“Customer journey” has already become one of financial marketing’s most popular buzzwords of the year. It seems you can’t have a conversation about banking, read a marketing strategy document or sit through a marketing presentation for senior management without hearing the term…along with disparate views as to what it means.

But here’s the problem with buzzwords: too many people spend more time bandying about a phrase like “customer journey” than doing the hard but fruitful work of actually deploying end-to-end initiatives to deliver the journey your customers desire. To really demonstrate your understanding of the customer journey, you have to dig in and be prepared to make some significant changes to the way your institution engages customers – across every channel they access.

Those turning leaves mean it’s planning season

On one hand, 2016 has flown by – early signs of leaves changing colors here in New England coupled with debates on the validity of the Farmer’s Almanac forecast for the upcoming winter. On the other hand, it is hard not to feel like the past 10 months have provided a grueling set of body blows to the industry: CFPB, phantom cross-selling, Fintech, tight margins and risk management. These realities paired with other priorities now need to be gathered and organized to make sense of where we go from here.

Welcome to strategic planning season.

During a week where the banking news cycle felt an awful lot like the current presidential campaign - with provocative coverage of items like the a cross-sell fiasco, calls for investigation and questions of who knew what and when did they know it - a really interesting, and potentially foreshadowing event took place in the industry.

It isn’t all that surprising that more negative stories commanded the headlines - as with the campaign - but this one caught our attention (and it wasn’t because of a cool Fintech rollout).

When was the last time a bank product flew off the shelf like the Chase Sapphire Reserve card?

We briefly highlighted the story in our most recent post highlighting the content marketing of 15 banks over a one-week period.  The card's popularity alone is newsworthy...but add to that the fact that Chase hasn't spent a dime on marketing the card. This really is a defining, viral 'gotta have one' moment for a bank product.

One of the areas that we noted in our annual outlook in January was the fact that all signs were pointing to an anticipated increase in the number of bank mergers in 2016. While most of the deals announced to date have been relatively small due to increased regulatory scrutiny on readiness in larger institutions, there does seem to be a growing undercurrent of activity. This arguably is driven more on seller motivation than buyer strategy. Regardless of the drivers, it appears to be a good opportunity for smaller buyers to make hay while their much larger competitors deal with meeting the demands of regulators in preparation for their next move.

So the mixed environment (which seems to have a few years of runway left) creates the need for those who are in the position to buy to take stock of some internal factors prior to jumping on the merger bandwagon. Here are a few thoughts to consider going forward.

Don’t distress. It’s apparently worse than it seems...but it’s the same as it has been.

Last week, BKM ventured out to Las Vegas to attend the Financial Brand Forum. It was impossible to miss the underlying passion that the Forum brings to their event; we're already talking about plans to head back next year.    

There is no question that financial marketers today face more headwinds than ever before. Not only are the industry challenges as onerous as ever but now bank marketers must respond to a mobile world that dictates what all customers expect. Aren’t we just talking about only how we compare to the other banks in our market? Nope! And it won’t be that case ever again.

BKM will be there!

Bruce McMeekin and Rick Hall are looking forward to attending the Financial Brand Forum next week in Las Vegas, from May 16th -18th.

If you are also planning to attend, let us know - it would be great to coordinate a time to see you while we're there! Either way, stay tuned - we will be sharing our thoughts and key takeaways through our blog and via twitter (@BKMMarketing) both during and following the Forum. 

Part three of a three part observation series

In my last post we examined a few ways that banks can elevate the role of data in their marketing programs to begin the process of gaining better alignment to overall strategy. This post will focus on the sales aspect of sales and marketing campaigns – what can be referred to the execution channel. But a word of caution: sales and sales people are no longer synonymous.

As with our data post, you will find five areas of focus for bank marketers to enhance sales activities. Since we emphasized the critical nature of list development driven by strategy, we would be remiss if we now veered back to traditional sales activities to execute the program. Modern marketing programs should create buyers - not just serve as a ‘warm lead sheet’ for field staff.

Understanding Strategy Makes for Better Marketing Execution and Sales Results, Part Two

Part two of a three part observation series

In my first post I started the discussion around the need for better alignment between bank strategy and sales and marketing initiatives.   For years, many bank growth initiatives have suffered either from cases of data overload, often referred to as the kitchen sink strategy (leading to inconclusive results) or data access paralysis resulting from legacy infrastructure (which provides little, if any insights into why programs succeed or fail). These challenges are real and our daily experiences lead us to a frustrating conclusion: many bank marketers underestimate the importance of good data in building any worthwhile campaign.

A quick word about data

The rapid increase in the amount of customer information available to bankers today is staggering, not to mention the mind blowing amount of R&D spent by technology providers on Big Data initiatives - particularly when you realize how little of the output is actually being utilized. While the banking industry is continuing to progress, we propose five steps that can jump start your institution’s work with data in developing and managing sales and marketing campaigns.

Part one of a three part observation series

Over the past twenty years, it has continually amazed me just how vigorously discussed and overthought the sales process (including the marketing support function) has become in the banking industry. So many financial and human resource investments have been deployed to find the right structure that it really is one of the great industry head-scratchers to observe.

Maybe the reason behind it is due to the industry trying to hang onto the concept of differentiation based on service - flooding frontline staff members with concepts like balanced scorecards, product sales “cheat sheets”, competitive positioning tools, and sales training boot camps – and that we just can’t face reality. Service in the unspecified way that most banks use the term just doesn’t make you different. So what's left, price?