Login
ISCOVER
NAB Broker recently completed its latest roadshow series, Future Directions 2016, which ran in April and May nationally. Communications and marketing expert Samantha Smith from The Royals was invited as guest speaker to educate brokers on becoming trusted advisers in today’s digital world.
The customer always comes first and top-performing brokers invest in building strong connections. Trust is crucial in the broker-customer relationship and the key to keeping clients for the long term.
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Looking for more benefits? Become a Premium Member.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
Looking for more benefits? Become a Premium Member.
As social media grows in importance and digital channels become increasingly popular, brokers need to learn how to thrive in this environment and harness digital as a tool for building trust, delivering strong communications and ultimately driving business growth.
The five steps Ms Smith shared with us to help brokers master this are:
1. Take the time to understand your customer’s motivations
Every marketing decision a broker makes should respond to the needs of a customer, so brokers should take the time to create ideal customer profiles. To create a customer profile, brokers should identify who they are targeting – their demographics, goals, frustrations, personal journey, preferred channels of communications, influencers and motivations.
Once brokers have a customer profile, or a set of profiles, they can target their marketing efforts to appeal to specific groups and create tailored messages according to which profile they are addressing.
This step may be an initial investment of time and effort, however, it establishes the foundations for effective communication going forward, and shows your customer you understand them and can speak their language.
2. Tailor your own unique story as a broker
Just as brokers need to understand their customer, it is important customers understand their broker. To help customers build a connection, brokers shouldn’t be shy to sharing their business backstory and the fundamental beliefs of the business.
According to a survey NAB Broker conducted with Genworth in November 2015, a quarter of customers choose their broker because they like them on a personal level. This shows that establishing a personal connection as well as service, expertise and a friendly attitude are important from the get-go.
3. Focus on building your relationship with your customer
A key way brokers can build relationships and trust with their customers is by creating content. Content can be anything from an email update on market trends, to a Facebook post with a happy customer testimonials or a blog on LinkedIn providing interesting industry insights. Effective content can help generate awareness, address customer misconceptions, drive leads and promote loyalty.
To get the most out of content, brokers should ensure they keep the customer front of mind, create engaging content and appeal to each of their different demographics. From a business perspective, content should also be used as a promotional tool that can encourage lead generation, and is trackable and measurable to monitor engagement.
4. Spread your message widely and cost-effectively
Once the content is developed, brokers should harness the power of digital platforms to send their story to an audience of many. This is one of the major advantages of using digital channels.
Whether the content is distributed via a blog, social media or an EDM, it is vital that content is created with the aim of being sharable, engaging and trust-building. Paid advertising options should be explored and considered to guarantee reach on social media.
5. Encourage customer advocates
Word of mouth is the most powerful source of advertising for brokers, with almost half of broker applicants sourcing their broker through a personal referral, according to research by NAB Broker and Genworth.
To harness the power of customer advocates via digital channels, brokers should incorporate customer testimonials across their website, consider regularly posting testimonials via social media or include a section in their customer newsletter profiling a customer advocate. Brokers should ensure these testimonials align with their customer profiles so potential customers can relate to the testimonial, consider it as a form of social proof and feel comfort that the broker has experience in dealing with clients similar to themselves.
NAB Broker is committed to helping brokers deliver market-leading service to customers. A loan is more than just a deal – it is the start of a productive relationship that should continue for the life of the loan and beyond. Digital channels are just another way brokers can reach their customers and build a strong relationship based on trust.
