If you’re like everyone else in retail banking, you’re probably trying to figure out how to keep your branches relevant and profitable in a traffic-declining environment. It might surprise you that some of the most important items to tackle in your branch evolution have nothing to do with architectural design. To get started, what you really need to do is define the optimal business model for your organization and your markets. There are many, many factors that will influence your model, but here are five candidates for you to consider as you begin your journey.
Author Archives: John Mathes
10 Warning Signs Your Financial Services Brand is Becoming Extinct
Wondering if it’s time to take the pulse of your organization’s brand to see if its moving you forward? How about a simple stress test to check your brand’s vital signs?
If the red flags below look familiar, it may be time to take a more serious look at the state of your brand program. While one or two warning signs aren’t fatal, they should serve as a check engine light, one that’s coming on to alert you that something could be amiss. It just might be time to call in reinforcements to get you moving forward again.
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Are you getting “brand update” notifications?
Slowness. Freezing. Inefficiency. Not connecting. All are symptoms of a computer operating system or program when it is in need of an update. Most often the update notification appears but you have no idea what it means or what to do about it until you have your IT department look at it. And sadly, a great deal of people ignore the update notice until some situation becomes complex enough to warrant immediate and sometimes lengthy attention.
Maintaining your organization’s brand sometimes follows the same path. There are signals that indicate something is amiss or not synced up correctly. These signals can be subtle and easy to miss. Or, just like the update notification, they can be ignored. But that never turns out well – for your computer or your brand.
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BofA Now Knows When You’re in the House.
Confession. I’m a BofA customer.
I know, I know…. but c’mon, don’t be a hater.
I’ve been with them a long fourteen years and at this point, it’s just too sticky. Early on, I needed nationwide ATM access. Plus it was handy to tell my credit union and community bank clients that I had to do my banking… “neutral”. It was a safe bet that I wouldn’t be consulting with BofA in the foreseeable future. And if I ever did, I guess I would have to bank “off shore” or something. Whatever that means.
I find myself needing to visit our safe deposit box on a frequent basis and that takes me into the branch (hmm… isn’t it interesting how safe deposit box access is diminishing). Today, I was greeted by a pleasant concierge, which in of itself is not a new thing, but she asked to see my debit card. Then she swiped it. In seconds she was looking at my entire relationship with the bank.
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Balancing your member messaging
Before focusing my attention on retail financial services branding, I spent the majority of my marketing career working with and for traditional retailers. Retail marketing and advertising is not for the faint of heart. No other category of business is judged so tightly as retail, where success is measured in comparative daily sales year over year.
With that monkey-on-the back looming over the marketing department, it’s very tempting to spend precious advertising dollars in one way – driving daily foot traffic with promotional events and price/item messages.
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The branch ship has not sailed
Fear not. This isn’t yet another post in the long line of recent rhetoric on whether the branch is alive or dead. You may be the one without a pulse if you’ve missed the litany of pundits lining up to support or depose the branch as a viable channel in retail financial services. But, if you’re like me, you’ve grown weary of all the branch naysayers with their death-knoll drumbeat of how backward organizations are if they continue to invest in brick & mortar. Most of these tarot-reading prophets come from the IT world, or from international climes that don’t connect to mainstreet in any way, shape or form.
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Culture isn’t invented. It’s born.
We’re amused by all of the activity going on surrounding JC Penney (JCP) and its move to an everyday low price offering strategy (EDLP). Their relatively new CEO, Ron Johnson (hired a year ago away from Apple Retail) has been at the helm of some sweeping changes, all designed to get mom back in the store on a regular basis. Media consensus is that the JCP board thought that if Johnson could perform his magic at Apple, then he could do the same for the ailing department store dinosaur.
Not so fast, Dino.
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Here’s your 13-point marketing checklist for 2013
Predictions abound for the new year and I don’t want my message to get intertwined with all the marketing prognosticators pumping out predictions. So, I want you to know that what I’m about to share with you isn’t guesswork. It’s thirteen viable and relevant steps you can take right now for building a holistic, results-driven and integrated approach for growth across your entire organization.
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