Tuesday Topic: The Power of Marketing

Barb, it feels like we're focusing enough attention and resources on marketing when you look at our expenses. We've been spending more on digital marketing in the last 2 - 3 years. But I suspect the others are spending more and more. And we know the largest banks have a national reach and spend more money on marketing and technology than we can imagine. The frustrating thing is that I'm still not sure which 50% of our marketing budget is effective. The holy grail of measuring digital marketing still seems like a mirage to me.

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John Tyson
CFO/SVP
Altamaha Bank & Trust Company
Vidalia, GA
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-19-2021 14:01
From: Barb Rehm
Subject: Tuesday Topic: The Power of Marketing

Truist CEO Kelly King was asked on CNBC's Closing Bell program late last week whether he feels vindicated by how the SunTrust-BB&T merger is working out. No surprise, King said yes.

"We saw the megatrends that were happening in our industry, which were largely around the need for additional scale to invest in technology, to invest in marketing, to invest in cybersecurity management, and all of those needs have turned out to be surely justified," King said. "To be very honest ... it's going even better than I would have expected when we announced the merger."

But then the veteran banker drilled down deeper and what he chose to focus on did surprise me. "Institutions that are meaningfully smaller than (Truist at $525B) are going to face the same challenges that we faced," he said. "Marketing is huge. If you're a smaller institution and you're up against in your market a larger institution that simply way outspends you and then perception becomes reality. And we've seen over the last decade a shift towards new accounts being opened by the very largest institutions and in many cases... it's not because the quality is better at the larger institutions, it's because they out-marketed the smaller institutions."

 

So, marketing – not tech or cyber – is where King sees the future of competition. I decided to Google "bank account openings." Guess what? All the marketing offers are from large banks, starting with Citi advertising up to $1,500 to new customers. Check this BankRate story I selected from my Google search results. Because I like to end these posts with a question, I want to ask: are you focusing enough attention and resources on your bank's marketing?

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Barb Rehm
Senior Managing Director
IntraFi Network
Arlington VA
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