The Social Business Report 2018: A Global Study On The Strategic Role of Social Media in Financial Services
The Social Business Report 2018: A Global Study On The Strategic Role of Social Media in Financial Services
From advisors to executives to employees, every individual has a voice on social and
the potential to influence customers. As a result, we’re seeing multiple departments
across financial services organizations using social media strategically and effectively to
deliver real business results—even within the confines of strict compliance regulations.
Hootsuite’s Social Business Report explores the extent to which financial services
organizations are deploying social media strategies such as social marketing, social
selling, social advocacy, and social customer service, and identifies if and how teams
and departments are working together to unify these strategies.
The study found that 38 percent of organizations have implemented social initiatives
in at least four areas of the business. Yet along with new opportunities, growing
adoption of social media across organizations introduces new challenges. While social
is used as a strategic tool in several areas of the business, social activity and data are
siloed, resulting in challenges such as the inability to measure and prove the return on
investment in social media.
Our Social Business Report outlines the unique challenges and opportunities facing
financial services today and offers recommendations to management for social media
consolidation, integration, and investment in the growth areas of social selling and
social advocacy.
The survey was conducted by a third-party research partner. To avoid bias, Hootsuite
was not mentioned as the sponsor of the survey.
Since that time, compliance has become a baseline requirement for social media
platforms in financial services. With regulatory requirements covered, departments
beyond marketing have been able to adopt social media and use it to drive sales,
engage employees, enhance the customer experience, and recruit top talent. In
fact, 75 percent of respondents agree that social media is more important to their
business today than it was two years ago.
This expansion of social media across the organization has elevated its strategic
importance. With 75 percent of respondents reporting that their executive teams now
view social media as a strategic area of focus for the business, the conversation has
changed from containing and mitigating the risk of social media to proving its value
and integrating it across the business.
Against the backdrop of today’s privacy and security landscape, compliance remains
top-of-mind, particularly when choosing enterprise technologies to manage social
media campaigns and programs. Sixty-five percent of respondents have automated
at least part of their content preapproval process—and with the introduction of the
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in EMEA, it’s no surprise that the region is
leading its global counterparts in automating preapproval compliance.
Today, businesses are seeking to prove and grow the value of social by integrating
it with business-critical technologies such as customer relationship management,
customer service and help desks, and business analytics. However, there are many
opportunities to drive new means of collaboration within and beyond the organization.
Growth areas include social selling and employee advocacy. Two-thirds of financial
services organizations are using social media as part of their sales process, and almost
one third intend to adopt it in the next 12 months.
To that effect, peer influence is also at an all-time high. And financial services
organizations are taking note—58 percent have already implemented an employee
advocacy program.
NA EMEA
46% 38%
APAC
29%
NA 88% NA 73%
EMEA 86% EMEA 69%
NA 88% NA 64%
EMEA 82% EMEA 64%
However, within marketing departments, social media is predominantly used for top-of-
funnel marketing activities (brand awareness) and for engaging with customers.
Because financial organizations have access to rich sources of customer data, Lookalike
Audience modeling in Facebook (a strategy to help organizations find more people who
look like their current customers and website visitors) remains an attractive opportunity.
Other opportunities include mobile video ads on YouTube, as well as retargeting
LinkedIn prospects on Instagram to reach the same audience at a lower cost.
Q: Thinking about your social marketing program, which of the following ways does your organization currently use social media?
(select all that apply)
We are creating useful resources that help people understand the issues
and navigate the all-too confusing jargon in finance. Social listening
helps us get closer to our customers and the real issues at hand.
Sarah Daley
Experience Manager, Legal & General
Gartner predicts that by 2020, 90 percent of companies will be using social media
for customer service.³ Our research confirms that financial services organizations
are adopting social media media for customer service, with 81 percent of
respondents currently delivering services via social media.
This makes business sense because social media costs less to manage than other
channels. In fact, social customer service can cost up to $5 less per interaction
than traditional customer service channels like phone and email.⁴
Social media is also less resource-intensive, with social agents able to handle
four to eight times more issues per hour than phone agents.⁵ And advances in
artificial intelligence and chatbot platforms ensure that we’ll continue seeing new
opportunities for efficiencies in social customer service in the future.
Our study found that in 78 percent of organizations, social media has been widely
adopted by advisors, brokers, agents, and wholesalers to drive sales revenue. Yet
although advisors are active on social, only 67 percent have implemented a social
selling program. This could mean that a proportion of advisors, brokers, agents,
and wholesalers are taking advantage of social media for selling without the
protection of an official, compliant social selling program.
The data also reveals that financial advisors are most likely to be connecting
(following) and engaging (liking, commenting, and so on) with potential buyers on
social but less likely to be listening for buying signals, sharing company content, or
tracking leads. These findings are reflected in Forrester’s study on social selling for
B2B, which reports that few advisors are taking a full programmatic approach to
using social media for sales.⁶
Q: As part of your social selling program, which of the following activities do you agents / advisors / brokers / wholesellers typically execute on
social media as a representative of your organization? (select all that apply)
Social media gives our advisors the confidence to deepen relationships and
grow their networks online by connecting, listening and engaging, knowing
that the technology manages any compliance and regulatory concerns.
Alley Adams
Manager of Digital Strategy, Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management Canada
4. Social advocacy
Fifty-eight percent of respondents have adopted social advocacy initiatives. Social
advocacy is often used to showcase an authentic view of the business to attract talent
and foster employee engagement. Departments that wouldn’t typically use social
media—such as human resources and internal communications—have found benefits
in sharing job opportunities and promoting company culture.
One key area of opportunity for social advocacy is with the executive team. Just
53 percent of respondents are using social to build the personal brands of senior
executives.
Q: Now thinking about your social advocacy program, which of the following ways does your organization currently use social media?
(select all that apply)
Manulife president and CEO Roy Gori does this really well. He has a
following of over 11,000 on LinkedIn, where he shares content from
thought leaders he admires to engage industry peers and build his
personal brand.
11,000 + followers
In fact, organizations that implement four social initiatives are more likely to see greater
business value, including reaching new customers, increased deal sizes, and improved
campaign effectiveness.
CRM 54%
Q: Which of the following technologies is your social media integrated with? (Select all that apply)
When social data is integrated with other business technologies, the benefits range
from better customer experience to stronger revenue attribution and return on
investment (ROI) metrics.
Q: What benefits do you see from integrating social media with other business technologies? (Select all that apply)
Financial services organizations have reached a defining moment for social media
strategy. To succeed in measuring social ROI and proving the value of social,
organizations must overcome these ownership and resource challenges.
Not only is ownership decentralized, but almost half (44 percent) agree there is no
collaboration on social media usage and strategies across departments.
And it’s not just social media activities that are siloed—so is the data. Across these
initiatives, organizations are using several tools and platforms to publish, engage,
and report on social media, resulting in fragmented data and
an incomplete view of their customers and results.
When organizations use multiple technologies for social media management, they
risk underreporting the impact of social media activity as a whole. Using one tool to
manage social media across all four initiatives results in a single source of social data
and enables comprehensive measurement of—and attribution to—social media
activities.
The speed of change in social media can make it challenging for organizations to
keep up. Whether it’s adapting to changing algorithms, measuring ROI, or adding live
broadcasting into your strategy, social is always changing. Along with the skills gap,
social activities are under-resourced and lack budget allocation for critical technologies.
Q: Which of the following barriers make it difficult for your institution to be successful on social media? (Please select all that apply)
Skills gap/lack of social Lack of human resources Lack of budget for new
media training to manage programs technologies
NA EMEA APAC
••By activating employees across the business to build social media activities into
their workday, organizations will see greater business results from initiatives such as
social selling and social advocacy.
••By integrating social media with other business applications, organizations will
be able to prove the ROI of social media and gain a better view of customer
engagement and activity across the business.
Our research shows that organizational culture is changing, with social selling, social
executive programs, and employee advocacy programs increasing in popularity.
But social selling isn’t just about curating and sharing content. Organizations need
a programmatic approach to ensure success, incorporating technology, training,
success metrics, measurement, and more. With a formal social selling program, your
organization can track the return on investment of advisor activity while complying with
financial industry rules and regulations.
Stuart Raftus
President, Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management Canada
Social executive programs don’t just engage employees and help attract fresh talent;
they also build systems to respond to escalating situations on social media with speed
and transparency. For example, in an unfortunate event such as a data breach, a tweet
from the CEO will travel further and carry more weight than a faceless apology in a
press release.
If the executive team is active on social, they lead by example, making it easier for
organizations to roll out employee advocacy programs. In turn, content shared by
employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand
channels, helping to increase brands’ organic reach on social media.¹⁰
With your social selling programs and marketing campaigns running on the same
platform, you can simplify administration and reporting by managing it all within the
Hootsuite dashboard. And with extensive employee advocacy training programs that
can be rolled out to all teams, Hootsuite’s training specialists are ready to set your
organization up for success.
By adopting one social media management solution that suits all business needs,
organizations can create efficiencies in resource and technology spending, share key
learnings across the business, and measure the impact of social at a strategic level.
Furthermore, you can select a best-of-breed compliance partner to integrate with,
ensuring your compliance covers all social media activity across the organization.
To prove ROI, you’ll have to demonstrate tangible business results such as increased
sales, increased conversions, decreased costs per customer service transaction,
increased employee engagement or retention, or more positive brand perception.
To make the connection between social media activity and business results,
organizations need to integrate social data with other technologies so it can be
aggregated with other business intelligence data.
For example, by integrating social media channels with help desk and ticket
management systems, organizations can create a unified view of customer interactions,
helping them track efficiencies gained in time and number of touches to resolve
inquiries. And by integrating social media channels with CRM and content management
systems, organizations can attribute web conversions—and subsequent pipeline and
closed business—to social media activity.
Today, they have members of the sales team across the globe who have undergone
an “authorised user” training accreditation which gives them flexibility to engage with
clients and prospects across their social media accounts, in a compliant and controlled
manner.
Mathew Greenlay
Head of Digital Marketing, Aberdeen Standard Investments
² Harvard Business Review. Turn Customer Care into “Social Care” to Break Away from the Competition. 2012.
³ Gartner. How to Manage Social Media Engagements for Customer Service. 2015.
⁷ Hootsuite. How Social Executives are Transforming the Financial Services Industry in Australia. 2016.
¹⁰ Social Media Today. From Employee to Advocate: Mobilize Your Team to Share Your Brand Content. 2014.
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