Marketing and Business Development are key cogs in the wheel of banking. How we handle those cogs is constantly changing. In community banking, more than possibly any other level of banking, face-to-face interaction remains paramount. “Know your customer” is something that I constantly preach to our staff. It is something I feel will never completely fade away in our business.
Last year I wrote about how we have witnessed the transformation within, not just our industry but across all business platforms in terms of methods of marketing and communication delivery. We still see billboards, newspapers and hear radio spots, but the digital age has transformed and will continue to transform how we deliver our message to different generations. While the newspaper ad with CD rates or a special may still have some ability to reach an audience, direct mail, internet, and satellite/internet radio are now the preferred medium to reach a broader audience (and for considerably less cost in many instances).
Facebook, Google Analytics, Twitter, and webpages allow us to take our own data, segment it into whatever message we want, and broadcast and track it very specifically. We track our customer acquisition, as I am sure many of you do, but with the electronic methods, it really builds all those tracking metrics in for you. It also makes it much easier to take the info and deliver it for our board members as well as our marketing folks to digest and analyze the who, what, where and how much of what we do.
It is also a good idea for marketing to work internally with loan and deposit staff to develop specific messaging regarding products, specials, or deliverables based on time of year.
For those just entering those markets or even for ones that have been utilizing these types of media for message delivery, I would recommend using a third-party vendor to help. There are many excellent firms out there that can help our marketing departments deliver our messaging and ensure that our dollars are directed and being viewed as efficiently as we can (or redirect those dollars into other areas that are producing better results).
It is also a good idea for marketing to work internally with loan and deposit staff to develop specific messaging regarding products, specials, or deliverables based on time of year. Regardless, without specific direction, marketing can be very disjointed and lack ability to resonate with whatever the message is that is trying to be delivered.
There are many excellent ways to deliver our messaging and many cost-effective ways as well, but we always need to keep in mind that our best marketing still is and will always be our staff. I said this in the past, but I will say it again, we, and our staff, are our own best ambassadors for marketing. There is no substitute for being an extension and reflection of our institutions and making sure we do not ever lose sight of how important it is for face-to-face interactions for our overall marketing to truly be a success.
