they try your mobile app.
Customers today are bound to their smartphones and they expect their banks to be at their pocket’s reach. If you combine useful features with high security standards, it will enable you to retain both, new and existing customers.
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