Services: Brand strategy, social media branding, content strategy
Finance House is a Maltese lending company offering loans for cars, motorbikes and boats. They came to us because they wanted a social media rebrand that would help them towards their vision of becoming ‘a leading, dependable and trusted financing solutions provider’. With many local and international banks already using Instagram and Facebook to advertise themselves as loan providers, we knew we had a challenge on our hands, but that has never stopped us before.
Turning a vision into a strategy
Before we could figure out what would be the right move for Finance House, we ran focus groups and market research to find out what different audience groups felt about the brand. One of the key insights that came to light was that customers didn’t understand what Finance House stood for. It was clear from this that our main goal should be to build brand awareness and trust.
Don’t fall for this trap
When businesses hear the words 'brand awareness' it can be tempting to throw money at boosting posts to ensure your logo and name pops up on everyone’s newsfeed. But in the world of social media cash is not king. Instead, users value authenticity. The truth is people trust people rather than faceless corporations, and in an environment where someone can comment, review, like and share their feedback on a brand’s products, it’s easy to spot when a company doesn’t deliver on its promises.
If Finance House wanted to become ‘a leading, dependable and trusted financing solutions provider’ then we needed to make sure the quality of service customers received matched the brand vision. So before touching anything online, we took a look at the whole client journey and suggested a few ideas to generate excitement and motivation among the most important customers every business has - their staff.
Upgrading the whole experience
Your team are your most important brand ambassadors. Happy employees, happy customers. To re-energise and encourage the Finance House team we suggested a refresh of internal office branding. With that came new merchandise like bags, notebooks, pens and a personalised coffee mug with the logo to add some extra perks for Finance House employees.
Then to further support staff and engage with customers too, we introduced different tools that would make day to day tasks easier and more efficient. We initiated automatic emailing and greeting messages so that every customer enquiry generated a follow-up message - not to mention making sure that no potential lead was missed. And, if customers were happy to share their birth details, an automatic ‘Happy Birthday’ message would be sent on their special day too.
With our goal of brand awareness in mind, we also recommended an out of home brand activation. Finance House representatives gave out recycled branded bags to customers at Greens Supermarket allowing them to speak face to face with potential customers, put a face to the brand name and explain who Finance House was.
Organic and paid media
With an elevated customer experience locked in, we were ready to reinforce it online. Using search data, we found out what customers were looking for when researching loans. From this information, and in the spirit of being trustworthy and dependable, we could proactively create posts that were intuitive and relevant to our desired audiences' needs. We devised a content plan of blogs and posts that explained what to think about when buying a car, factors to consider when taking out a loan, posts about the team, and product advice. Then, like a well-oiled twin-engine, we had organic and paid media working in tandem to take our strategy forward. As customers were seeing helpful content from the brand that showed Finance House as a source of trusted advice, we boosted branded posts and product campaigns using a clear set of design guidelines to solidify the brand image and raise awareness. And we’re proud to say that the numbers don’t lie. Here’s how the new branding worked.
Before vs After
948 -> 3150
Online and offline planning
Like anything else social media shouldn’t be thought of in isolation. Sometimes the key to social media success is to think outside of the box, away from screen and instead consider the entire customer experience - which just so happens to be what we love to do.
So if you need a full audit of what you can be doing to generate leads online and a team of people to set you off with a killer content strategy, let us know.
