Communication for banks in the rural market

The role of banks in achieving financial inclusion objectives of the Government has assumed more importance as the Government is trying to organize its financial transactions with the multiple entitlement holders  it is obligated to  serve. The net of banking is thus poised for a n expansion bringing under its loop people thus far unattended and  unserved.  Now the question arises is whether banks will be able to engage with its new stakeholders and ignite desire for a consistent association with it.

There are many problems that are likely to come up in the process of familiarizing people, especially illiterate and semi literate  to the utility of the various banking services. Now with banks performing multiple functions apart from their core services of deposit mobilization and loan disbursements, additional effort is needed to make the people understand the institution of bank and its role in shaping their financial fortunes.  Even today in many parts of rural India, small non- institutional financial practices are a common feature. So it Is mandatory to change the habit of the people and this needs a complete awareness campaign highlighting the comparative advantages of conducting financial transactions though banks in preference to locally practiced methods.

This need to send the right message requires a different thinking and use of different channels. Vehicles of communication used in urban areas are designed to match their socio-economic profiles and media consumption habits. In rural areas, the same procedure can’t be copied due to a huge difference between media accessibility, spending power and lifestyles. Even though newspapers and televisions have penetrated deep into India’s hinterlands, yet their power to influence peoples habits and opinions, especially in financial matters remains doubtful. Several factors could be held responsible for the poor response of the rural people to the communications of the banks.

First of all, banks are using the wrong platforms to communicate with the people. Rural people as has been mentioned above are less exposed to the conventional mediums and more to ambient mediums. Communication opportunities could be identified at places of mass congregation especially at time of fairs, local festivals, and periodic market gatherings. Those events provide ideal opportunities for interacting and engaging with those groups. In India, due to its cultural diversity, the number of festivals and fairs are quite high, especially in rural areas where tradition has deep roots. Even though most of the fairs are religious in character, yet small floating markets come up around them at the time and the number of people rises accordingly. This is also the time when they keep they keep their purse strings loose and spend on various commodities. Attendance at fairs has not reduced despite the diminishing gap between the consumer and the market. Banks must leverage this unique platform and find creative idea s of interaction at those venues to capitalize on the opportunities it presents.

Apart from religious fairs, sports competitions witness huge gathering of crowds. These competitions provide nice sponsorship opportunities for banks as they can tailor their messages depending on the type and place of the game. Besides they can also vary the tools of engagement. Banks however have to be creative in designing the models of interaction and the contents of the message.

So if Banks could integrate technology with common sense, insights with innovation and creativity with knowledge of the local market, they can extend their footprints deeper into the rural pockets and succeed in their goal of becoming the catalysts of financial inclusion.

Lovable brands

There has been much research to identify the reasons that makes a brand more likable than others even if there is little difference in the character of their product,market positioning or scale of operation. Perception of people about a brand is found to be influenced by many factors that are extrinsic to the business and operation of the organization along with core factors that shapes an organization's brand image. Scope of product differentiation has considerably reduced due to uniform adaptation of technology and identical adoption of quality standards by all organizations.This has made it contingent upon companies to find out other modes of differentiation to project themselves as having the uniqueness unmatched by others.Understanding people in the context of their value orientations,their cultural moorings and their peculiar environments gives an incisive insight into the factors that shape his brand judgement. Without having any reference or allusion to the company's excellence in its products or services,an image is sought to be projected which is the outcome of the company's values and people friendliness. Brands that are adored by people have properties other than their commercial propositions. Those are brands that become part of people's lives rather than subjects of utility recall.They become part of their daily conversations. They acquire their status by aligning themselves with the concerns and sentiments of the people.This is achieved not only by their focus on quality of their products , but also by their power to to make the lives of their consumers more fulfilling,wholesome and enjoyable. This deep affinity with consumers extends beyond commercial transactions. As the brand commands trust and loyalty,people dont find it difficult to associate it with beyond commercial engagements. This further reasserts and reinforces the brand's commitment to public cause which makes it more acceptable and lovable in the public. Now the obvious question that arises is how brands go about the task of having that loving image through a deliberate process.Difficult it may appear , but it is quite achievable to build personalized affinity with the people. Knowing his emotions, understanding their problems,expressing solidarity and coming up with solutions facilitate bonding at an intimate level Brands must strive not only to meet the inherent or implicit need his product or service is supposed to satisfy or the customer is having, but also his unexpressed or latent need, satisfaction of which can multiply his happiness and provide him more enjoyable experiences. This needs understanding the life style of the people and the environment in which his decisions are made.The more the brand engages with the customer and widens its level of engagement,the more strong the relationship grows. People need attention to their needs as well their person. So a brand that discovers more opportunities to interact,to talk and to identify itself with the broader need of the people, ultimately emerges as a lovable brand.

Branding Institutions

Perfect competition works best in a market if the demand-supply dynamics is driven by players of equal strength and competence. People have better options and choices and the pace of shift is swifter. The ideal condition of a perfect competition exists if the products are fast moving or mass consumed and need consistent replacements. The demand for such commodities is continuous and not seasonal or cyclical in nature. Contrasted against this are the market for services, and most pointedly the market of services having an ethical string attached to it like education and health care etc. People expect educational institutions and hospitals to function not only as profit making businesses but as service institutions. Hence it gets difficult on the part of entrepreneurs in these fields to blend commercial objectives with social expectations. But it is not difficult. What the players in these fields must keep in mind that it also offers them an opportunity to forge a bond with the people that can outlast their business relationship and go a long way in a sustaining their goodwill and trust . People are prone to share their experiences and a positive perception about your brand is discussed and talked across a number of forums. It expands the horizon of your target base and increases the number of your potential clients. Staying competitive in these sectors requires attention to the changing need profile of the people and your preparedness to attend to them. Differentiations in deliverables have become mandatory due to the near homogenization of products and services. What is more important is to communicate persuasively to the masses about your distinctiveness. This requires smart communication planning. Educational institutions invest much of their capital in building infrastructures, rightly so because those are critical for the operation of the institutions and have functional usefulness. At the same time their competitors are also building the same strengths. The scope of differentiation is getting narrower by the day in terms of deliverables. For example the difference in the quality of facilities like buildings, labs, hostels, technical support and even faculty members is declining. Accessibility which was an advantage for some institutions has lost its edge due to the proliferation of institutions across the state. Besides concentration of institutions in a few clusters have made faster access to them easier due to better connectivity. So what we see that these features can’t be leveraged to produce a unique advantage for any one institution as these are shared by their competitors too. That necessitates creating a distinct identity through uncommon differentiators that shows your institution’s uniqueness which is unclonable and with proprietary properties. Even though it is difficult to find out that distinguishing feature, yet a perception could be generated showing your institution as having that unmatchable characteristic. This is done through a sequence of communication campaigns which progressively makes the message a part of his thought and spins an image around it. Your projected difference can be the foundation of your brand making you strikingly unique. The communication campaigns need to be fuelled by powerful content and indisputable market research data. Even common features could be creatively presented lending them the appearance of a distinguished attribute.. All these activities need careful planning, right media strategy, creative concept development, market research and Public relation campaign, cumulative output of which could be seen as a distinct brand image.

Find your customer

Very often it gets difficult to identify the right customer or the group of customers. The difficulty arises mainly due to limited knowledge and lack of market research. Market research doesn't depend on huge spending or extended survey schedules. One may rightly get data on a wide range of subjects from a varied number of sources. Secondary data are available at the press of a key and one just need to know what type of data one requires and how important it is for attaining his objectives. Customers are not invisible beings and are not untraceable. the right prospecting technique is what one requires and it differs in sync with an organizations  profile, its goals and operational standards. Wise marketers see opportunities where there is none. They are not just in search of customers having in-built needs,but also for persons in whom a need could be ignited. These needs are latent needs about which a customer is unaware of and clueless about its presence and utility. The marketer has to point out this need and how satisfaction of that need could enrich his living and open the flood gates of more better experiences in the future. He should be communicated flawlessly about the impact of the good or service that he consumes on his personal well being both in the short and in the long run. 

Prospecting gets difficult due to poor definition of the target group . Categorizing along functions,territories or capabilities mayn't be sufficient always. It is common for overlapping to occur as one or two parameters of categorizing is shared by most of the customers. For example a person may be living in a geographic territory, can come under the desired income group and have the same functional requirements. This makes segmentation a difficult task as mutually non-overlapping variables are difficult to find and be classified as a sub set. Yet it is not a difficult task  as personalized data are now available easily thanks to facilitated by high end use of technology. 

Social media offers now a never before opportunity to know about each individual customers profile , his choices,preferences, values, strengths and weaknesses. It is a potential gold mine to harvest insights which are critical for developing an understanding of the customer and framing the right communication strategy which can spark a desire for the commodity or serivice about which he is communicated. 

In some sectors customers stay scattered over an uneven spread of territories. Neither do they use a common media nor do they have the geographic contiguity. Here you have to find a common thread that touches all your prospective customers and a common platform where they can be addressed, Some times it may be a club, some times it may be an exhibition,a particular channel and sometimes in customized events meant to focus on a perceived shared interest. It can diversify in accordance with the data or insight in command with the marketer. The magnetic property of your communication should draw forth prospects from their scattered hideouts  and huddle them before you to see them and approach them in ways as you wish. 

The role of strategy

                                                     

Strategy…Whether you are a big business or a SME, this is an important driver of your business growth and carries it ahead on the right track.  You need to make a concrete strategy to mobilize and optimize your resources in an efficient way. Many organizations fail to capitalize on their strengths, resources and skills and accelerate their growth due to lack of a clear strategy.  On the contrary organizations that prosper and achieve remarkable results are seen to be driven by a clear and properly outlined strategy.  Strategy is not an indivisible plan, but a composition of several sub-plans integrated into a whole.  Of course a defining goal characterizes the strategy and all activities are carried out to give effect to that end. The final objective of an organization is not achieved a by a strategy that is uniform across all departments and functions, but through a harmonious fusion of different strategies and the synergies produced by them.   

A strategy for one organization may differ from the strategy of another organization even though there is a commonality in scale, category or a target group.  An organization’s inherent values, its worldview and its commitments to the community could be major differentiating parameters and shape its strategy in a distinct way. Adaptation of technology, alacrity with which one responds to consumer feedback and the communication plan of an organization also influence the overall strategy of an organization.  For example,  In a complex organization with multiple structures, layers and command panel, strategy for growth is quite different from an organization that is simple and organically built. The former needs restoration of simplicity to ward off operational inconveniences arising out of a command inter-loop, decision overlapping and a skewed information spread.    They need simple operational controls and an efficient knowledge management framework   to overcome the noise and information mismanagement. In the later case the strategy should mostly focus on leveraging the lean organizational structure, transparent information management and free cross flow of ideas HR planning is less cumbersome in the case of the latter than in the case of the previous.

Organizational culture has also a huge bearing on development of a right strategy whether its product planning, choosing the right portfolio of products, marketing and communication planning etc. Marketing strategy and media strategies are largely influenced by the character of the product or service and the target base as has been defined and determined by the higher management and that in other way depends on the broader vision and outlook of the organization.  How much customer friendly or in broader terms people friendly the organization is can be ascertained from their strategic planning process.   An organization that cares little for its corporate social responsibility and the community adopts a different strategy than the organization where people are the focus of attention.

There is very little scope for identical strategies for organizations if they genuinely care for their expansion, so it leads to developing their distinct strategies and here the intervention of a unprejudiced strategic development process is required that can foresee the impending dangers, forecast about it and suggest prescriptive measures which sometimes may lead to a major deviation or restructuring of the strategy of an organization. 

Managing perceptions

  Perception of a consumer towards a particular brand never remains static. A blunder that many organizations commit is that they assume a consumer's perception about a brand remain the same over a considerable period of time. But the real fact is that it keeps on changing unless sufficient interest is built around it consistently. There are many factors that sway his attention form particular brand towards others.The most important reason  being proliferation of choices and abundance of alternatives. Novelty is a great attraction for customers whether it comes in the shape of a product differentiation or a breakthrough technology. Any organization that catch the wind of change first gains a distinct advantage over his competitors. Building on that strength it creates new value propositions and progressively cuts into the market share of its rivals unless they come up with their preemptive strategies. Loyalty as a fact is now a function of qualitative service combined with great product features. One cant stay immune to obsolescence unless one innovates and stays a step ahead. 

In this context managing perceptions about an organization has gained utmost importance. It depends upon the agility with which you respond to change and stay in sync with present developments. It depends upon the adroitness of the brand managers and their ability to shield your image from being corroded by stagnancy. It depend on weaving value to your products so that they they continue to retain their distinctiveness. Communication with the consumers should be more engaging and enjoyable so that wait with expectation for the next conversation. 

Another factor that builds a positive perception is about the public's understanding of your social responsibilities. If they perceive you as having a commitment towards the larger interest of the society and find you more responsive to the social needs, they can  stand behind you and any disadvantages you may have on other grounds can be neutralized. 

Finally it comes to the prudent mixing of strategies and your ability to create  and sustain a positive buzz around your brand,that can help you maintain that positive perception for a longer term. 

Intelligent consumer

Gone are the days when advertisement professionals would assume the average consumer to be gullible and susceptible to the adlusions..advertisement illusions they were reeling out to trap his attention. Consumer is smart now and any attempt to over-present any idea or proposition to him passes off more as an attempt to misguide him. With flow and processing of information getting organized , available and accessible at multiple touch points  , the consumer can now critically assess various aspects of an idea  or product pitched to him before taking any conclusive decision. He is now in possession of better discriminatory tools and has the ability to differentiate the grain from the chaff very quickly, thanks to the buzz generated by new and emerging media as well as critical inputs obtained from other sources. To predispose the mind of this intelligent consumer towards a particular brand now is more arduous a task than as it was ever before. This necessitates a fresh approach..a fresh thinking  with focus on creating a more enduring relationship with the customer. This has to be a consistent and sustainable process. Digital media and its famous offspring the social media offers a robust platform for advertisers to engage with the public and it is not a secret. But what will be the consumers response and more importantly what will be the pattern of his response..that needs to be figured out. By pattern of response I mean whether a consumer remains as receptive and enthusiastic  to a particular advertisers communication with the same degree of interest across a series of messages as he was to the first few communications? Will the advertiser be bale to sustain that level of interest throughout the communication cycle?These few questioned need to be addressed  and efforts must be made to make each communication snippet as unique and distinct as possible. This aspect on the other hand need more intense observation of a consumer's behavior,his cultural conditioning and value orientations.   Observing him  in isolation  mightn't yield the desired  insights and hence his behavior should be observed in the matrix of his multiple interactions with people in various groups,circles and communities. These are the places where he unwinds and untwists his mind and an entry path to his mind is  discovered. This is a tricky operation as it has to be undertaken without giving any idea to the customer that his actions are being tracked.  So it depends on the innovative genius of the marketer how he carries out this exercise and how long he manages to keep the consumer in good humor. Consumer is getting intelligent and so must be the marketers to stay in tune with their enhanced understandings.  This will ensure balance and equilibrium in the communication management system.