Tips & How-To Archive
10 Tips For Killer Headlines
Sharpen your headline writing skills with this handy how-to guide for financial professionals. (Bonus: Cheat sheet with 300+ words to jump-start your creativity.)
How To Keep Customers From Jumping Ship After A Merger
Here’s what you need to know to build an effective communications strategy that keeps customers from defecting during a merger.
Crafting Killer Creative Strategies
Here’s your comprehensive guide to preparing strategic creative plans that will yield the best work from your ad agency on every project.
Creative Thinking And Problem-Solving For Financial Marketers
Banking needs innovation and creative thinking as much as any industry, if not more. Here's a guide with 11 tips to help bank and credit union executives sharpen their creativity skills.
Marketing Clinic: Handling Lengthy Sweepstakes Disclosures
Do you have to run that nasty, 3-page contest disclosure everywhere -- even on a postcard? Or can you just say, "See branch for details?"
5 Tips To Maximize Google Adwords For Small Banks And Credit Union
Learn more about long tail search terms, your Quality Score, negative keywords and much more in this Google AdWords how-to.
How To: Brand Books For Retail Financial Institutions
What is a brand book? Who are they for? What goes in them? Here’s a comprehensive guide with answers to all your questions.
Steal This Idea: Cash Mobs
Community banks and credit unions can demonstrate their support for local businesses by organizing groups of shoppers armed with cash.
Angry Customers Are Gifts
Turn unsatisfied customers into happy brand evangelists using a service recovery strategy.
5 Ways Financial Institutions Can Use Social Media*
Five examples of specific situations where social media can be beneficial...along with some significant caveats.
7 Steps to Find Your Brand’s Personality
Seven branding exercises to identify your bank or credit union's real emotional brand associations.
7 Reasons to Use Your Slogan as a URL
If you have a brand tagline, why not turn it into a memorable marketing URL?
Steal This Idea: The Ultimate In-Branch Conversation Starter
Here is an excellent way to spark conversations in your branches that is both simple and effective.
Turning Bank Failures Into Golden Opportunities
When a bank fails, it seems the other remaining financial institutions in the community are reluctant to aggressively market themselves to the failed bank’s customers. They don’t want to seem insensitive to the hardship placed
10 Tweets You Shouldn’t Send (and Why)
Take a look at the top 10 most mundane things that financial institutions frequently tweet.
How To: Twitter for Banks & Credit Unions
Everywhere you turn, it seems people are talking about Twitter. Sure, you hear a lot of hype about how “you need to get on Twitter!” But there isn’t much in the way of practical, actionable
How to Choose the Right Ad Agency
Here are 13 tips and things to consider when picking an ad agency partner for your financial institution. Please feel free to add additional criteria and considerations in the comments below. 1. Results To see
How to Handle an Ugly PR Mess
What would you do if your financial institution found itself in the middle of a PR fiasco? Take a look at this situation involving Navy FCU, then check out six tips for how to handle
How To Look Up Your Financial Trademark in 10 Easy Steps
There are thousands of financial institutions across North America who leave some of their most valuable assets virtually unprotected. We’re talking about their trademarks — things like names, logos, slogans, products, etc. Here’s a step-by-step
The Do’s and Don’ts of CU Acronyms
Many credit unions refer to themselves internally in acronym form. Using acronyms is common industry shorthand. Everyone does in our industry, right? And when credit unions first start looking at a name change, one option
