How to Make the Leap from Traditional to Customer-Centric Marketing
NOTE: This article was originally published in the April 2019 issue of Great Lakes Banker Magazine.
Community bank marketing programs run the gamut from fully reactive – placing ads when approached by local directories, sponsorships, and so on – to fully proactive, with detailed written plans to target ideal customer personas and to create goal-based programs around initiatives like Customer Retention and New Customer Acquisition.
Reactive marketing relies on traditional advertising – TV, radio, newspaper – despite the evolving digital landscape. It’s very difficult to prove the ROI of traditional campaigns, often causing bank directors to be reticent to approve spend on more sophisticated strategies, where ironically, the ROI is far easier to track and prove.
On the other hand, proactive marketing programs create a structure that allows a bank to tell their unique story. The program transforms from campaign-centric to customer-centric. Out of the 35 midwest community banks we’ve worked with, the most successful make the cultural leap from solely traditional to a modern customer-centric program.
Change your mindset
Modern marketing isn’t just placing ads in newspapers, or running a standalone campaign when you want to push a particular product. It’s about the overall customer experience, encompassing all customer and prospect touchpoints, in or out of the bank. Think beyond the traditional:
Lobby Experience: are they greeted when they come in? Is the lobby pleasant to be in?
Digital Experience: can they easily find the information they need on your website? Is the site mobile-friendly? Is your mobile app easy to use (a good proxy: how many phone calls a day do you get for technical issues or password resets?)
Acquisition, Retentions, and Referrals: are these clear and distinct initiatives?
Above all, put yourself in your customers' shoes: what are the real issues they need help with? Hint: it's not a checking account, but it could be financial security, owning their dream home, or saving for a child's education. As the adage goes: no one buys a quarter-inch drill bit, they buy quarter-inch holes. Discuss personal goals with your customers and recommend products, instead of merely presenting.
Think Programs
Every marketing activity you do should fit into these buckets:
New Customer Acquisition: become – and remain – top of mind in your community so people think of you first when they're ready to switch. Utilize traditional advertising, but also incorporate social media, content marketing (blogging), and being present at community events like graduations, football games, and fairs.
Customer Retention: "surprise and delight" to keep customers excited about you. For example, give customers a $5 gift card to a local coffee shop on their 5th anniversaries with you. This costs little, but creates a moment your customers will talk about.
Cross-Sell and Adoption: are you consistently recommending new products and features to your customers, to create more multi-product customers that will stay longer? Speaking of, are you tracking app usage? Many customers won't start using things like mobile deposits until they need it – so your job is to keep the feature top of mind.
Brand Identity: make sure your brand and design are up to date. If it's too “tired”, prospects (especially younger ones) will not see you as an option. And even long-term customers can be drawn away from another shiny object. Your brand is your bank’s “soul” – and good brand standards can respect your heritage while making it modern.
Execute and Optimize
A common practice is to meet monthly to determine the advertising topics for the month. But most bank goals – growing overall loan and deposit volume, or gaining market share for example – take time to achieve, and month-to-month planning can miss the big picture view of a bank’s strategic 3-5 year goals.
Instead, tie each marketing activity directly to the bank’s overall goals. Think specific – if a goal is to grow loan deposits by, say, $3M, and your average loan is $250K, then your ad campaigns need to drive about 12 new loans, or 2-3 per year. Along the way, if you fall behind pace, you can shift more advertising focus to loans.
And finally, frequently review your progress – at least quarterly, if not monthly. If you fall behind that 2-3 per year pace, you can shift more advertising focus to loans.
Conclusion
By changing your mindset from campaign-centric to customer-centric, your messages and brand will stand out from the typical community banks’ product, rate, and service-oriented messages. This will help you improve product adoption, drive cross-selling, and attract new customers. Ultimately, your customers will appreciate your focus on their real issues and view you as a trusted advisor in their financial lives.