Bank Marketing Strategy + Ideas

What do bananas and baking soda have to do with bank marketing? I thought you would never ask. Let’s start with the bananas…

If I were to hold up a bunch of bananas and asked an audience what they were, most would probably agree they were bananas. But if I held up a green banana and asked the same audience how many would buy this particular banana, less than half would raise their hands. And if I held up a banana that had already turned dark, even fewer would probably want to buy this banana.

As you can see, we are not really selling bananas! We are selling banana skins. People buy bananas based on what the banana skin looks like.

In light of this fact, a smart produce manager would market bananas in different ways, understanding that some people prefer ripe bananas, while others prefer green or darker bananas. Perhaps he could market the dark bananas alongside recipes for banana pudding and even place them next to the vanilla wafers. Maybe he could even add a headline like, “Ready for Grandma’s Banana Pudding?”

He might market the green bananas to folks heading out on a vacation, with a headline like, “Traveling Bananas – they’ll be ripe when you get there!”

A good marketer can take a product that many people think of as one thing and sell it in different ways.

Now let’s talk about baking soda. This is a product that has been around for over a hundred years and there are thousands of ways to use it. A good marketer might list some of these many uses on the side of the package.

You can brush your teeth with it, freshen your mouth, put it in cat litter to eliminate odors, clean pots and pans with it, eliminate odors in the refrigerator, use it as an antacid, polish silver with it, or even clean batteries. That’s how baking soda was marketed for years.

Then, one day a very smart marketer decided that he would put this same baking soda in a box with “Fridge-N-Freezer” on the front alongside a tagline that read, “30 days of freshness in every box.” He also decided to charge $.10 more per box. And guess what? People started paying $.10 more a box just to have a picture of a refrigerator on the front of the packaging!

Then this very smart marketer decided that if people would pay more to have a picture of a refrigerator on the front of the box, they might pay even more to have a picture of a cat on the front. After all, people spend millions of dollars each year on their pets. They put a picture of a cat on the front of the box advertising it as “Cat Litter Deodorizer” with “Activated Baking Soda” and starting charging over one dollar more per box! (I love the tagline “Activated Baking Soda.” I wonder who would buy non-activated baking soda? I guess people are willing to pay more for their baking soda to be activated!)

This proved to be so successful that before you knew it, baking soda was in every isle of the grocery store with many different product names and profit margins ten times that of the old-fashioned baking soda in the plain old box.

This brings us to banking. I’m sure you are wondering, what do green bananas and baking soda have to do with banking? Well, it has everything to do with banking!

For hundreds of years, banks have marketed and advertised themselves as plain old generic banks. A few got creative and started calling themselves community banks.

Throughout history, we have given our kids piggy banks for them to put their money into as a savings account and taught them how to take it out in a real emergency (when it was time to buy some candy.)

Most of us have grown up believing that you put your money in a bank and the bank keeps it for you until you need it. Historically, banks advertised CD’s and money market accounts to get us to put the money in the bank, and promoted car loans, mortgages and home equity loans to lend it out – all while making a small margin in the middle.

Banks even gave out credit cards like candy trying to get customers to charge, charge, and charge, always hoping that they would be late one month so that the bank could raise the interest rate to 19% or more.

But the last few years have changed all of this. Many people don’t have money to save and most have learned to quit running up large balances on their credit cards. And many banks are afraid to make loans in fear that those folks that ran up their credit card debt won’t be able to pay them back, especially since real estate values have plummeted.

Now is the time for a really smart marketer to apply the “green banana” concept to the banking industry. We need to realize that every individual and business has different banking needs.

For example, a large apartment community collects dozens of checks every day throughout the month. And each day, the apartment manager leaves at noon to take the checks to the bank and go to lunch. But before they go to the bank, they make copies of the checks and fax them back to headquarters to let them know which residents have paid their rent. Some apartment managers might decide to collect the checks and make a “weekly” run to the bank.

Both of these solutions are inefficient.

A smart bank marketing manager would target those apartment communities with personalized and customized marketing materials that explain how their bank can eliminate the pain of copying checks, faxing checks and going to the bank every day to deposit them.

These marketing messages would talk about the many benefits of remote deposit capture, for example, and even include the apartment community’s name or logo. A smart marketer could even create an additional piece targeting the apartment community’s corporate headquarters, making them aware of the potential liabilities of having their managers driving around town with thousands of dollars on hand at any given time.

This marketing piece would also discuss the many benefits of remote deposit capture and how, if management utilized this service, they would be able to see images of the actual checks instead of faxed copies. And even more importantly, deposits can be made in minutes without requiring anyone to leave the property.

And, of course, customers utilizing remote deposit capture are a prime candidate for online bill pay and e-statements. In fact, that same smart marketer could develop an “Apartment Banking” product line that promotes all of the bank’s services that an apartment community could use. They could even buy the web domain name ApartmentBanking.com for $9.99 and use it to promote their apartment banking product. (This name is still available, but you’d better hurry!)

The bottom line is this: there is no reason you can’t have an Apartment Banking product – just like you can have “Cat Litter Baking Soda.”

And this doesn’t just apply to apartment communities. You can target different industries with this same concept. Find out what each industry needs that is unique and position your products around them.

Find the pain and position your bank as the solution. Sure your bank can work with any industry, but you’ll get more business – and possibly better margins – by positioning and marketing yourself in different “aisles.”

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Neal Reynolds has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions around the country helping them to grow core deposits and market share without growing their marketing budgets.  Contact him at nreynolds@eadshop.com.

So, you just got your Facebook page up and running and have subscribed to a few industry blogs for new marketing ideas for your bank. You are feeling pretty good – like you’re maybe even ahead of the game. But just as you start to relax, you see something new.

What’s that black-and-white puzzle-looking square on the back of your hamburger wrapper? And there’s another one on that movie poster . . . what is that thing?

It’s called a QR Code and, if you haven’t seen one yet, you will. They’re right around the corner. Technology moves at a breakneck pace and by the time you get comfortable with today’s hot new trend, you’ll be months behind the next one.

QR Codes are beginning to pop up all over marketing materials for big name brands like Google and Starbucks. These quick response (QR) codes attract the attention of the very “hippest” among us and can drive them straight to your bank.

A QR Code is an image that a consumer uses to access a specified URL. Once a user has downloaded the necessary app to his smart phone, he can then use his phone to snap a photo of the code and be automatically linked to a specific URL to learn more information, benefit from a special discount or redeem a limited offer.

Other apps enable users to use their phones to scan QR Codes and barcodes at participating merchants to take advantage of exclusive offers.

Creating the code is easy because you don’t have to do a thing. QR Code generators create the actual code. All you have to do is tell them what URL you want the code to point to. Go to the generator’s website, input your desired URL, and click on “generate code.” They provide you with the image to include in your print or online marketing materials.

Prospects who have downloaded the QR Code reader can scan the code or take a photo of the image with their smart phone and be directly linked to your website or a landing page that offers a special coupon, discount or promotion.

The Benefits: The primary benefit of this technology is its immediacy. The response is automatic. If a prospect sees your ad and wants to learn more, they don’t have to manually input a URL or write down a specific website address. They simply snap a picture or scan the code and they are linked immediately.

QR Codes are free to generate and don’t cost any more to print than the other images in your ad. They are both interactive and trackable and, because the codes can be any size, you can embed them in anything from printed ads to digital signs and even billboards.

The Challenge: The only real drawback is that QR Codes are still new to the marketplace. Those outside of early technology adopters might not know what it is or what to do with it.

But this also provides a huge opportunity for your bank to take advantage of this technology and jump ahead of the curve!

Give it a try and, best case, you establish yourself as a technically-savvy organization that can resonate with a broad audience.

Start Small. Imbed a QR Code in your marketing materials and see how your audience responds. Maybe offer a special deal for those who take advantage of the code by linking to a coupon that offers to deposit $25 into any new checking account opened by a certain date.

Think about where the customer will see the code. Is it in a newspaper ad or could it be on their statement stuffer, where you are explaining the benefits of e-statements or remote capture? Think about who will be reading the code and how they will likely interact with your message.

The bottom line is this: not everyone will utilize – or even notice – a QR Code in your marketing materials and advertisements. Consider your audience and make sure you include more than one way for customers to access your information. Maybe the first few times, you should include an explanation of what it is and instructions on how to use it!

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Neal Reynolds has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions around the country helping them to grow core deposits and market share without growing their marketing budgets.  Contact him at nreynolds@eadshop.com.

Banks, like other companies, spend countless hours and thousands of dollars each year communicating with their employees.

And bankers, like the customers they serve, are changing the way they prefer to communicate.

Introducing new policies, products and procedures to bankers in multiple branches requires substantial investments of time, money and energy to prepare and distribute. Once the message has been created, refined and sent to a designer for layout, it must then be proofed and often revised before it is finally distributed to employees or posted on the break room wall.

And even after all of this work, there is no guarantee that employees even received, read or understood the message!

Last week, we talked about how banks are using digital signs in their lobbies to communicate with customers, but there is also a trend emerging with banks using this technology to communicate with their own internal teams as well.

Sending digital messages to employees is a cheap and effective way to convey important messages – with an added benefit to the environment. These messages can include anything from reminders about banking holidays, quarterly revenue goals, new product and service promotions, or even recognition of exemplary employees.

Messages can be created quickly by combining customized text with your own professional images and videos or by using templates created through an outside agency. Once content has been created and uploaded, you can schedule when it will be delivered, the frequency of rotation, and where it will be shown.

With a simple click of the “send” button, content is delivered wirelessly to a specified digital sign in your designated bank for employees to read. These digital signs can be purchased specifically for this purpose or can also be a hardwired flat screen television already in your bank that has been inexpensively outfitted to integrate with the technology.

This technology provides banks with the ability to communicate important messages to employees across all branches instantly without the need for designers and at a fraction of the costs associated with printing and distribution – and they are more eye-catching, generating more attention than traditional printed materials.

In most cases, the technology and equipment can be paid for by selling advertisement space to vendors interested in reaching your employee base. With just a few spots a month, banks can often pay for their entire system.

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Neal Reynolds has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions around the country helping them to grow core deposits and market share without growing their marketing budgets.  Contact him at nreynolds@eadshop.com.

What truly makes a bank a community bank? Is it because it’s in a small town or community? Is it because the money comes from and stays in the community?

If that’s the case, why isn’t the local grocery store called a community grocery store? Or the local pharmacy called a community pharmacy? Is your favorite restaurant referred to as a community restaurant?

I think most bankers in “community banks” want you to believe they are there just to serve you and the other people in that community. They want to give the impression that they know your name and your kids’ names, your birthday and anniversary – especially since you go to the same church and sing in the same choir. Their kids play with your kids and they eat in the same restaurants as you. They know what kind of house you live in, what kind of car you drive, and therefore, they know what kind of financial help you need – right?

The problem is that when you walk into most community banks today, they don’t look any different than the large national or regional banks.

They’ve still got the same old rack that has been sitting there for years with the same old generic brochures imprinted with the bank’s name on the back with a rubber stamp. In the middle of the lobby is an old marble table with an ink pen chained to it. Some banks even have a candy dish with candy leftover from the “community Halloween party.”

On the wall is a large screen TV with either CNN or Fox News playing. (It’s as if a team of very good TV salesmen traveled the country a few years ago, convincing bankers that their customers want to watch TV while they stand in line waiting to make a deposit. In reality, banks are now paying $80 a month for cable to irritate 50% of their customers at any given time by playing political commentary from the wrong side of the aisle.)

Over the last couple of years, many successful community bankers have begun using technology to start putting community back into their community banks.

One of the greatest things about technology is that it levels the playing field for many industries. Small businesses can now compete with large businesses, and community banks can now compete with large banks.

These successful banks are turning their TV’s into “community event calendars” by putting a small computer – a little bigger than the size of your hand – on the backs of their TV’s. This enables them to communicate with their customers in a more meaningful way. Banks can now instantly congratulate the local football team on a big victory or show graduating seniors from the local high school instead of paying $80 a month to show footage from the war in Afghanistan.

They can promote the community dance recital or concert, introduce a new employee, or talk about the bank’s new products and services. 

For roughly half of what most banks are paying for cable, they can now subscribe to a digital sign solution from companies like www.BankMarketingCenter.com. 

All they have to do to get started is go to a web-based marketing portal and simply customize and personalize an ad. Once created, that ad can be running on their TV’s – in front of their customers – in seconds.

Banks can even select the date and time they want these messages to appear. For instance, they can promote remote deposit capture during lunch hour, when most of their business customers are lining up to make a deposit.

With BankMarketingCenter.com, community banks are able to put “community” into their communication pieces as well. For example, when a loan officer is calling on a customer, she can instantly put in the customer’s name, logo and picture. And all of the bank’s football program ads can now include real pictures of the football team!

By putting a little technology into these community banks, they are now able to put more “community” into their business.

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Neal Reynolds has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions around the country helping them to grow core deposits and market share without growing their marketing budgets.  Contact him at nreynolds@eadshop.com.