Tracking your competitors' marketing activity is a terrific way to stay one step ahead. And it's easier than you think. Here are seven tips that can help you monitor pricing trends, assess competitive product or service enhancements, and alert you to changes in their marketing strategy and tactics.

BKM Marketing is pleased to announce the hiring of strategic marketer, Megan Allinson. 

Leveraging data to improve marketing outcomes is a hot topic of conversation among marketers. But when asked, most marketers will acknowledge that while they know that data improves the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and communications, many still feel overwhelmed when it comes to actually integrating the two. 

“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.

BKM had a great time exhibiting at NEDMA’s Marketing Technology Summit yesterday at Boston University - especially running our cornhole challenge! If you attended we hope you enjoyed the day-long event that offered insights into the latest techniques and technologies that can be leveraged to create successful marketing initiatives.

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.

This year's NEDMA Marketing Technology Summit will be at Boston University on Tuesday, November 1st. BKM Marketing will be exhibiting this year, and we invite you to take advantage of our exhibitor discount.  Attend for just $79—that’s $50 off the early bird price.

Why are you still not using video? 

By now you know that including video as part of your content marketing strategy increases customer engagement. There is no shortage of statistics like these that prove video is only going to become a more essential marketing channel, and even our own non-scientific review of bank social and content marketing revealed engagement rates over 10x higher on video posts vs. posts with just text and images alone.

But knowing the statistics – and watching competitors jumping on the trend and gaining traction – is still not enough motivation for many businesses to get moving. We hear a number of excuses from marketers explaining why they aren't including videos in their content marketing plans – anything from budget concerns, timing concerns, subject matter concerns, not knowing how to distribute once they're complete – to just not quite knowing where to start. While these may seem like valid excuses for not moving ahead – are they rooted in reality? We’ve gone ahead and debunked a few of the most common “challenges” we hear below:

BKM is active in many key industry organizations - we are often speakers, sponsors and attendees at many events. See below for a list of upcoming events that we will be involved with - and join us!