With advanced tracking code installed on your bank's website, it's amazing what additional information you get about those who visit you online... and what you can do with that data to help move people along the conversion process, hopefully becoming a customer someday.

What got me excited today was actually seeing the marketing automation process "in the wild" thanks to the folks at Live Oak Bank. You see, last week on one of our project calls with a new bank website customer, we visited the Live Oak Bank's site to check out some of their functionality. During my visit, I must have been "cookied" as a visitor because while on Facebook today I saw the following advertisement promoting the bank's helpful guide for chicken farmers.

Because I don't live in their market area, I suspect they would not show me this ad normally, but since I visited the ag-banking section of their site they are taking a chance that this may be of interest to me. After clicking on the Download button (to get the guide - remember we don't want to try and sell the visitor right now), I get a nice landing page (see below).

This page builds credibility right off the bat with an attractive cover photo of its customers (and their names). There is a simple form to collect my information if I want to download the Grower's Guide, plus to the left, there is additional information that serves as further reinforcement about what I'll get by downloading the guide (encouraging me to fill out the form and give them my information).

Once the submission is completed, I get a thank you message with the link to download the guide, plus a link to special ag information on their site. A great thing if I was someone interested in learning more about their ag services and knowing more about the bank and their capabilities.

This is a good example of how the process should work. You can see how my visit resulted in me being tagged, remarketed to on Facebook with an ad informing me about something of "value" (not just trying to sell me a loan), utilization of a focused landing page to collect my information, and finally, the delivery of the guide. Pretty sweet to see the conversion process taking place "in the wild."

Any Marketing Automation Opportunities at Your Bank?

The only downfall for Live Oak Bank in all if this is I'm not a chicken farmer living in their market area. But if I was, you can bet I'd be interested in doing business with them. Despite my lack of interest in starting a chicken farm, I did download the guide and it had a lot of great information, based on their years of experience in this industry. That's the type of bank I'd think a chicken farmer would want to work with.

You don't have to be a bank that specializes in chicken farms to put marketing automation to work. Think about areas where your bank has some specialized expertise and develop a content marketing strategy with an inciting lure piece (like Live Oak Bank's Grower's Guide), share your knowledge, and build credibility. Drive traffic back to your site, capture visitor information, and start building a relationship.

While the interaction may not result in a customer right away, over time this strategy will certainly yield results and might be "eggs-actly" what you may be looking for to take your business generation strategy to the next level. If you're not too chicken to try something new, get in touch and we'll get crack'n with your marketing automation plan. Ok, that may have been overboard on the poultry-puns, but couldn't resist! ;-)