5 Key Takeaways From The ABA Marketing & Retail Conference

ABAHiX-2014 5 Key Takeaways From The ABA Marketing & Retail Conference

Our first experience at the ABA Marketing & Retail Conference was a positive one to say the least! It was great to network with other personnel and agencies in our field, hear what they’re using, and what struggles they face as well. There were also extremely resourceful sessions throughout the 3 days including Dan Swift & Mark Zmarzly’sFrom Inside Out, It Starts With You Keynote and the ‘Marketing Idea Bank session that acted as a roundtable discussion for bank marketing executives to share strategies on different mediums that have worked for them.

For those of you overwhelmed by all the information presented during the conference, here is a quick breakdown of some of the most important takeaways to apply to your company, right now:

1. Promote Yourself. Your Company. & Your Employees.

With over 300 million active users and 2 new users joining every second, LinkedIn is a vital tool for developing your company brand as well as developing yourself as an authoritative figure in your industry. How can you use LinkedIn to benefit your company profile & your personal profile?

  • Use the search feature to find new consumers in your market, location, and thought leaders in your industry.
  • Distribute company news, resources, and information on your company page, as well as engage and share other relevant content not branded by your company. ‘Sharing Is Caring’.
  • Actively follow and connect with users that are potential consumers for you.
  • Make sure your employees & your own personal profile are correctly connected to your company LinkedIn page

2. Have A Process For Compliance Friendly Content.

Compliance regulations are banker’s biggest fear and obstacle when it comes to marketing creatively. Drafting 3-6 month content maps and submitting them to agencies that work with FINRA, can allow you to organize creative articles and content ideas you have for your bank’s website. This also allows you to have your content filtered and approved by compliance regulators prior to publishing them. For social media content, it’s always important to document all posts sent out each month (or weekly), any feedback received from users, and any replies you included.

3. Create Content People Actually Care About.

              “Push solutions on social media, Not products.”

How do you stay creative with compliance restrictions? Keep in mind that consumers are generally impatient (thanks to technology) and visual learners, so making your content easily digestible is important. Use infographics, videos, and interactive media to engage and capture your consumers.

4. Social Media Is The New Age Business Development.

“Profiles with pictures get clicked 11 times more than ones without” (Dan Swift; Director of Financial Services at LinkedIn)

Complete your personal LinkedIn profile with a picture, previous experience, current title, industry, & endorsements. Consider including any keywords in your LinkedIn profile description that you want users to find you for, as well as anything that makes you stand out from your competition. Having an adequet LinkedIn profile will ultimately increase trustworthiness with customers doing due diligence on your company.

5. Where To Start? Create 1 Month, 3 Month, & 6 Month Marketing Strategies.

What are you goals?

  • New Account Acquisitions
  • Better Customer Experience (A great example; ‘Johnny The Bagger’ was used in the Marketing Idea Bank Session)
  • Increased Brand Awareness
  • Increase Local Outreach Organically Online

Some short term goals you can conquer are:

  • Engage on your social media profiles, updating your profile information, reviewing your competitors social strategy.
  • Create a list of prospects of users & companies that you would like to gain traction from or leverage for business development.
  • Check your website’s bounce rate, CTR, and average time users are spending on your site using analytics.
  • Find a way to capture emails on your website – Add a ‘sign up for our newsletter’ option, so you are able to keep track of loyal customers, and market to newer customers.

These are all pretty standard questions marketers and bank directors deal with when setting forth a plan to grow their branch or increase outreach & consumer base with their brand. Start small, especially if you are a smaller community bank. Write out your plan for what needs to be accomplished in the 1-3-6 month range and what your budget is.

I fully suggest having your website and even your social campaigns audited to start (We can do this for you!). This audit will tell you where you company currently stands, what you need to fix, what you are doing right, and where you should go from here.

Contact us for further information on obtaining an audit or for how we can help with your marketing efforts!