Comments on: What’s The Single Biggest Financial Marketing Issue In 2012?

By: Joe Sullivan

Joe Sullivan — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:53:07 +0000

I agree with Ron about banks and credit unions needing to demonstrate better use of the resources they have instead of automatically asking for more. There is an abundance of cost effective market information available, and, when combined with in-house customer data which can be analyzed for trends, opportunities and ways to reach customers – that is the best bang for the buck.

Using this data and customer information to better target specific audiences, will insure better response to the message, etc.

Bottom line – make better use of the mound of customer information you have, which will help you deploy the marketing budget you have – more effectively.

By: Editor

Editor — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:33:16 +0000

@Ron, @Josh - In the survey, financial marketers ranked "inadequate budget" their #1 challenge, followed by "measuring ROI" at #2. From the article summarizing this data, The Financial Brand wrote: “It is perhaps a bit ironic that financial marketers feel they are inadequately funded and understaffed (#1) considering that they struggle with measuring and proving the impact of their efforts (#2 on the list).” Josh, you will also notice in the same graph listing financial marketers' challenges that they put "lack of consumer trust" at the bottom, with only 9% seeing it as a serious issue. Talk about denial...

By: Josh McAfee

Josh McAfee — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:48:19 +0000

I agree with Ron: there are too many marketers in the financial services space that gripe about not having the fat budgets they did in the 90′s and 2000′s, but the real issue behind that is that they’re actually having to work now. They can’t afford to push a small campaign off on an agency now and make them do all the leg-work; they have to shoulder some of the responsibility now, and thus have to be accountable to the expense because it’s their creativity and their effort.

I think Ron’s also dead-on with the comment about age breakouts, but the problem with bypassing early-20-somethings in favor of late-20-somethings is that by the time the age group has established trust and makes a choice for a profitable product, you’ve missed your opportunity to grab them. You have to weather the unprofitable years to have a shot at a wealthy member, it’s just the nature of a banking relationship.

That also brings up the latter point, regarding alternative-financial-services. He’s right, you’ve got a serious problem with the defection of Gen Y to “ghost-banking”, but the deeper issue is lack of education and trust for our industry. We have to establish ground-level advocates that are willing to bring Gen Y back into the fold as traditional banking product consumers, because prepaid cards and cloud banking is great until there is a credit need for a mortgage or auto loan.

Budgets a problem? Yes. Cranky consumers? Yes. Lending opportunities compressing? Yes. Are any of these issues insurmountable? Absolutely not.

By: Ron Shevlin

Ron Shevlin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:39:34 +0000

Many of the marketers whining for more budget have some nerve. They can’t demonstrate the return on the existing marketing spend, but think the organization should give them more.

IMHO, only a couple of the respondents really came close to nailing what should be the biggest challenge facing financial services marketers in 2012: Growing demand for financial services products and services.

Young adults (20s) typically represent a disproportionate percentage of the demand for checking accounts and credit cards, as they graduate college, get jobs, and establish themselves as solid fin svcs customers.

A little bit older adults (late 20s/early 30s) historically represent the lion’s share of demand for mortgages as they reach the age when they start families and want to buy a house.

The emergence of a large segment of these adults (Gen Yers) at a time when the economy is floundering has depressed demand for traditional financial services and products.

On top of the that, the emergence of alternative services (e.g., prepaid cards, or new technology-based providers)has cut into the demand for the traditional products.

Fin svcs marketers can whine all they want about not getting enough budget. A bigger budget solves nothing if you don’t what to do with it, or if it’s used unproductively.