MUMBAI: Social media has become more than just a catch phrase or a passing phenomenon. Interacting over the Internet using a number of platforms, like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, has become a way of life for many people. Even banks, especially private ones, have now realized the growing power of social networking sites and are engaging customers through them reports TNN.

Indeed, if you visit pages of banks on Facebook, or follow their Twitter handles, you will also find many of their special offers listed there as well. These are some of the ways banks are exploiting social media to reach out to new and existing customers. Most have realized that social media offers an invaluable opportunity to reach sections of the target audience, particularly the youth.

"The cost of SEM is higher than social media, which is one-third the cost of selling through direct agents," said Tripti Lochan, Asia CEO of VML Qais, WPP Group's full-service digital agency network.

"While direct sales and search engine marketing were successful in breaking previous benchmarks for performance, the paid social metrics proved that in an era of burgeoning social media usage and widespread banner blindness, the lowest effective cost per action was achieved using a combination of Facebook-branded content and media, to the extent of being three times more effective than using a direct sales person," said Lochan. She also added that this was actually one of the experiences of a Singapore-based bank, which used various digital channels for acquiring new customers.