Don't Begin Your Next Planning Session Until You Can Do This!

The Super-Duper Credit Union/Community Bank member/customer is family focused. She is a married woman with a good job, but (combined with her husband's income) making just enough to support her family's comfortable lifestyle. She has one or two young children and a husband who likely earns a little more than her. They live in a 2 bedroom home in a middle class neighborhood with lots of swing sets and have been there for 5-10 years.

Retirement seems like a pipe dream. Though they invest a little through their employers, it is not the focus. They are more concerned with meeting monthly bills and still squirreling away some savings for their children's future college bills - who's majority will ultimately be financed through student loans.

Her time is divided by maintaining a career that she is proud of, raising children that she loves dearly, supporting her kid's activities, volunteering for community groups, exercising 3-4 times per week, and trying to salvage a relationship with her husband, family and friends where she can find time. She has replaced time on the phone with her friends with frequent pictures and updates of the kids on Facebook.

Because her husband is "busy earning more," or because she's more responsible, she's in charge of most of the family finances. While she is technologically savvy, she received her first email account when she started her first real job, about 20 years ago. That said, she writes more checks than she probably should but is beginning to see the efficiency of online banking and starting to trust it more. She's certainly not an early adopter of technology - but she LOVES her i-Phone.

Though she and her husband each switch cars every 3-4 years, they do not lease. They want the look and amenities of a BMW or Mercedes without the hefty monthly payments.

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The off-site hotel is set and the golf reservations are made. You know how you'll entertain your Board and they are looking forward to a weekend together. Now, it's time to begin the REAL pre-work to your planning session.

As credit unions and community banks, everything we do is 

built around our members and customers ... EVERYTHING!  

You, of course need to be prepared to talk business: How will we decrease loan loss while still being open enough to grow the portfolio? How will the health care act effect us? How do we increase non-interest income without establishing big-bank fees? Are there new markets that we should look at? Do we want to merge (or be merged)? Are we over or under staffed?

This is all vital to discuss, but before you break into THAT agenda ... think about who you're doing it for.

Can you tell a story like the one above? You need to!

The days of being all things to all people is over. Your margins shrank years ago and have little promise of coming back any time soon. Your marketing budget isn't limitless. You need loans NOW and your 65 plus year old members simply aren't borrowing like you need.

So you need to focus! You need to determine who in your market(s) you are attracting now and who you WANT to attract. You need to understand your best customers and what makes them the best. Then learn everything you can about them. 

When you can tell a story about your customer: where they live, where they work, what they do for fun, what drives them, what they fear, what they care about ... then you can start making strategic decisions on your product suite, pricing, branching, tech investments, your website, and your marketing message.

Related Articles:
The Great Storyteller Gets the Audience
You'll Never Get Everyone to Love You
Mirror Mirror

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 more than 260,000 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)

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Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

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A Cheat Sheet to Perfect Creative

Give your creative the FREEDOM of a tight strategy.

What I love about what we do is that there are infinite ways to address the same problem.  There are few rules and usually, the crazier the idea, the better.

You want your creative to stand up and take notice.  You need it to be clear and concise.  To get there, you have to be focused!  

That's the job of the creative brief.  In one to two pages, describe exactly what needs to happen.  A great creative brief can lead to killer creative.  It's also your sanity check to know whether the creative is simply entertaining or on strategy too.

Here are the 5 areas to focus on when you're focused on creative:

1. What do you want to do?

Why are you spending this money?  What do you want the effort to accomplish?  How will you quantitatively know if it worked or not.

• What does the advertising do for the brand?
• How will the objective be measured?

2. Who are you talking to?
It's easier to write to a person than to a nameless group.  Who do you want to talk to?  Give them a name, a face, a personality and needs:

• What do they look like? What do they like to do? What is their economic standing?  What makes them tick? (be as specific as possible)
• What motivates them?  Why are they making this purchase decision? What's going on in their life?
• When they buy, why do they choose you?
• When they don't buy with you, why not?
• How do they FEEL when they make the decision?  How do you WANT them to feel (tone)?

3. The ONE Big Thing

Let's face it, we're lucky if anyone ever sees our work ... we're blessed if they care ... and if they take away ONE message, we've done our job.  What is the ONE big thing that you want them to know?

• How does it make you different from the competition?
• So what? (Benefit) What problem are we solving?  Why should anyone care?
• Prove it (3-5 supports - Prioritize) Why should they believe you?
• Who's voice is telling them?  Are you the trusted old uncle or the hip young friend or the crazy granny?

4. What do you want them to do?
How will the audience help you achieve your objective?  Do you want them to feel something?  Pick up the phone?  Go to a URL?  Run to your location?

• Is it easy for the target to do what you want?
• Who answers the Call to Action?  Are they prepared?

5. Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots
What are the rules? The must and must nots.

• Budget
• Schedule and duration
• Media options: Print? Broadcast? Web? Direct Mail? SEO? Point of Sale? Outdoor?
• What does the staff need to know or do?
• Mandatories (logos, icons, legals, etc)

Now go back and start crossing words out.  Keep the brief ... well, BRIEF!  The more focused you are, the less sidetracked the creative ideas will be (You know creatives ... show 'em something shiny and you lose them for hours!).

From the brief, try to come up with at least 3 good ideas:

• The safe idea
• One that scares the hell out of you
• Something in between

Finally, when the work is complete, go back to the brief and start checking off each item.  If the work addresses each element of the brief, then it should be on strategy ... focused ... and ready to generate business.

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.

Nearing 230,000 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

Who Says it Better than Don Draper?

In an idol-centric society, I’d like to be a significantly more monogamous Don Draper. 

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

As marketers, we are the great conversationalists.  Driving the external message is the easy part, we have total control over the paid media, we craft the press releases, we segment and target and slice and dice.

The INTERNAL conversation is our responsibility too.  It’s our job to manage meaningful conversation at the front line.  What questions do your front line ask?  How do they listen?  Can they hear needs and convert those to product recommendations?  Do they have the tools that they need so that your weakest “conversationalist” has what they need to be successful?

“What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.” &

"People want to be told what to do so badly that they'll listen to anyone."

This is a twofer.  At face-value, both quotes sound like dirty ad-talk.  It makes us "Ad Men" sound slimy.  And in the hands of some, it IS evil.

As Peter Parker’s wise grandpa said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  If we’re not top-of-mind and driving members and customers to our credit unions and community banks for good, then the Wells Fargos and Bank of America’s of the world will get people to listen to them.  They will “invent” a need that challenges reality and controls perception.  We need to get there fist and louder.

 “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance. That whatever you’re doing…it’s okay. You are okay.”

A bit overdramatic but right on target.  Good advertising evokes emotion.  Hope, fear,  nostalgia ... we have to make the target FEEL something.  As banks and credit unions, we deal with people's money - what evokes more emotion than that?  First car, new home, college tuition - it all comes through us.  There's no reason your work shouldn't touch someone's heart.

"You're happy with fifty percent? You're on top and you don't have enough. You're happy because you're successful, for now. But what is happiness, it's a moment before you need more happiness. I won't settle for fifty percent of anything. I want one hundred percent. You're happy with your agency? You're not happy with anything, you don't want most of it, you want all of it. And I won't stop until you get all of it."

This ambition is the food that nourishes marketers.  Somewhere, in a desirable segment, is a prospect who isn't doing business with us yet.  Worse, right now, in one of your branches, is a customer who doesn't have ALL of their accounts with you ... it makes you sick, doesn't it?!?

"Even though success is a reality, its effects are temporary."

See the above quote.  It's why we keep analyzing and dreaming and planning. 

"The day you sign a client is the day you start losing one."

A good client/agency relationship is a bit like a marriage, the goal is to remind her, every single day, how special she is and how much you appreciate her.  

"Change is neither good or bad, it simply is." &

"You want some respect? Go out and get it for yourself."

Another twofer.  I think these two quotes speak for themselves.  Don is a philosopher!

“We're going to sit at our desks and keep typing while the walls fall down around us because we're creative - the least important, most important thing there is.”

Ahhh, creative.  The one job where "everyone" feels like an expert.  Who tells their doctor where to make the incision?  But, everyone knows the logo should be bigger!

Creative is the least important, most important thing.  The strategy drives success.  The timing and the offer and the target and the staff training are where you should focus most of your efforts - but without standout, emotion-evoking creative, your ad is a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.

Peggy: “Sex sells.”

Don: “Says who? Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this. They take all this monkey crap and just stick it in a briefcase completely unaware that their success depends on something more than their shoeshine. YOU are the product. You- FEELING something. That's what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can't do what we do, and they hate us for it.”

It's just a matter of time until a bank takes the GoDaddy route to advertising.  But you know what's "sexy" about banking?  The way we effect people's lives.  The way that EVERY life change involves a trip to our branches or website. 

And, just for fun:

Don: It’s your job. I give you money. You give me ideas.


Peggy: But you never thank me.


Don: That’s what the money is for!

Don: [In a flashback from the second time they met] “I'm sorry, it's just... I've left some messages for you.”

Roger:  “And I've ignored them, that's my message for you.”

Did I miss a classic quote?  Want to expand on any of these?  Be an ACTIVE participant and add to the “comments” below.

Want more fun with quotes?  

Click here for Lessons Learned From the Godfather

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 205,000 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

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain (Marketing Magic)

Marketers are the Great and Powerful Oz!

In my formative years at Flynn, Sabatino & Day, a Dayton ad agency, I worked on Copeland Scroll Air Compressors.  These little suckers essentially looked like R2D2 - but in the industry, they were extraordinary!

We were responsible for many new product launches, but on one fateful day, I was amazed and astounded ... Not so much by this little metal R2D2 critter as by my creative team.  We were on an already extended deadline for a key trade pub for a full page ad that was going to announce the launch of our newest compressor technology.  The concept, copy and ad design were all approved and we were literally gathering the files to send to the publication at 5:00 the night of the deadline when it happened ...  The client called and said that they had just decided that our little black canister was going to launched in BLUE!  With no actual blue units produced and no time for a new photo shoot even if they had one, our only response was ... "What shade?"

Here's the amazing part.  Within an hour, we had a color sample from the client and the Mac Wizards magically transformed our black, shiny product into the new, (yet unproduced) compressor with the files ready to go to print.  All of the shadows and glare were in the photo - it looked like this blue beast really existed.

A few years later, while working on an international launch of the Scitex (now Kodak) VersaMark printer, we ran into a similar conundrum.  We had to include a machine in sales collateral that had not yet been produced.  Unlike our 10 pound R2D2 friend, this sucker filled a room ... existed only in prototype ... and had to be in sales materials in about a dozen languages and press releases in all major trade pubs.  Our answer ... "Lets build a model."

Through the power of styrofoam and wonder of photography, we had a quarter-sized model made and shot it to look like it's full-sized behemoth counterpart.  It was like dusting off the flux capacitor, gassing up the DeLorean and shooting into the future.

I learned early in my career that there is literally NOTHING that we can't do!  If we can pull off this type of magic with technical equipment, image what you can do with a checking account or auto loan!

As marketers - especially at credit unions and community banks - we can do some pretty amazing things.  We can give the gift of courage (or confidence), a heart (taking care of our communities), a brain (financial education) and home (mortgages).  

Our tactics may occasionally involve smoke and mirrors, but in the end we do great things.

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With nearly 189,000 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.  

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.

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

Tell the World Your Goals to Hit Them.

Any runner will tell you, "If you want to stay motivated to train for a big race ... tell everyone your goal."

What's true in running is typically true in life.  And what's true in life is almost ALWAYS true in business. 

Last year, we had a client with a core objective of growing loans.  We looked at their current portfolio, recent growth trends and local market conditions and determined that funding $100,000,000 in new loans in one year was a reasonable goal.  Now, the exercise could have stopped there ... but it didn't.

We weren't happy with simply posting an internal goal and measuring, we wanted the world to know.  So, on January 1, we bought ads telling the area that we were lending ... In a time when big banks were perceived as reining-in their approvals, we were lending ... In a time when the economy was beginning to recover and larger purchases were once again an option, we were lending.

Through the entire year, we carried the $100,000,000 theme. If we talked about an auto loan, we mentioned our goal.  When we touted our mortgage expertise, we mentioned our goal.  Whether we talked to new members or old, we mentioned our goal.  One thing was bluntly clear to the community, our members and staff ... come what may, we were going to lend $100,000,000 before the end of December 31!

Tell the world when you set it,
tell the world when you hit it!

And it worked!  Our $268 million credit union client funded 3,590 new vehicles, 548 homes, helped 185 small business grow and assured that 417 students went to college.  In all, we loaned more than $105 million in 2012. 

You can read about it in this link to the CU Times.

And this year, through refined targeting and improved processes, we expect to do even better!

How did they accomplish what so many institutions are vying for?  Consistency!  

• A consistent and clear message to staff
• A consistent message all year to the community and members

As marketers, we too often feel a need to change up creative with every single media buy.  This case proves just the opposite.  Pick a message and run with it!  Month-after-month; day-after-day.  

Tell the world your goal this year and watch it happen!

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With more than 177,000 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.  

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.

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