This document proposes a social media strategy for MBank. It discusses the business benefits of social media marketing, including improved customer service, reduced costs, increased brand awareness and loyalty. There are three focuses of a social media campaign: amplification to manage brand perception, listening to understand customer needs, and interaction to build human connections. The proposal recommends using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to target specific demographics and provide customer service at low cost. It also outlines how to measure return on investment through increased website traffic and engagement. The banking industry has started adopting social media successfully despite regulatory challenges.

1. A CASE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AT BANKS
Prepared for: MBank
Prepared by: Career Enlightenment LLC
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Proposal Revision #: 1

2. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 2
Overview
Why Social Media Strategy
Social media marketing offers companies expanded and low cost marketing channels where
messaging can be highly targeted and bi-directional. Where traditional marketing relies on
interrupting an unqualified population though print of other medium, social media asks for
interaction from a focused and qualified demographic.
According to a recent study called, The Feed Report, published every year by The Razor Group:
 65% of consumers have had a digital experience change their opinion about a brand
 97% of consumers say their digital experience influenced whether or not they eventually
purchased a product or service from that brand
The business benefits of Social Media Marketing include
 Improved customer service
 Reduced costs associated with customer service
 Increased brand awareness and ultimately brand equity
 Increased customer loyalty
 Reduced Marketing costs, with improved demographic targeting
 Low cost, if not free, new product or service development “crowd-sourcing”
 Through derivative, higher revenue and higher profits
There are essentially three focuses of a social media campaign
1. Amplification
2. Listening
3. Interacting
Amplification
Your company has a brand. And according to a Nielson study in 2009, 70% of people look at other
people’s reviews of your product or service before making a decision. Negative sentiment or
positive sentiment online seems to have very high impact on the purchasing decisions of the
consumer.
A good social media campaign will strive to manage negative reviews while providing value and
other reasons for positive feelings about the brand. If online brand attitude is not managed by the
company, then someone else is determining it.

3. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 3
Listening
Social media demands that the traditional sales cycle become reversed. Where companies used to
sell, they are now asked to listen. Where companies used to react to complaints, they are now
asked to interact, in dialogue, with a community of users. Customers will not listen to companies
who do not listen to their needs. The chart below illustrates this reversal.
During a Greenpeace campaign geared at preventing whaling in the Sea of Japan, several whales
were tagged with GPS devices. Each tagged whale was given a name. Most of the names were quite
wonderful: Fecity, Serendipity…and then there was Mr. Splashy Pants. Greenpeace wanted to
choose one of these whales for an official maskot of this campain.
So they put it to vote on social media. Mr. Splashy pants won the vote, but Greenpeace didn’t want
a maskot called Mr. Splashy Pants and rejected the vote. The outcry online was very heavy handed.
So after several bouts with public opinion, Greapeace let go or control and really listened. Their
campain was a huge success.
A good social media campain includes active listening to really understand the needs of the
customer.
Interaction
When a customer tweeted that they were stuck on the tarmac for four hours on their Continental
flight to Chicago, Southwest airlines told them, on Twitter, that a free ticket was waiting for them
at their gate, if they could get to it. For the price of a free ticket, Southwest not only earned a new
lifelong customer, but showed the Twitter community that they were listening and that there was a
human behind that interaction.
In general, a feeling of animosity to big brands that don’t “see” their customers as human pervades
the internet. A great deal of loyalty and social equity can be earned just by having human
interactions. And though these interactions might not lead directly to a sale, they certainly lead to
precursors to sale, such as more website visits, questions answered, and social buzz. An ROI can be
correlated with many such campaigns.

4. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 4
The Big Three
Most businesses have very little risk in using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for their marketing.
These medium forms the foundation of any social media campaign and when you work with me, I
begin setting up and optimizing these tools immediately.
Facebook
Facebook is by far the highest leverage tool for consumer-based influence. With more than
400,000,000 registered users, and the average amount of time on the site clocked at about 50
minutes, businesses will not find a better community to target. Facebook advertisement, for
example, gives businesses 36 data points so that their messages can be targeted to very specific
demographics at very low cost.
The following Google-Trends chart shows site/search traffic volume over the last four and a half
years. Facebook is clearly on an upward trend and exceeds high volume words such as “the” and
“porn” (understanding that until recently, pornography was the largest source of internet traffic).
Twitter
Despite a popular opinion, Twitter is not just for young people bored at work. In fact, HP boasts
about making over $6 million just from Twitter. The following chart shows that the median age for
Twitter is 18-34, white females with no kids. Though, from my own experience, people under the
age of 25 do not really use Twitter as much as people between 25-34 years old. Yes, I have even
heard a 21 year old tell me that “Twitter is for old people”. Go figure.

5. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 5
During an engagement with me, I leverage several powerful tools to create large and focused
Twitter audiences for your organization. I will help your communications team develop an editorial
calendar and schedule broadcasts, as well as train your team on how to interact with others on
Twitter. The following chart show the average growth trend that I will be able to provide for you
during a typical 3 month engagement.
LinkedIn
Over 50 million people use LinkedIn for professional networking. Companies use it for talent
acquisition and job postings, as well as for collecting poll results. Individuals use it for networking,
informational interviews as well as for making B2B purchase decisions. Having a strong LinkedIn
presence can help reinforce a business’s professional image, and by having the executives listed,
adds a human element.
Finding an ROI
According to marketing strategist Oliver Blanchard, social media presents a very complex path to
ROI. Where in traditional marketing, tracking efficacy of each campaign is fairly straightforward,
the relationship focus of social media can be more round-about. But it is not impossible. Oliver

6. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 6
presents several steps in determining ROI. The crux of his argument lies in statistical correlation. If
an organization can measure in increase in the precursors to sale, such as website visits,
interactions, impressions, views etc. then increases in revenue and profit may be effected
indirectly. The following illustrates the point, showing that slopes with drastic increase after a
social media launch are labeled “impacted”.
Beyond theory, just look at some other ROI trends reported by large companies (from “Social Media in the
Banking Industry):
 Online community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004)
 Community users spend 54% more than non-community users. (EBay, 2006)
 In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than online
forums and other Web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)
 Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users. (McKInsey, 2000)
 Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users. (McKinsey,
2000)
 56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more. (Annenberg, 2007)
 Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail.
(Jupiter, 2006)
Banking Industry and Social Media
Despite what must seem to be a regulatory nightmare, many banks are adopting social media
marketing. According to Jeremiah Owyang (one of the greatest Social Media thought leaders of our
time) there are 19 major financial institutions currently leveraging social media, http://www.web-
strategist.com/blog/2008/06/23/ongoing-list-of-social-media-in-the-financial-industry/
For example, here is a screenshot of Bank of America using Twitter to handle customer service
issues.

7. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 7
Here is a screenshot of 1st Mariner Banks’s Facebook Fanpage:
According to, “The Community Banker’s Guide to Social Media”,
Social networking Web sites allow banks to accomplish one or more of the following objectives:
 Improve customer understanding of products and services.
 Promote issues of social concern (e.g., mortgage defaults, green initiatives, etc.).
 Promote products and services.
 Facilitate sharing of knowledge between bank employees and consumers.
 Increase brand awareness.
Because of MBanks focus on Community Banking, setting up and maintaining community based
web services will be an important part of the company’s strategy. There are many of examples of
other banks from which to draw significantly diminishing much of the business risks. And with
proper policies in place, the rewards for modernizing customer outreach far outweigh and of the
drawbacks.

8. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 8
In 2006, Wellsfargo started the first Bank Blog, and has grown their web services to include online
games that teach children financial literacy to Twitter based customer service. Hundred of
Wellsfargo employees use blogs to brainstorm and develop new services and ideas as well as
interact with customers. Steve Ellis, EVP of Wells Fargo’s wholesale solutions group said, “A blog is
informal--a great way to get away from the corporate thing and let people inside our heads.”

9. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 9
Appendix A: Generic Metrics per Channel
Paid Traffic Benchmark
Click through rate 2%
Conversion rate 1%
ROI
Banner Ads Benchmark
Click through rate 0.50%
Conversion rate 2%
ROI
SEO Benchmark
Google Page Rank 5
SERP Rank 1 to 3
Quality of Incoming Links
# Incoming Links
Unique visitors
Bounce rate
Conversions
Brand:non-brand
What keywords are driving traffic
Main traffic sources
Pages Indexed
Keyword density
Social Media Benchmark
# positive mentions
Customer
involvement
Unsolicited Testimonials
Company Feedback 5%
# of retweets
# of blog comments
# twitter fans 1,000
Benchmark
Video

10. MBank Internet Marketing Consulting Proposal 10
Marketing
Views
iPhone Apps Benchmark
Downloads
Email
Marketing Benchmark
Open Rate 24%
Click rate 10%
Conversion Rate 2.50%