Insights and Ingenuity

Gotta Speak the Language

Last week, I was in Des Moines, IA attending a marketing conference sponsored by the Iowa Banker’s Association titled “Blue Ribbon Banking: Marketing for Success.”   At Ovation, we’re considering our sales strategy for the bank vertical and this local conference provided good timing.

My banking experience is limited to the typical consumer relationship, so I thought it particularly important to visit with bank marketers in hopes to better understand their pain points.  Knowing the issues they face could help us tighten our messaging or even inform development of creative sales programs to help reduce barriers to entry.  While in attendance, I sat in on three presentations that remain top-of-mind for me, from presenters Mills Financial Marketing (Spirit Lake, IA), F&M Bank (Columbia, TN), and McLellan Marketing (Des Moines, IA).

140 Characters or Less

Mills had the opening keynote and endeavored to cover a lot of ground including e-marketing tactics, ideas to befriend local media in an effort to increase exposure, and about tapping into the community to create a vibe and stay current.

F&M had another 2-hour session presented as a case history of the institution. From a small, infrequented bank located in the wrong neighborhood to an incredibly successful, high profile institution with impressively appointed offices, F&M has grown by tapping into key customer motivators (like ‘exclusivity’) and psychological aspects (such as southern-bred compunction to reciprocate). It started by using twice-weekly ladies lunches (hence the chicken salad) to create networking opportunities for bank executives to connect with prospects (and their friends!) on a personal level.  The bank remains focused by funneling marketing dollars only into venues that provide the greatest opportunity for exposure and return–instead of sponsoring a Little League team and receiving the F&M logo imprint in return, the bank might sponsor the winning team pizza lunch and make a short congratulatory announcement, followed by small talk with the kids parents.

Drew McLellan (@DrewMcLellan) provided curious bank marketers with insights into baby step-sized forays into the world of social media and social networking.  I live-tweeted the presentation (#drew), but you may have to scan through some other search results in order to view my notes.  I think Drew used humor to to comfort and reach his audience, and broke down the various tools and platforms into easily understood and prioritized chunks. Among his imperatives were Google Alerts and LinkedIn. He mentioned posting his presentation online, and when I can get the URL, I’ll update this post.

At the End of the Day

Some part of me had hoped to learn about some new tools or understand topics in a deeper way that I could apply back at the office. While that didn’t necessarily happen, I did gain a greater appreciation for the unique situation marketers in each separate vertical must face–I truly did not anticipate that banking would be slower to adopt than healthcare, but in speaking with folks at the conference I’d say that’s definitely the case. This event impresses upon me the importance of research, focus fieldwork, and good old-fashioned listening.  You may have a great product or service, but you’ll run into difficulties reaching prospects if you don’t truly understand how to relieve their pressure points. Looking forward to the September IBA conference, I figure we’ll be ready.

Tags: conference, Sales, Strategy

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Business, Sales, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.