Some of the challenges faced by friendly societies are no different to those of other financial institutions (i.e. Consumer Duty, sustainability, D&I, digitisation). But one of the key issues that sits at the very heart of their proposition is whether the public, and more specifically younger people, understand what a mutual is and does, and how this model might benefit them.
With a huge distrust for many banks and financial services and increasing pressures on the welfare state, friendlies should be a shoo-in. Indeed, they need new blood for their own long-term survival but how to attract a new mobile-first, tech-savvy, TikTok generation is a question that may be leaving many at friendly societies scratching their heads.
Leaving aside the importance of a technical website audit, what can be done?
Branding
Normally, branding isn’t an area in which we, at Browser Media, usually get involved. Our mantra is, ‘We don’t particularly care what your logo looks like or where you put it on your website,’ as it rarely affects SEO but if a friendly society is looking to attract a younger demographic, then branding simply can’t be ignored. However, changes to the look and feel of a brand should be ushered in gently via consultation – anything too radical could alienate existing members as the mutual, Nottingham Building Society recently experienced.
A good place to start is by looking at what some of the newer challenger banks (and other sectors outside of financial services) are doing, as that’s what younger audiences will be accustomed to. If a friendly society’s website looks dated, it might attract visitors but they won’t hang around long enough to interact and even less so, trust it with their savings or protection needs.
Keyword research for product content
The second question to ask is how well-optimised a website is and when an audit was last undertaken?
I’m not a fan of constantly tinkering with the meta content on a website for the sake of it. It needs time to bed in and for search engines to understand it and determine where the site should come in the pecking order of SERPS. However, it does need a review from time-to-time and sometimes a refresh of meta content is a good stimulant to invite Google to recrawl your site.
A common mistake made in financial services is optimising around a product name rather than the generic product term, or using industry terminology rather than the words and phrases that real people use. On the flip side, hugely competitive terms will be hard to rank for, so it’s good to look for that sweet spot in the middle.
Once decisions have been made about which product terms to use, the H1, page title and page description all need to work in harmony with each other and with the on-page content too. While keyword research is reasonably scientific its application on the page is more of an art form in terms of appropriate repetition and readability.
Even if a friendly society’s products are mainly sold via intermediaries, it’s important that both the end user and the intermediary can easily find and understand the details of the products online: selling via a third party is no excuse for sloppy SEO.
Long-tail terms and content strategy
Supporting their members and community is in the DNA of friendly societies and indeed, this gives a great deal of comfort to members, new prospects and intermediari