Analyzing FNB's Social Media Strategy

The assignment analyzes First National Bank of South Africa's (FNB) social media strategy. It discusses how FNB shifted from traditional marketing to digital platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The analysis focuses on the eWallet game campaign and its success, demonstrating how social media can drive customer engagement and revenue. The document also explores the broader implications of social media for customer relationship management, product design, and risk management within FNB.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Management Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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To: Lana Strydom, Head Digital Marketing and Media, FNB.
From: Name of the Student, Senior Associate, Digital Marketing and Media, FNB.
Date: Current Date
Subject: Analyse the management of a social media strategy.
Mrs Strydom,
First National Bank of South Africa had spent a huge amount of money in the past for
their marketing strategy. They even spent R216 million as a sponsorship fee in the FIFA World
Cup of 2010. They updated their marketing strategy by approaching the digital and social media
as a form of far reaching, cheap form of marketing as the initial investment is low, and the return
revenue they received was high. They even started awardingthoseemployees with the most
innovative marketing ideas.
Different marketing ideas on the digital media included a large number of YouTube
videos that hosted educational content, FNB digital storesand even creating the very first app that
the people of South Africa can use for banking. A eWallet game was created on Facebook where
people could learn about the working procedures of the eWallet and the game served as a great
marketing as well as advertisement tool. However, it was emphasized that Facebook should
primarily be used as a channel that would serve the customers of FNB with value added services
rather than just using it as a marketing platform. Facebook and Twitter was focussed on to
approach the mass and LinkedIn was used to approach the banking professionals.The online
presence of FNB was humanized where a persona named RB Jacobswas created. RB Jacobs
would represent FNB on all of the social media sites.

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The investment in the social media strategy providedFNB with a huge success.
Approximately 50,000 people showed interest in the game and around 30,000 people played the
game repetitively. Considering the revenue perspective of the eWallet initiative, an investment of
R1.4 million was made and R6.1 million was achieved as return on investment. People usually
conducted online research as to develop their choice of bank. Thus, this strategy helped in
attracting potential customers and retaining the old customers as well.
Social Media helps banks and the financial institutions in multiple ways. It helps to create
channels. The social media assists in creating channels, the social media sites help the consumers
help the consumers to stay connected all the time. the consumers like, share and comments,
depending on that FNB can know the preference of the consumers. Based on the social
responses, they can shape their business (Rokka, Karlssonand Tienari2014). The social media
also helps in promoting the products of the banks. The social media can help the engage the
consumers, it helps in enhancing the brand value of FNB. The social media also facilitates
implementing functionality to accommodate online apps. It also facilitates the opening of
accounts of new consumers. The social media can help FNB to gain the industry insight, FNB
can know their position in the market with the help of the social media.
The social media can give them the competitive edge, as well as they can know their
dominance in the market (Hollebeek, Glynnand Brodie2014). FNB can learn about the latest
market trends and the consumer demands. FNB with the aid of the social media can spread their
market. They can reach to many customers. FNB with the aid of social media can advertise and
can earn money. The consumers will click the button and in turn FNB will earn revenues. The
social service can help them to build relationships. FNB should implement the informed team
and that will manage the communications in effective manner (Varnali et al. 2017). The

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informed team must take into account the positive and negative feedback and must take
appropriate actions, they should reply or act in such a way such that they can earn trust of all the
consumers. FNB also can learn about their value of efforts with the help of the Social media
analytics and the Google Analytics.
Various factors for organizations like FNB that are needed to be considered while using
social media for communicating with customers along with enhancing their experience is
discussed hereafter. First of all, they can move from enterprise CRM to social CRM. Current
analytics tools have been making that possible in gauging customer sentiment at various times.
This could be done with essential dates like birthdays, anniversaries and utilize the data for
offering proper services and products (Durkin, McGowan and Murray 2014). The customers
need to be educated. Customers could also be aware of latest launches of products via social
media. Thus they can develop concerns and query about them.
Further, customer insights could be gained. Utilizing analytics for dissecting data could
deliver invaluable data about customer sentiment and behavior. Thus it allows banks for
designing more personalized services and products. Besides, the customer base can be improved.
This can be done by in-depth analysis of social media. Thus they can better understand activities
that they could take to transform enthusiasts or fans regarding services and products (Grégoire,
Salle and Tripp 2015). Further, customer delight could be achieved. Any dedicated team of
social media can make FNB more responsive and accessible to the customers. The customer
services can be improved through monitoring social channels that must highlight channels faced
by customers and help the banks to undertake steps for denoting problems like they have been
degrading customer relationship (De Vries and Carlson 2014). Lastly, the issues can be
efficiently resolved through crowd-sourcing. This holistic solution must cover various arrays of

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capabilities like customer engagement, data-diagnosis, derive insights, compliance and
governance.
Thus social media must be incorporated into FNB’s ecosystem. This is because it can
quickly affect various areas of customer relationship management, product and service design,
customer education, risk management and so on.
Regards,
Name of the Student
Senior Associate, Digital Marketing and Media
FNB

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References:
De Vries, N.J. and Carlson, J., 2014. Examining the drivers and brand performance implications
of customer engagement with brands in the social media environment. Journal of Brand
Management, 21(6), pp.495-515.
Durkin, M., McGowan, P. and Murray, L., 2014. Perspectives on the potential for social media to
improve communication in small business–bank relationships. The International Journal of
Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 15(4), pp.251-264.
Grégoire, Y., Salle, A. and Tripp, T.M., 2015. Managing social media crises with your
customers: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Business Horizons, 58(2), pp.173-182.
Hollebeek, L.D., Glynn, M.S. and Brodie, R.J., 2014. Consumer brand engagement in social
media: Conceptualization, scale development and validation. Journal of interactive
marketing, 28(2), pp.149-165.
Rokka, J., Karlsson, K. and Tienari, J., 2014. Balancing acts: Managing employees and
reputation in social media. Journal of Marketing Management, 30(7-8), pp.802-827.
Varnali, K., Ersoy, E., Tanriverdi, S.G. and Terzi, E., 2017. Case Study 7: Managing Social
Media Communications at Garanti Bank. In Strategic Marketing Cases in Emerging Markets (pp.
99-106). Springer International Publishing.