We analyzed 173 bank locations across Scandinavia to see how their SEO results changed after they started using PinMeTo.
The industry
Though banking is one of the world’s oldest industries, it has the potential to benefit from advances in location marketing just as much as newer industries do. But the banking industry doesn’t seem to be capitalizing: many banks have been slow to adopt marketing technologies, which negatively affects both their brand recognition and their customer satisfaction with their marketing communication.
While banks might be slow to embrace the digital, their customers certainly aren’t. Google remains the dominant method customers use to find businesses, and with more than 50% of searches ending without a click it’s important for banks to have comprehensive and accurate information on Google. Customers are also increasingly sharing their experiences with banks online, as one study noted a 6% yearly increase in the amount of customers who were likely to leave a review after a positive experience at a bank.
The harms befalling banks with outdated online location management practices don’t end at weak brands and unhappy customers – scammers have used banks’ unclaimed or mismanaged Google listings to dupe customers into giving out personal information by creating fake listings or even editing the information on the banks’ own listing. Claiming their online location listings and maintaining them with proper information is not only a marketing best-practice: it should also be a key part of modern banks’ cybersecurity strategies.
The process
Now we’ll take a look at some banks who are proactively managing their online location marketing.
While onboarding with PinMeTo, the banks claimed and verified all of their already-created locations on Google, merged the duplicates, and integrated every listing into PinMeTo’s service. They also created new listings for the locations which didn’t yet have them. This gave them full control over all of their locations’ information from one place, so changing opening hours or updating a phone number for 100 locations was as easy as doing it for 1 location. Having control over their locations also prevents these banks from falling victims to false information scammers.
Changing opening hours or updating a phone number for 100 locations was as easy as doing it for one location.
The Results
We crunched the numbers on 173 Scandinavian bank locations using PinMeTo, analyzing their Google results from the year prior to starting PinMeTo to their results after they’d been using PinMeTo for a year, and found increases across the board:
Direct – show up when your current customers are looking for you
Direct search is when customers search for specific locations, e.g. “Goliath National Bank, Manhattan.” These are often current customers, who might be trying to get directions or to contact the bank – and banks using PinMeTo saw 20% more clicks on directions, and 11% more calls and clicks to the website, in addition to the 72% increase in direct search result appearances.
Discovery – help new customers find you
Discovery search is when customers search for a type of business, rather than searching for a particular business by name, e.g. “bank near me.” Banks using PinMeTo saw a 22% increase in the amount of Discovery searches they showed up in, meaning that they were attracting more interest from potential new customers.