2024 Journal of Community Bank Case Studies

FIRST PLACE: Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania

narrowly defined markets, turns social media into a powerful tool for attracting new business and generating revenue. However, Facebook is not just a marketing tool. FCCB primarily uses Facebook as a communication platform to connect and build customer relationships. According to LeeAnn Gephart, FCCB’s Chief Consumer Banking Officer, the bank believes it is essential to use the platform to demonstrate its core values of community and relationships by highlighting actions, not words. For example, posts often focus on FCCB’s community involvement, employee achievements, and financial literacy activities. These posts help to improve FCCB’s brand and show how committed the bank is to its community, which leads to more positive relationships between the bank and its customers. The bank also has several employees who actively monitor and respond to customer comments on Facebook. When a customer comments about a problem, an employee will research the problem and call the customer directly or direct a branch location to do so (Sargent). In this way, FCCB uses Facebook as a two-way communication tool, making it one of the most important factors in the bank’s customer communication plan. FCCB also uses platforms other than Facebook. The bank uses a LinkedIn profile to connect with businesses, recruit new employees, and build camaraderie with its current employees (Sargent). The bank has also heavily used Core iQ, an automated email marketing platform tailored to the financial industry. According to Sargent, the bank uses Core iQ to advertise to

FCCB primarily uses Facebook as a communication platform to connect and build customer relationships.

specific target markets, promote cross-sales of different services to customers most likely to be interested in them, and onboard new customers to ensure every customer gets the same experience no matter where they open an account. Although FCCB’s current social media operations appear effective, we believe the bank should consider expanding into other social media platforms to broaden its reach. For example, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with 1.69 billion users as of April 2024 (Kepios). The platform is especially popular among younger audiences, whom FCCB could target to expand its market and cultivate lifelong customer relationships. Additionally, the platform’s focus on photo and video sharing would align well with FCCB’s marketing philosophy, enabling it to display community engagement through pictures and videos at various community events. Another option to consider is X (formerly Twitter), commonly utilized by businesses to make announcements, gather consumer feedback, and monitor

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