Can Marketing Really Be This Easy?!?

Alternate Blog Title ... "3 is a Magic Number"

The average day in the life of a financial marketer (the way many people see us):

• Get the newsletter written
• Plan a customer appreciation day
•  Build a float for the parade

Is this time well spent?  The answers may vary.

A friend in Maryland made me aware of a great article on The Financial Brand titled, Marketing’s (Only) Three Challenges, written by Ron Shevlin.

Ron’s Take

There are three – and only three – challenges that Marketing faces:

•  Acquiring the right customers
• Retaining the right customers
• Growing the relationship with the right customers

Everything is related to one of these three challenges. 

I purposefully did not label the challenges with numbers, because the priorities may differ based on your institution’s current performance and business objectives.  But that’s it.  That’s all you have to do.  It’s that easy!

Alright, so you could argue that the newsletter builds relationships and Customer Appreciation Day helps retention and the Parade Float drives acquisition.  Again, is this time well spent?  It all comes down to resources and priorities…

The MarketMatch Client Mantra

There are a thousand things you COULD be doing … 

what are the 3 things you SHOULD be doing?

Resources

We all have limited resources. And it is very likely that, for your department, time is at a higher premium than even your limited budget.  Since you only have so many hours in a day and so many dollars in your GL, you need to focus on priorities and make a strategic decision to let some things simply not get done.

Prioritize

1. You should have a business plan to work from.  Of your Business Objectives, what is mandatory?  In short, if your institution only accomplishes 3 things this year – what should those 3 things be?
2. In order to accomplish those 3 Business Objectives, what are the top 3 Marketing Strategies for each Objective? Now prioritize your 9 total strategies.
3. What are the 3 most impactful Marketing Tacticsyou can do to support each of your 9 Strategies – think on-going processes as well as short-term campaigns.

With this exercise, you now have 27 of the most impactful tactics, prioritized, to meet your bank or credit union’s key objectives.  That averages 2.25 tactics per month and should definitely help you to maximize your time and monetary resources.  If you can’t get to all 27, use your prioritization to identify what to do now and what to put in next year’s plan (or simply partner with someone like me).

Now that we have YOURresponsibilities identified, lets apply the “Power of 3” to those who approve your work.

If we can assume that your department is the expert and is focused on Acquisition, Retention and Penetration.  And if we also assume that, as marketers, you are the most qualified person in your institution to understand customer segmentation/needs and competitive messaging/differentiation – then we can make creative approval easy!

The only 3 things that anyone approving your work needs be concerned with are:

1. Is the information accurate and compliant?
2. Does the offer address a strategic need of the institution?
3. Does the message fit the bank or credit union brand?

I've been on your side of the desk and, yes, I know that Ron and I have over-simplified life quite a bit.  But, have we really?  I truly believe that aside from your top strategies & tactics and the above 3 approval requirements, everything else is a distraction.  That's not to say that other tactics don't need to get done, but they are certainly "back-burner" items.

Hopefully I've struck a nerve or two and lit a few fires.  Share your thoughts below.

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We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

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Of Hispanic Time, Calendars, and Tradition

Latin American calendars are a cultural tradition that can provide an interesting marketing tool to marketers in the United States. The notion that time has different dimensions for Hispanics than for other cultural groups is relatively well known. There are those who talk about "Latin time" and those who talk about "mañana." "Mañana" or tomorrow represents how many of us, Hispanics, think about what we need to do in life.

Tomorrow is a great time management tool because it allows one to postpone all things that are not emergencies, thus piling huge numbers of activities into a very small tomorrow. Tomorrow presents interesting possibilities as those who expect things tomorrow may forget about them or the activity may have lost interest. Thus tomorrow saves effort because one does not waste time doing things that tomorrow will show are not important.

Now, calendars represent a related but more complex story. Latin American calendars are not just for providing the date and to keep us organized. They are cultural icons that symbolize how we feel about time. Latin American calendars display cultural and historic pictures in their pages. They illustrate the past and the pride associated with it. In many ways, calendars are decorations that we cherish as we try to pile things up into tomorrow. We can see how much more time we have for enjoying the present. Looking at the calendar gives us a glimpse of the past that we respect, celebrate the moment, and look at a "mañana" that is slow to come.

I remember growing up with calendars that the grocery store, the butcher shop, the phone company, the electric company, the shoe store, the restaurant, and others had given my family at the end of the year. These were presents given to us so that we would remember those nice merchants that helped us decorate our walls with so many images of our tradition, our tastes, and our cultural pride.

Traditional Latin American calendars can be of great marketing value in this modern era, where Hispanics are still proudly honoring the symbology of their culture, while most others are just rushing into the future. Large and small marketers can establish an emotional bond with Hispanics by providing them with these traditional calendars as tokens of appreciation. They serve as a continuous reminder that a specific business or brand thinks about us and shares with us the images of our culture.

I have come across http://www.latinworldcalendar.com/. An exploration of this site will provide good examples of the different types of art and motifs that Latin American calendars offer.

While time flies for so many people, it is good to have a traditional calendar that can help us keep time still for just a little while.