The problem with bank marketing

Why is most bank marketing so dull?

There are several reasons.

The best marketing differentiates: Banking is heavily regulated, so most banks offer pretty much the same services and products. And that shows in conventional bank marketing.

The law of supply and demand influences the level of excitement any company can generate: How many banks are within a five mile radius of your business or home? How many more can you access and utilize on the Web? So much for being the only game in town.

Marketing for which you could swap out one company's name and replace it with another's is lame. But banks do it every single day, because it is genuinely hard to say something unique.

It doesn't have to be this way. Here are tips for better bank marketing in 2012...

•Speaking the truth about what people and businesses are facing, what they need and what really matters in their banking relationships can indeed help.

•Researching customer and non-customer needs and impressions of your bank is well worth your while.

•Having the nerve to confront your competitors' missteps (charging for debit card use is a great example) is worth considering. Their mistake... your benefit.

•Being upfront and out-front about what actually differentiates your bank matters. To go a step farther, make some changes that DO differentiate your bank. Stay open late! Offer personal and private banking. Help customers avoid fees. Provide out-of-the box products - it IS possible even within the bounds of this regulatory climate.

•Focus your messaging more than ever before. Katelyn and Justin, age 26 and newly living together have different wants and needs than Esther, 69 and on her own for the first time ever. Or John, saving for his daughter's education and hos own retirement... while paying two mortgages. Or Charlene, striving to grow her software development start-up. These differences call you to use micro-marketing including new methods of interactive and social media outreach to speak WITH your prospects and customers in an authentic voice. And to hear what they have to say as well.

•Newspaper ads and stuffers may be fun, but are not the way most new customers will be won. Not anymore. See above.

•Use your online banking portal to cross-market, but don't go overboard. When people want to pay a bill online and are deluged with less-than-relevant pop-up ads or in-portal "personal" emails that turn out to be globally issued sales messages, they turn off.

•Most of all, banks must SERVE a new world. Sorry to bring this up, but banks, especially large ones, have lost the public's trust and need to regain it. Walk the walk, providing the services customers need and the honesty they deserve. Then talk about what you do - and your customers and influentials will too.

 

Good news. Good to see.

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We're accustomed to absorbing discouraging news in the national and regional press. Teeth-gnashing politics, tear-gassed protesters, sex abuse scandals, devastating storms... we need to know.

News for trend trackers

But there is more to the news than imminent doom. There's problem solving. van Schouwen Associates' team provides client media relations, so our relationship with the news involves dealing with the nuts-and-bolts (and electrons and microchips, etc.) of business trends and challenges. When a company engineers a way to deal with a business or environmental challenge or harness an opportunity, talking about it in the press helps effect change.

This time, a client is harnessing sunshine.

We're working with client Northeast Treaters, which has good news stemming from a forward-thinking project. Belchertown, MA-based Northeast Treaters has developed a 35,000 square-foot solar photovoltaic plant that generates 80 percent of the electricity used by the company. It was built by local and regional workers, with materials from the region and the U.S.

Local green jobs, local green energy.

Last week's open house to celebrate the solar endeavor drew customers, influentials and the media. The press so far has done the project justice, and we extend our appreciation to Springfield, MA NBC affiliate -Channel 22, Springfield, MA CBS affiliate Channel 3 and The Republican (among others who will create a story about the project) for taking the effort to highlight how one company can make a difference in the local economy and to the environment by putting action behind its commitment to both.

Isn't it great to see good news for a change?

SEO bugaboo

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You might be surprised. You've worked on your company's SEO and are feeling pretty good. (Or moderately good.)

But hang on a minute... you may be missing something.

Take our own firm's experience as an example. Differentiating a marketing firm in a few words (e.g. search terms) can be surprisingly difficult. Standing out in online search engines from the four zillion competitors within Western Massachusetts (even just greater Springfield) is an ongoing, albeit fun, project.

One reason? The search terms people use to search for a firm like ours are not always words vSA would first or ideally use to describe itself. In MadMen days, a firm like van Schouwen Associates was almost always called an advertising agency. Despite the fact that now vSA provides value through more holistic business-to-business (B2B) strategic marketing including interactive, public relations, media relations and a whole host of other stuff that is more effective than ads alone, we find that many prospects still type in the search term "advertising agency" or "ad agency" when they Google. Even though they don't want 20th century-style straight-up advertising, but instead maybe a grassroots communications program, or eblasts or consulting. Even though they may be searching for what vSA does.

Do you know what search terms your missing prospects are typing in – and then finding your competitor? There are many tools you can use to find out – or, hey, just ask your "advertising agency"!

Google and go: Information demands innovation

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A client commented wryly the other day that the Web as an informational resource is a mixed blessing. Like many other technologies, light-speed access to information has accelerated the pace of business and, much like the evolution from from courier to FedEx to fax to email and beyond, has created higher expectations all around. Ready access to information has made thorough competitive research easier... in fact, it has also made it imperative. This is how a new opportunity transforms into a baseline expectation. Everyone has the same opportunity and so doing business becomes more demanding than it was in more blissfully ignorant times.

Twenty six long years ago, when van Schouwen Associates opened its doors, competitive research (especially for smaller to mid-sized client firms whose budgets had their limits!) was typically a drawn-out and inefficient affair, depending variously on resources such as customers with opinions, loose-lipped sales reps and slyly procured sales literature and price lists. Information was often scanty and in some cases dated or seriously imprecise. But oddly, life was easier because the bar was set lower. We didn't intend that; we weren't lazy. It was just the way things worked.


The challenge today is that, with the exception of not-yet-released products that have been developed with dedicated attention to secrecy, it is possible to find out a great deal about other peoples' products and services, marketing messages, pricing, and the strengths and weaknesses of any competitor's offerings. It is often easy to reverse-engineer technical products. Why? In part because it's all on the Web.

Well, nearly all of "it" is on the Web. A frequent discussion the van Schouwen Associates team has with its clients involves what to include and what not to include in that very public forum. There are several layers of potential privacy clients can employ, including:

No privacy: Placing material out in the public arena online

Moderate privacy with potential for leakage: Offering material protected by passwords (often permission-based passwords with expiration dates and renewal requirements)... plus additional layers of security

Higher privacy but not perfectly secure, just ask Congress how leaks happen: Material that isn't put online anywhere, period.

Today, companies typically have (or should have) vast information about their competitors and their market opportunities. This is excellent.

Vast knowledge (or access to same) has also made business all the more challenging even as it presents clear new opportunities.

At vSA, we (and of course, our clients) know – more than ever before – exactly how high the bar has been set. So does anyone else who cares to look.

Result 1: Increasingly, products developed with insufficient regard to what is already on the market FAIL where once they might have succeeded. Less competitive services do the same because the customer's process of finding a better deal – the best deal – is pretty easy. Just Google and go.

Result 2: We expect that this universal access to competitive information will continue to yield impressive improvement in business innovation. Innovators and marketers have to work harder... and harder... and smarter.

The attitude and aptitude for success

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Damn the torpedoes. As president of a firm that follows the markets as well as economic and political news with a level of interest bordering on the obsessive, I recognize the downside of short-term thinking.

For example. Today: "The markets are sinking again! Egad! What does this mean for business conditions? Should I edit vSA's 2012 budget planning?"

Uh, not so fast. In fact, with threatened double dips (sorry, these are recessions, not ice cream servings) coming as frequently as thunderstorms in summer, vSA has undertaken an ever more aggressive approach to business development and growth. Perhaps some of what is working for vSA can be of benefit to other managers and entrepreneurs – so here's the executive summary.

vSA premises:

•In even the shakiest economy, some companies continue to forge ahead. These must be our clients. This means two things: vSA must be sufficiently effective that its clients see increased success based on our partnership. And vSA must select clients with the attitude and aptitude for success.

•Businesses must spend money to make money. Period. However, businesses need not waste money. vSA runs a tight ship but does not hesitate to invest in tools for growth. We look for the same mentality in our clients.

•There are an array of "sweet spots" with which any company worth running can make a major difference for its clients. Play to those. Here are just a couple of vSA examples as you consider your own sweet spots.  vSA can be a tremendous boon marketing for B2B companies who sell to specifiers, building management, engineers, contractors, designers, and/or architects. vSA knows Gen Y - especially when it comes to its preferences and aversions in banking and finance.

•A positive let's-win-today-and-every-day attitude toward business, sales and marketing is the only approach that makes sense. Economic shock waves are not going away anytime soon.

What a career!

It's the dog days of summer, but there will be no lolling about here.

van Schouwen Associates has a career opportunity available... for the right person. We want a strategic communications professional to join our writing and PR team. WELL, you may say, that should be an easy position to fill.

Nope. In fact, looking for the right person to fill this job opening gives the existing vSA team a new appreciation for what we do every day. And it gives me a new appreciation for the team we have. The job opportunity requires a person who can:

-Face undaunted the task of QUICKLY learning to communicate intelligently about client specialties that may range from geothermal engineering to patented building supplies, aerospace quality management to investment planning for the wealthy.

-Write like Ernest Hemingway about said topics.

-Edit like... oh, I don't know, A.M. Rosenthal?... about said topics.

-For media relations initiatives, pitch to diverse, extremely busy editors, employing a keen understanding of what each editor, each venue and each readership needs right now.

-Switch between topics, disciplines and client needs at a moment's notice. And again. And...

-Genuinely enjoy working with clients who are smart, busy, facing pressures and deadlines of their own, and who trust vSA to create and implement strategic marketing programs that perform... programs that perform extremely well, no matter what the climate.

-Come up with great program ideas and innovations for clients.

-Work social media in B2B, financial services and other wilderness expanses.

-Work with the rest of us.*

Are you the one? Do you know the one? Be in touch...

*We're fun. Naturally.

Gone With the Wind: Springfield Massachusetts tornado

The most important news about the June 1, 2011 Massachusetts tornadoes that tore through Springfield and other Western Massachusetts communities is about the people, the damage they suffered and the courage they are demonstrating as they rebuild. But there is a business lesson as well.

van Schouwen Associates (vSA) Longmeadow offices overlook a beautiful Springfield golf course. Late in the afternoon of June 1st, we watched the sky grow menacingly dark, and saw dazzling flashes of lightning a little too close for comfort. Our internet connection went out. The lights flickered repeatedly, then the copier turned itself off. We decided to shut down our desktop computers in case of a major power surge. Several vSA staff members were looking out the window, over the golf course at – could it be? – a big funnel cloud – when the office phones went dead. My cell rang. It was my mother, warning that "a tornado is headed right for your office!" Then the cell went dead too. Surprised and moving quickly, we took shelter downstairs in an interior office... and the tornado missed us by over a mile. Lucky.

But what if the tornado had hit us? We developed an article recently for a FieldEddy newsletter. The article, Pardon the Interruption: You're Broke, discussed the importance of business interruption insurance in view of the fact that even a solid business can be devastated in a matter of moments by natural or human-made disaster. Now we'd seen firsthand how fast business life could change: No phones, no cell, no internet... no office?

What if the office had been destroyed? Desks, chairs and the like - we could replace. But computer files? That's different. For us, computer files (from graphic files to writing for clients, accounting to customer archives) are vital. That plus vSA staff services, highlighted by our aggregated expertise, are the crux of what our strategic marketing firm provides. vSA keeps remote (off-site) back-ups of computer files. With our staff and computer files intact or available, we could operate without an office, at least until we found a new one.

Of course, vSA needs clients, too. Fortunately for all of us, while some of our local clients suffered tornado-related damage to their facilities or short-term productivity, all have moved forward well. For some local businesses, cash flow slowed for a week or two, project priorities changed - and some of our clients requested our support in communicating with their own customers. It could have been much worse for vSA. What if it were?

This is where planning ahead makes an important difference. When a company loses its phones, its internet service, its office or plant or, worst of all, some of its staff, having a contingency plan helps (at least from a business perspective).

That disaster or business recovery plan you've been meaning to update? Or have been meaning to create? Do it now. At vSA, we're glad we have a plan, and we're reviewing it to see how well it would have served us if the tornado had turned an iota to the south. Right now, we're giving ourselves about a B+ for the plan we've had in place. We're working to bring our disaster recovery grade up to an A and hope like heck we never need to implement the upgraded plan.

The best single marketing tip

It's this, and any marketing firm worth its salt should know it and tell you, although many don't.

Today, the best marketing is all about building relationships by communicating value – and this means that communications are not linear but genuinely (not just nominally) a circle of talking, listening and responding. This simple tip can expand to include a whole range of marketing efforts. To start, marketing is not just about delivering messages, although that's still a major part of it.

Marketing is a bigger deal than ever... but it has changed its stripes. It now includes outreach, support, conversation, customer service, technical support, training, and interaction. It encompasses accepting and integrating feedback from customers and influentials and then letting them know you did. It means providing information, resources and forums prospects and customers want. At its best, marketing now means – dare we say it – building a modicum of brand loyalty in an environment in which loyalty is nigh unto impossible to earn and equally hard to keep.

If your marketing is still all about telling, try completing a circle of communication in which  your company not only accepts but elicits feedback and ideas, provides support, hears and responds to needs, and in many ways talks with – not to – the people you need the most.

Easier said than done? Or course. But building relationships by providing and communicating value via a genuine circle of communication is one of the best ways your company can build a sphere of influence (no pun intended) and enhance its positioning in its industry.

Eight ways to leverage your company's trade show participation

If your company exhibited at ten trade shows ten years ago, perhaps you exhibit at five or six now. If you occupied half a city block with your new products and displays at the dawn of the new millennium, you may be getting by with less space. Or maybe your company has continued full steam ahead – with the caveat that results will be monitored very closely. Trade shows today can provide great opportunities. But they are expensive and so each one in which your company participates is no doubt expected to Produce with a capital P, whether the ROI is measured in actual sales generated at or after the show, new prospects gained, new alliances initiated, or great visibility garnered.

For future shows, you may benefit by going well beyond exhibiting and running a couple of ads.

Here are eight ways to make more of your trade show efforts:

1. Plan ahead to talk to a key audience. Up to a year or more before an important show, secure a speaking engagement for one of your key people. Talk about industry trends or innovations. Position your company and your speaker as thought leaders.

2. Get press before the show. Start several months ahead to assure that your company's name and news are in the publications attendees will read before and at the show.

3. Generate more press while you are at the show. Make boothside appointments with editors and writers from key trade publications and blogs. Be prepared to give them a story worth telling.

4. Introducing a new product or service? Go a step further with the media: hold a press conference.

5. Get off the trade show floor to do some serious business. How often do you have this many distributors, customers and key prospects in one place? Organize an event: whether it's a roundtable meeting for select advisors and customers to get input or plan next ventures, a breakfast or dinner to generate excitement about the year ahead or a cocktail hour to connect, a trade show is an excellent opportunity to enhance relationships.

6. Use social media intelligently. Twitter, Facebook and your corporate blog are good venues with which to let your constituencies know why they should interact with you at this show. Read Skyline's good post on this topic for specific tips.

7. Go beyond selling. Show your customers, prospects, distributors, and other audiences that you are a partner and a resource for them. Introduce new training programs, partnering opportunities, Web applications, and more at the show. Showcase new interactive tools on giant screens at your exhibit – seeing is still believing.

8. Don't file your hard work away. Don't put your new leads, contacts and intelligence aside in the post-show scramble. It's all too common to see gains lost when staff gets back to the office and gets busy. Make and adhere to a plan to close sales, engage with prospects, follow up with the press, and act on intelligence gathered.

We'd enjoy hearing what has and hasn't worked for your company at trade shows - here or on van Schouwen Associates Facebook page.

Brand advocates - why you need them, how to get them

A brand advocate is a person or group that likes your brand, speaks or blogs or tweets or otherwise communicates about it, may buy your brand, and certainly influences others to consider doing so. A brand advocate is a like a billboard with credibility - no, not literally, but you get the idea.

vSA tells its clients that they will benefit from having brand advocates - that, in fact, they need them if they want optimal performance from their companies or organizations.

Here are a few benefits:

-Believability: Isn't it credible when someone else sings your praises? Third-party endorsement tends to ring true.

-Velocity: Talk goes viral. Your advocates are your feet on the street. They have no reason to be "selling" you – they simply admire your company, products, services, or mission.

-Reputation enhancement: People say your company is great. They say it all the time. Point taken.

-Stability: A great reputation can help navigate your company through stormy seasons.

How can you get brand advocates?

-Since Mahatma Gandhi said it, it is worth hearing, "If you don't ask, you don't get." So ask.

-Seek media coverage (print, online, broadcast) that provides third-party endorsement, whether by virtue of an article being published or - even better - a bylined article by someone who speaks well of your brand - an advocate!

-Gather testimonials and case studies. Customers who've used your products and services to solve problems, who come back to you over and over, brand loyalists... it may sound like old school but there is a reason companies continue to use testimonials and case studies - they act as proof that the company has advocates!

-Get your products and services reviewed and tested independently - publish the good news about how they've done.

-Train users in the best ways to employ your products and services, and make advocates of these users. Better yet, make them loyal for life.

-Get involved with independent training and certification programs through which your products and services can be recognized for their excellence in specific usages or characteristics.

These are just a few of the many ways to build brand advocates. We'd enjoy hearing about your experiences, in this blog or on the van Schouwen Associates Facebook page (where, by the way, your "like" vote counts in our book as brand advocacy)!

Where is it? Location-based marketing for B2B

Location-based marketing is all the rage in consumer marketing circles. As B2B marketers we feel, well, left out. But there are a host of reasons that B2B marketers should step into this brave new world.

First – what is it? Location-based marketing is interaction with customers or prospects by their location, offering special opportunities for which the recipient’s location is a key factor. (As in “I’m currently down the street from the latte for which you’ve texted me a coupon.”)

In this new generation of the term “location-based marketing”, this interaction takes the form of electronic messaging to the customer or prospect, often through mobile device but on occasion through that near-archaic box on your desk or in your briefcase – the PC.

Even before marketers started shooting out messages to consumers on their mobiles, and even before consumers started “checking in” to let marketers and friends know their current location, B2B firms were using earlier forms of location-based marketing.

Where did it come from?

“First-generation” examples from my own marketing firm’s experience:

•We’re managing a client event and conduct a live radio broadcast from the event to draw in additional business attendees.

•We’re with a B2B client at a trade show, showing a new product for the first time; we Tweet editors in attendance to invite them to stop by the exhibit for a person-to-person demonstration.

Where is it now?

Examples of ways B2B firms will leverage new forms of location-based marketing:

•“Check-in” apps will be used increasingly at trade shows and conferences to let attendees know about product promotions, introductions, educational opportunities, and cocktail hours available to a select audience that is “on location”.

•B2B companies that conduct road shows and special events to convene with, educate or market to prospects can have these prospects opt in to receive messages and opportunities based on their geographic proximity to an event.

•B2B companies and their PR firms will invite editors to press conferences and deliver media alerts using location-based marketing tools.

Of course, B2B marketers will have to be vigilant not to misuse location-based marketing. People at work are busy and justifiably impatient with interruptions to business at hand. Messages and offers must be relevant, useful and occasional. Text me once and I may respond positively. Text me three times and I will unsubscribe.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

Showing up (online)

A little background: van Schouwen Associates is not a New York advertising agency. van Schouwen Associates makes its home in far-less-visible Longmeadow, Massachusetts, right outside Springfield, close to Hartford, CT and reasonably adjacent to Boston. While it lacks Madison Avenue glamour, it boasts easy parking and two Starbucks outlets and is therefore an excellent location from which to serve clients up and down the eastern seaboard. We do a good deal of marketing and sales outreach, which is only right, since van Schouwen Associates is, after all, a marketing and public relations firm.

Still, every unexpected incoming inquiry is refreshing and welcome. In fact, we're often surprised by the companies that find us, and by HOW they find us. We learn from their experience, and by learning, we can provide better support to our clients.

Aside from referral business, most prospects who find vSA find us on the Web. Like most of our clients, we want this to happen increasingly often, and to involve increasingly attractive prospects. Here's what we've learned...

Lesson 1: SEO is tough when you're in an overcrowded field and when the words often used to describe your services also have other meanings and are all over the Web (take marketing, public relations, consulting, strategy, and B2B as just a few examples of terms nearly as common as pizza or gas station).

Lesson 2: It's sometimes surprising what prospects are looking for, and the very specific terms that allow them to find you. We've had people call from across the country because they Googled B2B Web applications for mobiles.

Lesson 3: Sometimes prospects find your company because they've asked Google a question and you've already put the answer online! Prospects will likely Google questions about how to solve a problem that your company's product or service can indeed solve, and therefore your content marketing should be sure to ask that question, maybe even in an FAQ section on the company Web site, or in your corporate blog.

Lesson 4: Blogs, editorial/media coverage, social media, and other non-sales-promotion-y outreach are credible, well-read and visible, both in real life and on Google (vSA generally focuses on Google for SEO because it certainly holds the lion's share of the search market; sorry, Yahoo).

Think content first, sales second. When you offer value and credibility, sales opportunities often follow.

Lesson 5: Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman) said it all the time. He didn't benefit a bit from it, but your company may derive a modicum of wisdom from the classic phrase: "I was always well-liked."

Be well-liked... or at least well-known. Show up on incoming links on the Web. Comment on relevant blogs and link to your business site. Get listed in directories. Use relevant affiliate links (relevant ones only please).

Lesson 6: Content rules. Make it meaningful. Make it authentic.

Lesson 7: Keep tweaking your online presence. It's a rare company that can't show up better than it does online. Except maybe Facebook or Google.

Topline... why everything in marketing has changed

Remember the fax? Remember the print or TV ad campaign that reigned supreme as the "way to get the word out?" Remember direct mail when people actually read their mail while more than three feet away from the nearest wastebasket?

No, I don't either. Even though I've been a marketing professional for nigh on three decades and an avid follower of consumer culture since about age three when I "invented" a toothpaste that would STILL BE STRIPED when you spit it out. (Unfortunately, I didn't have the manufacturing facility to bring this fine toothpaste to market at the time.)

Remember when you sent a resume on nice paper, through the mail, to get a job? That's gone, too.

Everything has changed, for obvious reasons we've hashed over forever (not included here!) and a few that are somewhat less obvious, even to those of us in the trenches:

• Companies now need brand advocates; it is no longer enough to independently trumpet about strengths. It is instead imperative that the people who could purchase or influence purchasing are enthusiastic about what you do and how you do it.

• Social media... it's more than Facebook. And it cannot be ignored. Smart marketing campaigns send the same key message points across multiple media, in many cases including social media. This is true (albeit sometimes trickier) in B2B. Forget silo marketing.

• People's access to information may not actually make them smarter, but it certainly makes them more easily informed. Or disillusioned. No longer is it true (if ever it was) that "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

• Content is king and queen. The way to break through the noise is to have something worth saying. Educate, help, solve, entertain. If you have nothing to say, go back to the drawing board and figure out why, because content-poor marketing is a waste of money and time.

Business bonding... B2B Web applications

Evidently, just about anything we can do on an illuminated screen, we WILL do on an illuminated screen. Take for example reading (Nook, Kindle). Exercise (Wii). Meetings (GoToMeeting, Skype). Keeping up with friends (Facebook) and with news and gossip (Twitter). Finding love (Match, eHarmony). Business networking (Linkedin).

At the vSA office, we're finding that some of the work we identify as being part of that catch-all "client marketing" has in fact merged with something more akin to "facilitating the process by which our clients bond with their prospects, customers, influentials, and affiliates".

In more than a few cases, this means Web applications. Whether the illuminated screen in question is a desktop, notepad or mobile phone, the need to create synergy and loyalty is well-served by applications that let the user do something that either is not possible or is less convenient any other way. Examples include online training modules, B2B planning tools, calculators both simple and complex, members-only apps, custom purchasing programs, catalogs for sub-licensing, and even games to play to learn about new products. Typically, the process is to build the app, test and test (and then test!) the app, and at last make sure the intended audience knows it's out there and understands how to use it. Depending on the application, a company may make it freely available, or use it as an incentive or reward for customers and prospects who meet chosen criteria.

Some people remember the Web in its commercial infancy, when creating a good-looking site – essentially an online brochure – was the ultimate goal. Next came Web 2.0, with its more personalized experience and its tracking of the user's every move (useful for business, questionable for privacy)! Now, the Working Web presents business with almost unlimited opportunities to provide value – and to bond, so to speak – with the people it most needs to engage.