Restaurants and Financial Marketing - Part I

Cupcakes, smoothies, fro yo, and noodles.  What do all of these foods have in common (other than the fact that they are all delicious)?   Many of the establishments that make and sell these foods are like rabbits.  You see one, and then, pretty soon, you see many more just like it cropping up in neighborhoods all around town – all with slight variations of the same name, menu, and even logo and color scheme.  These are all food trends that are all trying to play the same game.

A billboard advertisement I saw in my hometown the other day was clearly trying to simulate a national noodle chain with its pithy punch line and swirly font, and it got me thinking about sustainability and marketing.

QR codes, flash mobs, iPads and “coffee shop branches.”  These are all trends, too…trends that a lot of credit unions have smartly employed in their marketing and member experience efforts. 

Pursuing a trend doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t room for business continuity and sustainability.  However, every business – whether it is a cupcake shop or a credit union - has to be incredibly smart and deliberate about its plans or, like most trends, it will end up going the way of the tofu ice cream shop.

How can you leverage trends successfully?

Step One: The most important thing to remember when pursuing any trend is making sure that the trend fits your credit union’s strategic goals, culture, and target audience(s).  If you are doing it merely because you’ve seen a bunch of other credit unions doing it (like the restaurants above), then the trend won’t be a lever for success.    

Step Two: As your credit union is serving that next cup of gourmet coffee, keep your eyes on the horizon.  The next trends are already on their way, and you need to be ready to adapt your service model and product suite when appropriate to capitalize on those trends while keeping true to your credit union’s identity and strategic goals. 

Step Three: Stay tuned for Part II of this series for more on what your credit union can learn from successful restaurants.  You may want to dress up for this one and call for a reservation.  

Amanda

MarketMatch solves business problems for credit unions and banks through marketing by providing FOCUS, generating MOMENTUM, and creating measurable RESULTS.  We are the only marketing firm to offer an ROI guarantee for our clients.

Contact me to learn how MarketMatch can help you with your marketing efforts, whether it is through marketing strategy, branding or rebranding, budget planning, new product development, and much more.  Learn more about all of our client services by clicking here. 

Follow me on Twitter!

www.weknowcreditunions.com

A 10 Year Old, Bad Dancing, 2 Dogs & Your Agency Relationship

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure it's out there.  You know, EVERYTHING is caught on video now-a-days.

I first want to apologize to everyone, and then explain myself.

When you see that video of the dashingly handsome, painfully modest, suburban man acting 15 years younger than his true age and doing a dance in his front yard that is a unique interpretation of an Irish jig and the Macarena ... I'm sorry. But I had a darn good reason!!!

My 10 year old son mowed my lawn ... by himself ... for the first time this Saturday.  

(Pause, while I do ANOTHER little dance)

At face value, this seemingly has NO meaning to you, my fine marketing reader. But wait, it will!

With my son dutifully walking straight lines back and forth in my yard, it freed me up to do a lot more. I was able to mulch the flower beds and straighten up the shed. With a much more productive Saturday than I had anticipated - I was able, on Sunday, to be a lazy slob and nap with my pit bulls on the couch.

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't easy to hand over the mower. And at first, I kept stepping in to go back over small strips that he missed. Even now, I look at the yard and know that it doesn't look EXACTLY how it would if I were to do it, but it looks pretty darn good. And thanks to his help, I was able to accomplish significantly more.

Now, think about your 3rd party partnerships. Like my handing off the mower, it may be hard to relinquish some tasks. And since we are, in great part, in a creative business, I can guarantee that the solution an agency comes up with will be different than the direction you would have taken. 

There are two reasons to engage a 3rd party marketing firm:
1) When you need additional expertise in an area that simply isn't your forte.
2) When there aren't enough hours in the day to focus on all the things that really matter.

Had I kept stopping to "recommend" better ways for my son to mow, I would have never gotten my other work done.

That's the trick to a sound partnership, isn't it? You need to know when to let go and trust your partner. Assign them the jobs that you are comfortable handing off or where you need the added expertise. Unlike my boy, I'll bet it's NOT their first time behind the mower. Then you can look like a hero by completing more than expected. Heck, you might even have time to hit the couch and nap with your pups too.

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

With nearly 214,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

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

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

Why Intuition Still Matters in Marketing

There's no doubt that data and data analysis are fundamentally changing the way marketing is practiced. Big data is one of the hottest topics in marketing circles today, and many thought leaders argue that extracting insights from customer data is now an essential driver of competitive advantage.

Because data has become so important to effective marketing, some pundits contend that it should be the primary tool for making marketing decisions and that human intuition no longer plays a significant role in marketing.

Rich Beatty with CMG Partners addressed this topic in an article for AdvertisingAge titled, "Data Guides, But the Gut Decides." In this article, Beatty asks whether the growing importance of data, analysis, metrics, and data scientists in marketing means that science will kill the need for the art of marketing. Beatty says that most CMOs define art as the process of using intuition in making marketing decisions and science as the process of using data to inform decisions.

Beatty argues that both science and art play important roles in effective marketing. He writes, "Science provides the foundation for informed decision-making, while art is an accelerant that brings the insight to life in a more impactful way."

I agree that art (intuition) still has a place in marketing, but you need the right kind of intuition. There are three basic kinds of human intuition. Ordinary intuition is what we typically call hunches or gut instinct. We experience ordinary intuition as an emotional feeling. When you meet someone for the first time and after a half-hour of conversation say to yourself, "I feel like I can trust this person," that's ordinary intuition at work.

Expert intuition (the kind of intuition described by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink) is a form of rapid thinking where you jump to a conclusion when you recognize something familiar. When we use expert intuition, we essentially draw on memories of what we've experienced or learned in the past and use that stored knowledge to solve a similar problem. We do this very quickly, and we're not usually aware of the process our brain is using. We just "know" what decision to make. Expert intuition can play an important role in making routine, repetitive marketing decisions.

When faced with major marketing decisions that present new issues or challenges, the kind of intuition you need is what William Duggan has called strategic intuition. Duggan is a professor at the Columbia Business School and the author of several books on this topic, including Strategic Intuition:  The Creative Spark in Human Achievement.

Duggan describes strategic intuition as a flash of insight that occurs when a person taps memories of what he or she has experienced or learned in the past and combines that stored knowledge in a new way to solve a new problem. This is the fundamental difference between expert intuition and strategic intuition - expert intuition is used to deal with familiar problems, while strategic intuition is used when we need to solve a problem we've never encountered before. Duggan argues that strategic intuition has played an important role in most forms of human intellectual achievement, from scientific discoveries to military and business strategy.

Strategic intuition will remain critical for effective marketing because data and data analysis have inherent limitations. I'll have more to say about this in a future post, but one of the major limitations merits a brief mention here. Data and data analysis rarely provide a clear answer when a major marketing decision is involved. This lack of clarity can exist because:

• We don't have data regarding some important aspect of the decision.
• The data we have doesn't conclusively indicate that one decision is better than the alternatives.
• The success of the decision made will depend on future events, and data can only describe what has happened in the past.

I'm a strong advocate of evidence-based decision making, and I believe that marketers should use sound data to inform and guide their decisions. But data and analytics do not eliminate the need for strategic intuition in marketing.

Thoughts from a 100 Mile Ultra-Marathon

My sister-in-law is amazing!

Last weekend, she ran in a 100 mile race. To put that in perspective, it's a race the equivalent of Dayton, Ohio to Indianapolis, Indiana ... on foot! 

She had 30 hours to complete the 100 mile trek, and she was ready! She had been training for months, and she had a plan. She knew when she would rest, when to eat, when to take electrolytes and when she would ... well, when you're planning to traverse 100 petrol-free miles, you need to plan for everything!

She toed the line on Saturday morning confident, prepared and excited. Ahead of her lay six 16.6 mile laps, all she had to do was work her plan.

Much like the plan you're currently working. As we race into the 5th month of 2013, you fully understand your objectives, have a in-depth understanding of your target audience, know when you want to promote key products and have defined milestones to reach. You have a plan to acquire, retain and build relationships. When you toed the starting line in January, you were confident, prepared and excited too.

For about a week before the race, it had been raining in Indiana. Though the April showers might bring May flowers, they also brought terrible flooding to the ultra-marathon course. On each of the six laps, racers were expected to cross 8 knee-to-hip deep water crossings. That averages one water crossing per every 2 miles ... for 100 miles. Add to that, when the sun set, temperatures fell significantly colder than anyone had predicted. In the end, her plan was spot-on. Her legs held up great, her cardio was outstanding and her mind was clear. But after roughly 3 consecutive marathons, the water and cold won-out. With symptoms of hypothermia, she had to stop, take off her shoes, and think back on the adventure.

The real story here is not in how the race ended, but in that it ever started at all. The ambition of a 100 miler is amazing.

Now, look at your plan. What factors this year have made you want to stop, take off your wet running shoes and look back? Has unemployment taken a sharp climb in your market? Has a competitor gotten more aggressive than expected? 

The lesson is that the best, most thought out planning and preparation can never prepare us for the actual outcomes. Since we will never experience life-threatening physical limitations in marketing, we simply need to adjust, tweak the plan and keep running.

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

With nearly 211,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

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

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

Ship Your Own Pants

If you haven’t yet seen the Kmart “Ship My Pants” video that became a viral internet sensation last week, you are among the few in the social media realm.  In just a week, the video has had over 14.4 million views through thousands of shares, tweets, posts, emails and more. 

It took guts on Kmart’s part to engage in humor that critics have dubbed immature and crude, but I think it was a smart move.  Up until the "Ship My Pants" spot, the second-highest number of views on their YouTube channel tops just over 60,000. 

My previous blog post about passion and storytelling is seemingly unrelated to this post at first glance.  However, what Kmart has done here is told a story through appealing to people’s emotions.  In this case, it was humor.  I mean, how exciting can it be to buy a pair of pants online and have them shipped to your house?  But, make it funny, and guess which company is going to be next in line when someone needs a pair of khakis?  I’m just saying.

Credit unions, there are a couple of lessons to be learned here:

1.     Depositing checks, transferring money, and doing about anything related to banking is boring to consumers, and they see it as a checkmark on their list of things to do.  But if you can tie that errand to the emotions associated with transfers, loans, checking or savings accounts, then you can gain traction by breaking through the noise. 

Once you’ve done that, you can then start to build actual relationships by communicating with your target audience and showing them the human side of our very transactional-based business.  That’s how to gain followers and build your brand awareness.

2.     Playing it safe in your marketing efforts and not taking any risks because you are afraid of making this person mad, or not appealing to that person, is not the way successful marketing happens in this day and age of social media and thousands of marketing messages per day.  And, in many cases, it means not trying to appeal to a certain group means not appealing to any group.

I’m not condoning distasteful advertising, but there is an opportunity for credit unions to stand apart from other financial institutions.  We all know why we do – it’s because we are awesome at taking care of members’ financial needs and the communities we serve.  We just need to get better at telling our story and shipping our pants in our own special credit union way.  

Amanda

MarketMatch solves business problems for credit unions and banks through marketing by providing FOCUS, generating MOMENTUM, and creating measurable RESULTS.  

Contact me to learn how MarketMatch can help you with your marketing efforts, whether it is through marketing strategy, branding or rebranding, budget planning, new product development, and much more.  Learn more about all of our client services by clicking here.

Follow me on Twitter!

www.weknowcreditunions.com

Why Improving Performance Doesn't Always Create More Value

In a recent post at the SiriusDecisions blog, Jeff Lash wrote about seeing an advertisement for a cell phone that boasted about the phone's 215 hours of battery life between charges. Mr. Lash noted that on a heavy usage day, he spends at most two to three hours on his phone and at that rate, 215 hours of battery life would last about ten weeks. He thought it was pretty likely that he'd be able to find a convenient power outlet more frequently than once every two and a half months.

Mr. Lash's point was that 215 hours of battery life far exceeded his requirements, and therefore much of that long battery life would provide little value to him.

I've written frequently in this blog about the importance of understanding how your solutions create value for customers. Clear and compelling value propositions are, in fact, the foundation of all effective marketing.

Unfortunately, it's easy for marketers and other business leaders to overestimate the value of their solutions. The problem stems from an implicit belief that improving the performance of a solution automatically increases the value of the solution.

Clayton Christensen addressed this issue in The Innovator's Dilemma. In Christensen's view most established companies in any industry improve their products or services along dimensions of performance that their major customers have historically wanted and valued. What often happens, however, is that the pace of performance improvement exceeds the ability of customers to take advantage of the increased performance. Eventually, a company "overshoots" its market. Prospective customers are happy to accept the higher performance, but they aren't willing to pay more to get it because they can't translate the increased performance into benefits that produce better business results.

This circumstance has several important implications for marketers. Most importantly, it means that marketers should always seek to understand whether and to what extent new features or capabilities will enhance the value of a solution in the eyes of potential buyers.

So, before deciding how to market a "new and improved" version of your solution, answer these questions from a prospective buyer's perspective:

• What performance criteria are most important for my business?
• What levels of performance must a solution provide in order to meet these criteria?
• Are some of the performance criteria more vital or important than others?
• Once "acceptable" levels of performance are met, do higher levels of performance and/or new capabilities create meaningful new value and, if so, how?

The Key Ingredient to Successful Business Development

During my first week here at MarketMatch, I’ve been commuting from Columbus to Englewood (a little over an hour drive) in order to get acclimated to the team and my new role as VP of Client Management.  I wanted to maximize this extra time in the car by listening to an audio book.  My business coach, Dan Stover, recommended a book to me about leadership, and so I spent those hours in the car this week learning about how to be a better leader.

One of the things that stood out to me was a point the author made about passion.  Our body language as we speak about something is the indicator of the amount of passion we have about the subject on which we are speaking.  Passion cannot be faked. 

You can know the ins and outs of a given service – for example, like all of the kinds of checking accounts your financial institution offers and their features.  But, if you don’t bank there and realize the benefits for yourself and really look to see how your credit union or bank is truly helping someone financially, your body language is going to convey something less than passion.  Therefore, the likelihood of making a sale is substantially less. 

How many conferences around the country have sessions for successful business development?  Like, a lot.  But here’s a piece of advice: your biggest asset as a business development person is yourself and the stories you have to tell. 

Even though banking is an errand, we are in the business of emotions.  People aren’t emotional about their loans!  They are emotional about what loans get them: a new car, a bigger house with a backyard for their kids to play in, a dream wedding, or a few extra dollars when ends won’t meet.  These are the stories on which we should be building our product suites, our marketing strategies, and our business development plans. 

Everyone has a story when it comes to their financial picture.  Find the stories.  Therein lies the passion with which you can weave a pitch to a new business client, a meeting with a potential new homeowner, or a potential employer group. 

Amanda

MarketMatch solves business problems for credit unions and banks through marketing by providing FOCUS, generating MOMENTUM, and creating measurable RESULTS.  

Contact me to learn how MarketMatch can help you with your marketing efforts, whether it is through marketing strategy, branding or rebranding, budget planning, and much more.  Learn more about all of our client services by clicking herewww.marketmatch.com/services.

Follow me on Twitter!http://twitter.com/AmandaLThomas

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