Does growth hacking apply to banking? Can banks actually implement growth methodology and active experimentation framework?

Growth hacking is a relatively new focus in the marketing field, in which we would focus on key growth metrics for a bank. The goal of its extremely effective methodology is to quickly test ideas that can improve the growth metrics before investing a lot of resources, copy and expand ideas that can work, and modify or abandon those that don’t work.

First, we start with metrics to measure growth of our bank. The key metrics should always be the ones that best deliver growth to your bank, like new strategic partnerships, new enterprise clients, new clients, number of loans or mortgages, etc. Any KPI that brings us growth with either customer commitment (think daily active users, or DAUs, in your banking application) or have a direct impact on our revenue, like purchase of additional insurance, could be measured as growth metrics.

Once we know which metrics are the most important ones, it is time to set goals. Goals should be SMART, and these are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Getting a million in additional revenue in next month, open 300 new deposit accounts or get to the point of 100 mortgages on 2.5% through partners could be a SMART goal. Think of goals as a desired increment, of decrement, of your key metrics.

After we set up our goals, we ideate new or existing growth drivers. Growth levers, or drivers, are hypothetical ways to achieve goals. The bank’s blogging strategy could increase traffic to your website, build social media profiles and build expertise (an example to what BBVA did with their content strategy). This could be a potential growth driver to test. Social media is an essential tool for marketing in banks and building brand influence among competitors. However, social media should be used to enable your followers to obtain useful and relevant information, not just to sell information. 87% of consumers said that most banks on social media are “annoying, boring or unhelpful”. If you want to use Social Media as a growth driver, you need to make sure that your baking strategy is quite different and unique, and that it responds well to what your customers are looking for. Excellent customer service can be built into your marketing strategy and ultimately used to enhance your brand image. Videos and podcasts to attract customer attention could also be tested as a growth driver. Another possible drivers could be partnerships, cooperations with organizations that share the fundamental value of customers. This can be done through entertainment companies, real estate brokerage companies or non-profit organizations. Each of these could be tested as an experiment on a small scale before you decide you want to make a complete strategy out of this driver.

Experiments are ways to test the drivers. Each driver can be divided into small experiments which, if successful, validate the driver and give you relevant information on the strategy your bank should follow in the future. If what you are looking for is the lean approach for a specific product, you can test methodology separately for the product itself. It is all about the cycle of drivers - ideas for experiments - execution and then, of couse, learnings.

Want to know more about how to apply growth hacking to your team in a banking sector? Are you looking for a specific team setup and methodology implementation for a bank? Sign up for Hypertry and ask for a one to one session!