Marketing Strategy of Sber: Overview & Campaigns

About Sberbank – 

Source – Wikipedia

Founded in 1841, Sberbank is one of Russia’s largest financial institutions. The bank served nearly 70 per cent of the population countrywide in 2020 and reported a net annual loan volume of over 25 trillion Russian rubles.

The bank’s rise since the 1990s is in part due to its close connections to the Russian government. Sberbank is the historical successor of savings offices, which were established by the decree of Emperor Nicholas I, and later the State labour savings offices, which are closely linked with the course of Russian history. As of 2014, it was the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe and the third largest in Europe, ranked 60th in the world and first in central and Eastern Europe in The Bankers  Top 1000 World Banks ranking. In the world ranking of public companies, Forbes “Global 2000” Sberbank takes 51st place.

Sberbank Russia PJSC provides financial services and commercial banking. Among its services are corporate loans, asset management, payroll projects, leasing, online banking, cash and settlement, and cash and settlement services. Furthermore, the company offers a wide range of services to financial institutions, including correspondent accounts, custody services, and interbank lending.

It operates through the following regions: Moscow, Central and Northern Regions of the European Part of Russia; Volga Region and South of the European Part of Russia; Ural, Siberia, and Far East of Russia; and Other Countries. The company was founded in 1841 and is headquartered in Moscow, Russia. 

Russia’s largest bank and a leading global banking and financial institution with a 179-year history. Sberbank plays a significant role in the Russian economy with one-third of aggregate banking assets and about 45% of all retail deposits. In Russia, Sberbank has more than 98 million active retail clients and 2.7 million active corporate clients.

Sberbank Online is one of the Top-3 most uploaded applications in Russia and the number of its monthly digital users is 71 mn. At the same time, Sberbank has the largest physical distribution network with over 14K branches. It also has subsidiary footprints across the.

In September 2020 Sberbank was rebranded into s ber’ to make it relevant for the new role. S ber is no longer just a bank – it is a whole universe of financial and non-financial services for life and business built within the ecosystem. At the same time, S ber is transforming into a tech company. 

S ber unveiled its new strategy on November 30, 2020, with the primary objective for 2023 being to be a trustworthy helper and guide in a world that is changing quickly in order to aid people, businesses, and the nation in developing sustainably.

Quick Stats on Sber Bank –

Marketing Strategy of Sber Bank –

We have now gained enough knowledge about the company, So now without any further ado let’s get into the marketing strategy of Sber Bank.

Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers who have different needs, characteristics, or behaviours and who might require separate marketing strategies or mixes. Sberbank segments its services to Institutions and entrepreneurs who are seeking financial support.

Evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to serve is called targeting. The Target Market of Sberbank is Families, businesses, and small business owners.

Positioning is the strategy used to ensure that a product has a distinct, desirable place in the target consumer’s mind relative to rival offerings. It serves as a bank for all of the locals’ requirements.

Marketing Campaigns

Sber bank conducted two major marketing campaigns in 2015 and 2018.

1. The New digital platform was based on a Back base-2015

Sberbank.com’s redesign project began in the summer of 2014 and was completed in time for testing in December of that same year. The online rankings have increased by 3.5 since being life, which is a significant increase given that Sberbank ranks as the 15th most popular website in Russia in terms of traffic.

Since Backbase CXP was introduced, the marketing and business teams at Sberbank have been able to directly control their online marketing and online sales campaigns without the need for IT support, increasing the time to market for new products, services, and promotions. This improvement in performance is primarily attributable to this.

The following are some key facts about Sberbank and the project:

• Sberbank has 110+ million customers
• 70% of the Russian population banks with Sberbank
• Active in 22 countries
• 3rd largest bank in Europe
• Merged 83 siloed websites/platforms into one customer experience platform based on Backbase CXP
• Will roll out Backbase as their new omnichannel delivery platform (marketing site, internet banking, tablet/mobile banking, kiosks/ATM, social)
• After launch, Sberbank increased online sales performance 3.5 times by utilizing Backbase’s targeting and campaign tools, now available to Sberbank’s business team, without IT dependency.

2. Sberbank launches advertising campaign for My Business small business solution-2018

30 May 2018, Moscow – Sberbank has launched a campaign to advertise My Business, its new solution for small businesses.

My Business includes cash and settlement services and an extensive set of services that every small enterprise needs, such as online accounting, legal advisory, billing, counterparty verification, and much more. The set of services can be customized to meet the needs and correspond with the objectives of any business.

The campaign features a series of TV adverts and online videos, whose target audience is owners of specific types of businesses: service stations, tailor shops, cafes, grocery stores, couriers, beauty salons, home repair, and decoration firms, agricultural enterprises, and design bureaus. These companies showcase Sberbank’s offering in the form of perfect personnel.

Social Media Marketing 

• Instagram – 697K
• Linkedin – 42K
• Twitter – 651.2K
• Facebook – 426K

Sberbank is mostly active and followed on Instagram. Sberbank usually posts promotional content on its social media accounts for its audience.

SEO Strategies

Source – UberSuggest 

According to SEO rankings, it is believed that the number of keywords should be above 1000, below 500 is poor, and 10,000+ is great. Therefore, 17K+ keywords are present in Sberbank, which is a good number. It demonstrates how well Sberbank’s digital marketing is gathering new information.

Additionally, the amount of traffic is known as Excellent at 90k+ per month. As a result, we may infer from the statistics that Sberbank has a good grasp of SEO.

Influencer Marketing 

Sberbank does not use any kind of influencer marketing. They can try and use this new age marketing tactic as it is an easy way to attract their target audience in this new age social media-oriented world.

E-commerce Strategies

Sberbank, the largest lender in Russia, said this year that it was restructuring its management team and creating an e-commerce holding company as part of its ongoing diversification away from just providing financial services.

Sberbank has been expanding its non-financial operations, including e-commerce, technology, and cloud services, in an effort to fight banks’ declining profitability. Sberbank is one of a small number of Russian companies entering areas outside of their primary industry.

Sberbank has a website but it does not provide its services on its website.

Mobile Apps

Sberbank works to ensure that customers with impairments may access all of our remote channels. Each update to the Sberbank Online programme provides the blind and visually impaired with high accessibility, as measured by the USABILITY LAB ranking. Visually impaired employees are involved in designing the interfaces and helping develop new scenarios for interacting with the application and testing them.

Content Marketing Strategies

For content marketing, they post press releases on their official website. Along with that, there are various websites that publish blogs and articles about Sberbank. Further, they are fairly active on social media.

This ends with the detailed marketing strategy of Sber Bank.

What’s Unique in the Marketing Strategy of Sber Bank?

As it has a history of 179+ years and is the world’s largest famous bank in Russia and Eastern Europe has served nearly half of the world’s population according to the 2020 report. Sberbank also has social media marketing and marketing campaigns as we read above.

And the unique strategy of Sber bank is they are providing services to visually impaired persons through mobile banking at their convenient places with the best user experience, which could help the bank in gaining direct customers and their trust.

This detailed marketing strategy of Sberbank would have highlighted the need and importance of digital marketing in today’s world which is revolving around the internet. Digital marketing helps a company to grow in many ways. Digital marketing helps a company to get noticed and approached by its audience. 

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Hope this marketing strategy of Sber bank has given you enough idea about the company and how they carry out their marketing tactics. Do share your thoughts about what you liked about this marketing strategy of Sber bank in the comments section below.