By Mark Gibson
A bank’s lines of business are increasingly relying on the marketing department to support their growth efforts, according to a new survey conducted by the ABA. “This survey reinforces a shift we have been seeing in the industry for several years,” says Mary Beth Sullivan, managing partner of Capital Performance Group. “Marketing is playing a critical role in growing customers and deposit balances.” This year’s survey was fielded from September to October of 2024 and had 101 respondents from banks between $200 million and $10 billion+ in assets.
Marketing is becoming a partner in growth
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As a result of this shift, there is a global movement often referred to as ‘revenue operations’ which aligns the efforts of marketing, sales, customer service and operations to optimize the customer acquisition, growth and retention efforts of an organization. The ABA survey indicates aspects of this movement are beginning to occur within the banking industry.
More than half of the marketing leaders indicated that business lines have direct input into their marketing budgets, reinforcing the fact that marketing is an important partner contributing to lines of business achieving their objectives.
Source: ABA Budget and Organizational Survey, October 2024.
Further evidence of Marketing’s increased role in the sales effort is that 73 percent of respondents agreed that their marketing budgets support sales efforts as well as brand building. “We have redefined our marketing function over the past several years to partner with our business lines for revenue growth,” says Charlene Cates, chief strategy officer at Machias Savings Bank. “This has resulted in less money being spent on traditional things like agency fees and more money allocated to data analytics and targeted lead generation for our bankers.”
Source: ABA Budget and Organizational Survey, October 2024.
Marketing has historically supported lines of business with tactics such as events, sponsorships and printed collateral material. However, Machias’ experience highlights that this support is evolving into search engine optimization, paid search and social media advertising to build awareness, deliver content and generate leads from targeted consumer and business audiences.
Source: ABA Budget and Organizational Survey, October 2024.
One potential gap or blind spot indicated from the survey regarding the budgeting process is that marketing is often required to submit its budget before lines of business have firmed up their growth goals. Forty-two percent of respondents state they make decisions on programs to fund once their budget is approved. This flies in the face of marketing best practice, where the marketer begins with the goal to be achieved, say, 3 percent net growth in checking households. Knowing the specific goal allows marketing to calculate the number of incremental checking accounts needed, estimate the cost of acquiring those accounts based on historical data and derive the marketing budget needed to achieve the goal.
Marketing in the digital driver’s seat
The second major finding from this year’s survey is marketing’s role in driving sales through the digital channel. More than half of respondents stated that marketing has a “great” or “absolute” influence on their banks’ digital delivery strategy. And nearly three-quarters of banks in the survey offer online applications for deposit products and mortgages.
These findings reinforce a broader trend in banking and other industries. As consumers increasingly research and even buy online, marketing necessarily takes on more of the actual sales effort, supporting and in some cases supplanting the role of traditional in-person sales teams.
Source: ABA Budget and Organizational Survey, October 2024.
Source: ABA Budget and Organizational Survey, October 2024.
Recent research reveals that while only 16 percent of checking accounts are currently opened online, almost half of millennials and Gen Z consider the ability to open an account online a critical need when choosing their bank. What accounts for the discrepancy? First, the survey indicates that more than a quarter of institutions do not offer digital applications. Second, the user experience of the application process at many of the others is not up to consumer expectations, forcing them to visit a branch instead.
Critical success factors in the digital channel are in some cases similar to the personal channel, but there are several important distinctions. Common elements include the need for a brand and products that appeal to specific groups of businesses and consumers. Unique factors include using media to drive prospects to the bank’s website, relevant web content to engage and educate, a compelling call-to-action to motivate them to begin the application, and an extremely easy and fast digital application that allows the consumer to open and fund the account without human intervention or a visit to the branch.
Rising to the challenge
This recent ABA survey shines the light on an important shift not just in attitude and perception, but the actual role the marketing function is playing within financial institutions. “Our marketing department is now actively partnering with sales operations to help our bankers find new growth opportunities,” adds Cates at Machias. A partnering mindset is required for this transformation, as well as increased use of data and technology tools. Marketers are increasingly required to use both sides of their brain, not just the creative side of yore.
Mark Gibson is a senior consultant at Capital Performance Group, a strategic consulting firm that helps financial institutions maximize the ROI of their marketing efforts. He can also be reached on LinkedIn.
