Sonic Branding in FinTech

In advertising, we speak about trust and loyalty a lot. But there’s no sector that it matters more to, as we move into this next decade, than finance and banking.

Blackline’s CEO Therese Tucker defined trust as firm belief in the reliability, strength, truth, or capability of someone.

This is imperative for the finance sector then; the stakes are people’s personal finance, and the field is convoluted with jargon’d nonsense.

This being said;

69% of people in the UK have expressed their distrust in finance and banking, despite feeling reliant on them.

So what’s gone wrong?

Recent history, that I suppose at this point goes unwritten, has left a culture of disillusionment and mistrust not only in this financial sector. Worse, maybe, it has undermined trust in the general business landscape – with 2018’s Edelman Trust Barometer suggesting that trust in public companies has dropped by 10% in the last three years.

In fact, the sector hasn’t nearly recovered from the damage done by the 2008 recession – see Statistica’s 2018 report on trust in banking for an indication.

Whilst this is troublesome, it has led to some much needed change emerging, mostly in the form of new start-up challenger banks; who seem determined to flip the sector on its head.

Consumer trust is still an issue these new challengers need to address – so how are they doing it?

Well, there are many ways to build trust. But it seems the No.1 way these days is through the traditional-sounding word of mouth.

Nielsen states that 83% of consumers trust references from peers - seven times as much as any messages delivered from brands.

And so the focus shifts to customer experience to regain the trust left absent in the wake of aforementioned scandal.

One way the challenger banks have begun to address this is through public displays of transparency, most notably through community forums and active customer interaction.

But this is difficult in this sector, as Starling Bank found. They have had to close their community message boards to avoid exposing sensitive consumer information and preventing fraudulent activity, among other reasons.

Transparency is difficult when the sensitive nature of your business requires a degree of discretion.

So what can these new fintech companies do to promote trust and customer loyalty?

Two words: Sonic Branding.

Sonic Branding can mean a lot of things. In its vaguest form, it’s how your company is heard. You can read more on it here.

Essentially, it works as a frequency medium: you repeatedly play a sound to the consumer, to the point of familiarity. In this sense, any sound would work; with enough frequency, you’ll be remembered.

Then it’s just a question of how you want to be remembered.

Good sonic branding will prompt the consumer to feel a certain way about your brand as they hear it; and if that feeling is positive, you’ll achieve one of the best effects you could hope for:

Increased brand loyalty.

So, who has a need to promote brand loyalty? Who has a loads of customer touchpoints to achieve the frequency needed for effective sonic branding?

FinTech.

The new challenger banks (with the traditional banks in close tow) are promoting a modern ‘branchless’ system of banking. Everything done, at the tapping of fingers, through a financially omnipotent phone application.

These apps are rife with opportunities for touchpoints. Placing sounds at every button click, every message sent and every push notification through is a great way to achieve high volumes of frequency for your sonic branding.

If the app does this right, the app becomes personable; it begins to form a relationship with the user on the brand’s behalf.

The most exciting of these touchpoints are payment sounds.

These can be programmed to play through the customer’s phone, with google or apple pay, or ideally through the card reader after it’s tapped by a debit card. Mastercard just paid an awful lot of money to make this happen.

The right payment sound would serve as a positive affirmation of a correct financial decision for the user.

FinTech is everywhere these days. Whether it be one of the new challenger banks, or a more traditional brand moving to (serviceable) mobile, the user experience is paramount to success.

A focus on sound can complete this user experience.

Sounds good, eh?