Turn real-time marketing into a channel that directs attention to your brands

Kenya’s largest bank in terms of assets, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), has redefined itself in the social media space, embracing real-time marketing as a way of establishing a relationship with customers while at the same time selling its products.

According to a survey conducted in 2015 by Wayin, a digital marketing platform, 56 per cent of the marketers surveyed cited real-time marketing as a key way of forming customer relationships.

“Social media is an ideal place to interact with consumers in real time and we found that responding to timely trends, news and events on social media, as well as engaging with customers on such platforms, were included in 58 per cent of respondents’ real time marketing strategies,” said the study.

KCB has found notable success through newsjacking, which is injecting of ideas into a trending news story, which in turn leads to social media engagement.

“Some of the instances we have done this include the escaped lions from KWS and the #PoleKwaMwirigi trending topic,” said Alex Muriu, the KCB Digital Marketing Manager.

“We also contextualise our products to customer behaviour and industry trends, for example the change in interest rates where we poked fun at ourselves, and riding on events such as the recent Chris Brown concert to raise awareness on KCB M-Pesa.”

In doing so, KCB is using its social media platforms as a mass channel that directs attention to its brand.

“What a brand has to do is be able to produce content on a regular basis and make it timely and relevant,” said David Armano, the global strategy director at public relations firm Edelman Digital, in an interview with AdWeek.

“If it has many followers across social networks and at any given moment puts up the right content and promotes it the right way, it can get in front of a lot of them. And that becomes a mass channel that’s direct to its brand.” KCB has not only used social media as a mass channel, but it has also developed a human approach when engaging with its customers online so as to make them more approachable to its audience.

“Most brands shy away from connecting with customers on topics and issues that they care about, we chose to immerse ourselves in these same areas of conversation as a brand and it has paid off,” said Mr Muriu.

It is this ability to communicate with customers with real-time information that has earned KCB two social media awards in two years; the Social Media Africa Award in 2015 and the Social Media Kenya Award in 2016 in the financial category.

“We have been consistently ranked position one by leading research companies such as Social Bakers and the Africa Brand Index in customer engagement, response rate and sentiment among financial brands in Africa. Over one million of our customers now engage with us on social media, thanks to the world class level of service we now offer,” said Mr Muriu.

KCB decided to embrace real-time marketing in 2012 after taking note of the new age customer who is more empowered, opinionated and inclined towards brands that are able to offer instant gratification and faster resolution turn-arounds.

“We did this in recognition of the trends in customer behaviour, namely the increasing Internet penetration and online behaviour as a result. Also, our target audience is the 18 to 34 age group, people who are constantly online and consume information mainly from digital sources and a target market that does not want to walk into a branch to conduct banking activities.”

For this market, it also created an application called KCB App so as to enable them to conduct their banking activities easily.

“The majority of this category is on smartphones, which make it easier for us to come up with content that can be easily consumed on mobile very fast and hence the KCB App, which is the best banking app in East Africa and has been downloaded over 300,000 times.”

Across these various initiatives, KCB has now achieved a top spot as a real time marketer, in successfully connecting consumers with products or services that they need.

- African Laughter