S.E.L.L. more with SEM and SEO

"For online advertising, almost half (48%) of consumers surveyed said they trust ads in search engine results, online video ads and ads on social networks. More than four in 10 (42%) trust online banner ads, up from 26 percent in 2007. Forty-five percent of respondents in Nielsen’s 2013 survey believed display ads on mobile phones were credible, and 37% trusted text ads on mobile phones, up from 18% in 2007."

~ Under the Influence: Consumer Trust in Advertising, 09.17.2013

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BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2013.
Myles Anderson & filed under Online Reviews, Research, 06.25.2013

~ Only 5% of consumers had not used the internet to find a local business in the last 12 months 

(down from 15% in 2012)

~ 37% of consumers used the internet to find local businesses at least one time per month 

(up from 34% in 2012)

Many of us have new customer acquisition at the top of our wish list for 2014.

• Fact #1: To acquire new folks, you must first have market awareness.
• Fact #2: Awareness takes money that most of us simply don't have.

That said, strategically, you have to steadfastly stick to two strict disciplines:

1. You DO NOT want everyone in your market. So why pay for media that reaches everyone. Identify as narrowly as possible who you REALLY want to walk through your door and focus your money there. Anyone else will walk in organically.

2. You need to reach your target when they care. It would be great to have the budget for a Nike-style blanket awareness effort, but you don't. 

More and more, a focus on electronic media makes more sense than burning your budget on traditional broadcast and print. A serious evaluation of SEM and SEO can make a huge difference in your marketing results.

Search Engine Marketing - (SEM) allows you to quickly identify and serve text ads to individuals as they are looking for information related to local banking options 

SEM is focused on key words, so you reach your target while they are hunting for what you do - but it goes much deeper. For the most part, you can also target your SEM just like you do direct mail: Regional, demographic, lifestyle, etc.

SEM is typically budgeted on a cost-per-click model, so unlike direct mail, you will not pay for simple exposure, but for actual desired action.

SEO - Having a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is an essential component in being competitive in the search engine realm and providing your customers with the most timely, accurate information about what you do and what you're about. The goal of SEO is to provide an intuitive user experience by communicating with search engines about your products and services so that you rank well within the search results. 

Proper SEO is not a DIY project. It requires regular analysis of web crawler reports, key word rankings, competitive analysis and content review. It also takes updates of keywords generation and meta data as well as social media integration.

The best part is that both SEM and SEO are budget friendly. With a pay-per-click and super-tight targeting, you can create a SEM plan that fits most any budget. And, while SEO is an ongoing effort, you can reasonably expect to pay just a  few hundred dollars per month for the consultation, reporting, analysis and management

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 280,000 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.

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937-426-9848

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The Sound of Music ... and Advertising.

Whether you're Mozart, B.B. King, John Lennon, Hank Williams or Ne-Yo, sitting down to a blank page of music opens up a limitless world of possibilities. Boundless, untapped creativity. The dots you splash on those lines can be the next great ballad or the next great ballet. They can make people laugh, cry, love and dance ... it's totally up to the musician.

That's what I love about what we do. To me, creative is like music.  Eddie Wilson in the movie Eddie and the Cruisers said, "words and music, man - they need each other." I couldn't agree more. But so do words and images.

I share this rant because I just heard about an interesting client conversation. They didn't want to provide too much creative input because they didn't want to stifle the creative process. In essence, they were providing blank sheet music and asking us to write the next great song.

Which is GREAT!!! No creative wants everything dictated to them. BUT...we didn't know if we are writing a love song, pop song, western or jazz.

For advertising, the strategy is like providing the stye to a musician. It provides the ground rules that allow creative to flourish. Yes...creative DOES need rules. Are we writing an eight-bar blues riff? A concerto? Will it be acapella? We at least need to know what instruments to include.

And within each musical style, the creativity is varied by tone. How do we want people to feel. Is it reminiscent? Inspirational? Foreboding? Your advertising creative needs a defined tone too.

You can give 100 musicians the same 8 notes and you'll hear 100 totally different tunes. They just need to select a style and define a tone.

Give 100 writers and designers the exact same well-defined strategy, and you'll get 100 different well-positioned ads. If you truly want to set your creatives free to keep their feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars, give them the freedom of a tight strategy.

For the cheat sheet to a tight strategy, click here: 

A Cheat Sheet to Perfect Creative

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 272,000 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

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.

---------------------------------------------------

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)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

What it takes to be Carnac the Magnificent.

As marketers, we are always looking into our crystal ball, reading the tealeaves and flipping the tarots. 

Whatever it takes to be the industry's Carnac the Magnificent.

"Who needs our product?  Who will buy?  What will they buy?  When?"  

As we discussed on August 12, a great deal of focus in the magical, mystical world behind the marketing curtain is spent in segmentation. The scientific and not-quite-so-scientific methods of running human being's through a filter to better manage our time and monitory resources.

Recent blogs have yakked about segmentation from topics like: 8 life stages that you should market to and Mirror Modeling and Birds of a Feather methodologies. These are all great ways to plan for today and the near future. (And they're absolutely brilliant prose!)

But how can you look a bit further out? Elementary, my dear Marketer ... watch the schools.

The 2004 NEA research paper, K–12 Education inThe U.S. Economy: Its Impact on Economic Development,Earnings, and Housing Values, discussed these findings:

"With regard to effects on economic development, one statistical study found that cutting statewide public K–12 expenditures by $1 per $1,000 of state personal income would reduce the state’s personal income by about 0.3 percent in the short run and by 3.2 percent in the long run. They also note that another study found that such a cut would reduce the state’s manufacturing investment in the long run by 0.9 percent and manufacturing employment by 0.4 percent. Similarly, another researcher found that a decline in educational quality, as measured by a 10 percent drop in standardized test scores, would lead to a 2 to 10 percent reduction in home values.They also cite a study that found a 10 percent reduction in school expenditures could yield, in the long run, to a 1 to 2 percent drop in post school annual earnings."

My simplistic, "If-Then" interpretation: When schools are managed poorly and/or necessary levies are routinely voted down - the level of education suffers. When the education suffers - people choose to move other places. When people move other places - so do business. When businesses move - so do jobs ... then the community truly can't afford the levies to fix the schools and the snowball gets bigger.

So, when you're trying to decide where to build a branch, or what region of your footprint should demand your attention, or where the future opportunity is ... of course, look at the current demographics, employment and economy ... but also look at the schools. They hold the key to every city's future.

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 255,000 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

Great Marketing: It Slices, It Dices...

Hey, friends. Are you tired of your marketing budget getting slashed every year? Are you embarrassed because your CEO looks at Marketing as the Arts and Crafts Department? Well friends, have I got the answer for you…

The Seg-O-Matic … It slices, it dices, it improves your response and blows up your ROI.


Alright, I know I sound like a bad '70's, Ron Popeil infomercial. But, hey ... that cat knew how to sell!

Seriously, folks ... segmentation is all about slicing and dicing. Here's an example:

We have a client who is rolling out a new interest checking account. Like many other smaller institutions, they previously only offered Free Checking and are now expanding their product line with the hopes of acquiring more checking, increasing retention and increasing services per household.

In the span of a 10 minute conversation, we had 7 target segments:

1. Members who qualify for new product - Move them into it
2. Members who qualify by balance but missing ancillary product - Motivate them to open more services to step into the new checking (this segment could have been more than a dozen individual segments is we focused on exactly what they were missing)
3. Those who are close in average balance - Increase balances/retention
4. Members who have required balance in deposits but no checking - New checking/retention
5. Non-checking with loans - New checking, focus on convenience of online banking
6. Non-checking without loans - New checking
7. Acquisition - Self explanatory (this could also be countless segments, but this SEG-focused institution has access to a very targeted list)

So there you have it, an instant strategy for product roll out by simply considering who the product affects, what each segment needs and what those needs have to offer to your objectives.

This client has fewer than 8,000 members, so it would have been easy to create a postcard to sound the trumpets and proudly proclaims the coming of "The Greatest Checking Account in the History of the World." (Could you hear the echo when you read that?!?!) 

We could have printed 8,000 pieces, used "Dear Member" as the salutation, mailed them out, sat back and counted new accounts. But our clients (and your members/customers) deserve better than that.

Segmentation goes far beyond the "haves" and "have nots." Consider your target's needs, how they use you and how you want them to use you. 

The more targeted you get, the more personal you get. The more personal you are, the better you can:

• Speak to specific needs
• Focus on specific calls to action
• Address different objectives in one campaign

The goal is to get as one-to-one as possible. In our example, there were only about 50 members who qualify for the account today. They could easily be called at home in a few hours.

Once you've sliced and diced and analyzed your segments, you'll have a better feel for what tactics you can use to communicate with each. Does your culture fit an external call effort? Can you trust your team to send personal letters? Can you create a process that looks more personal but still takes the responsibility off the front line staff? Should you?

I believe that everything can be prioritized. Once you have a feel for the quantities in each segment and how those segments like to use your institution, you can use this list as a guide:

Hierarchy of External Conversations

1. Personal phone call 
2. Personal letter from relationship manager
3. Postcard direct mail/email specific to the segment
4. Mass media

But Wait … There’s More!
How much would you pay to increase your response rates? 

But wait ... there's more!

Not only does the Seg-O-Matic give you personalized conversations and more meaningful calls to action ... it also allows for better campaign tracking. Yes, my friends, you get it all ... a one-to-one conversation, more objectives met, the power to know which segments respond and which you need to tweak.  Now how much would you pay?

But hurry, this strategy is not sold in stores. It's available to you only for a limited time. Call today!

For more lessons from infomercials click here.

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 255,000 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