I wrote this article for Banker Middle East magazine's June issue. It highlights the need and benefits of digital marketing for banks sighting a few case studies, references and ideas.

1. www.cpifinancial.net46
DIGITAL
MARKETING
D
o tell us about the work
you have conducted
on searches for the BFI
industry, why is the data
important and how do they use it?
“Search data is extremely important for
clients because it estimates demand.
We know that there are 55,620 searches
in MENA relating to credit cards every
month; for example the most searches
for credit cards in Oman take place on
the first week of July. This information
indicating consumer behaviour can
help us determine the market size, the
cost required to reach our objectives
and the best time to advertise or launch
a new product.
Search is the most basic yet extremely
important form of digital marketing;
because a search engine is typically
where any user starts his/her browsing
experience. We see Google as a salesman
who people go to for advice. The most
typical scenario would be John wants to
open a bank account, he goes to Google;
types ‘Banks in Dubai’ and would get
results (recommendations from Google).
Banks need to make sure that they appear
and rank as high as possible in that
recommendation list. Almost one million
searches about banking and finance take
place every month in MENA*.
Netizency’s Co–Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Fadi Khater
discusses the benefit of search data for Banking and Finance Institustions
(BFIs) digital social marketing and brand building, with Zoya Malik
“We help banks and financial
institutions appear on Google in
two ways; SEM & SEO. SEM (Search
Engine Marketing) involves buying ads
on Google – the ad will appear as a
sponsored search result with a small
yellow square indicating that it’s an
ad. The placement of the ad in terms
of rank is a function of Bid x Quality
Score; where quality score indicates how
good the site is and how relevant it is
to the keyword being searched. All ads
on Google are done in the form of an
auction; the advertiser sets a maximum
bid and once a search takes place a live
auction takes place to determine the ads
that will appear and their rank. HSBC
is the top ranking search ad for the
keywords ‘Bank in Dubai’.
“SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
is how a website is optimised so that
search engines pick it up organically
(without advertising); There are many
ways for optimising websites the most
important of which include using the
most searched keywords in the content
and meta tags, in addition to creating
as many inbound and outbound links to
the site as possible. United Arab Bank is
the bank that appears first in the organic
search results.”
What do BFIs need to do to reach
their customers using social media?
“Social networks are where people
go to socialise; they are not a place
where people seek exposure to hard
sell campaigns or annoying sales calls.
For BFIs to successfully integrate on
social channels they need to be human,
relevant, and engaging. Relevant
content should be tailored to the specific
locations and target content based on
interests. The content needs to be human
whereby customers feel that they are
interacting with real people as opposed
to automated messages; this can be done
by staff videos explaining products, live
Q&As, or testimonials from clients. The
last and most important point is the
engagement aspect; people want to feel
Search and optimising
the future
Netizency’s co – founder and Chief Strategy
Officer, Fadi Khater
page 46-48 Netizency difital marketing.indd 46 5/13/14 3:09 PM

2. www.cpifinancial.net 47
important, so brands must ask for their
opinion and involvement.
“Social Media marketing allows
content to appear in your newsfeed as
opposed to you actively searching for it.
Being in its target audience’s newsfeed
should be the most important objective
for a bank. Each newsfeed is different;
every person’s newsfeed is a curation
of the things that he/she likes including
friends, family, brands, and news.
“Social content can appear in one’s
newsfeed organically or in a paid
manner. The most engaging posts have
a higher likelihood to appear organically,
whereas less engaging ones need to be
promoted. Facebook shows brand posts
to less than six per cent from the people
who like a brand page – this percentage
varies according to number of page likes,
type of post (text, link, image, video),
and number of engagements. A post can
appear in your newsfeed because a brand
posted it or because a friend interacted
with it. Twitter on the other hand shows
all posts to all followers however, because
we tend to follow many people but we
only read the last 30 tweets when we
open Twitter; brands need to promote
their posts for them to stay at the top of
a user’s newsfeed.
“Brands can target people on social
channels based on their interests.
Interests are determined based on
who people follow, their activities, or
interests that they indicated. There are
15.2 million people on Facebook and 1.4
million people on Twitter in MENA who
are interested in banking and finance.”
How well does the BFI industry
fare in terms of audience reach,
vis a vis other sectors?
There are fewer people interested in
banking than other sectors; this is
because people are less passionate
about banks than they are towards
travel, sports or technology. For industry
interests in MENA see graph:”
Can you share some BFI client
objectives and case studies?
“Engagement on social media is
like any other form of engagement;
the end objective is almost always
to increase revenues, but that is
done through creating awareness,
offering a better service, and giving
back to the community. Here are
some examples:
“CSR: When Qatar National Bank
wanted to develop a strategy for
Corporate Social Responsibility; they
decided to go social. The bank asked
the residents of Qatar how they wanted
their bank to help. This question led
the public to recommend a multitude
of activities and recommendations that
inspired the bank’s CSR strategy.
“Ad Feedback: QNB occasionally
used Facebook to get people’s
feedback on their advertising; the
most prominent of which was when
they got the biggest hoarding on
the Doha Corniche – the feedback
helped confirm the communications
team’s idea and aided them in selling
the advertising concept to the bank’s
senior management.
“Announcing financial results and
economic reports: Social channels
are the best platform to announce
financial results and share economic
outlooks since they arrive in the relevant
people’s newsfeeds and they get shared
by friends; ensuring that the relevant
people find out about them.
“Team Engagement: People want
to feel that their banks are human and
social channels help in making that
happen. Banks can get their staff to talk
to the public through videos explaining
products or live Q&A sessions.”
How advanced are BFI companies
in social media marketing in the
Middle East?
“BFIs in MENA are relatively weak
when it comes to activating marketing
promotions contrary to telecom
operators. Most of the banks use social
networks as push marketing channels
like TV and press as opposed to using
them for engagement, personalisation or
co-creation.”
Which companies in the Middle
East use social media well? Why
is this so?
“Let me start with an overview on social
media followers across different industries:
“Media including the likes of MBC
and AlJazeera tend to be the channels
with the largest numbers of fans since
people actively seek their content as
opposed to other brands that use social
media for self-promotion purposes.
Telcos follow since their customers use
social channels for customer service and
wanting to stay up to date with the latest
offers and win contests.
“Airlines come next as they have a
very large pool of global audience to get
followers from.
Industry interests in MENA
Food & Beverage
Sports
Music & Radio
Movies & TV
Technology
Travel & Tourism
Banking
10,000,000- 20,000,000 30,000,000 40,000,000 50,000,000 60,000,000
Twitter
Facebook
cont. overleaf
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3. www.cpifinancial.net48
DIGITAL
MARKETING
cont. from pg47
“Now to answer your question; there
are two case studies that I feel make the
best use of social media. Those are:
“Ana Wal Sukari: An Arabic only
FacebookPagededicatedtopeoplewhoare
living with Diabetes in MENA. It targets a
very niche community and provides them
with content that they are looking for. The
page has fans that actively seek its content
and brands that seek to participate with it
to reach a relevant audience.
“Emirates Airlines: The airline clearly
invests a lot of time and effort behind its
social activities. It has very well thought
out content that is insightful and rich;
they tend to have beautiful imagery,
socially tailored content, and videos
with high production values.”
How advanced are consumers in the
Middle East in using social media?
“Social media usage in the Middle East is
more advanced than the rest of the world.
There are 84 million Facebook users,
10.4m Twitter users, 9.5m LinkedIN users
and growing. People in Bahrain spend
over 4.1 hours/day1
on social media (as
opposed to 37 minutes/day2
in the US),
Twitter toppled the government in Egypt,
and Saudi Arabia is the biggest user of
YouTube per capita in the world3
and a
major content contributor.”
What will be the next big trend
for bank customers?
“Banks in MENA will start using
more data from social channels to set
their marketing and communication
strategies based on the interests of
their customers and target audience.
“The main evolution that everyone
is looking for is linking online to
offline and vice versa; this includes
providing banking services on social
channels (i.e. making a credit transfer
on Facebook) and providing social
integration in branches (i.e. sharing
an in-branch banking activity
on Twitter).”
*Countries in MENA: UAE, Bahrain, KSA, Qatar,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and
Iraq (84m Facebook Users) (10.6m Twitter Users)
1 Social Media usage per day in MENA: http://
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/damian-radcliffe/
understanding-social-medi_1_b_4715302.html
2 Social Media usage per day in the US:
http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-
engagement-statistics-2013-12#!ClvSr
3 YouTube usage in KSA: http://www.
fastcompany.com/3021832/fast-feed/the-worlds-
most-avid-youtube-viewers-are-in-saudi-arabia
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