Marketing

Ready to be an entrepreneur? Only if you can answer these questions

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You’re a wide-eyed entrepreneur, dreaming of the next big idea and how it’s going to change the world. And you could be right — Perhaps you’ve got the genesis of the next Facebook, Apple, or Tesla in the back of your mind. Don’t be fooled though, being an entrepreneur is tough — It’s not just about the ideas, it’s about the flawless execution, the product, the hustle, the market, and more than just a little bit of luck.

It’s also about asking, and answering the right questions. So much of being an entrepreneur is about making the right decisions, and that comes from asking deep, penetrating questions of yourself, your business, your industry, and your customers.

Here are some of those questions you should be asking — Think about each of these deeply, see how they spin off into other questions, and answer them as best you can. These questions will help you validate your ideas, understand if your products can survive in the market, and see if you’ve got the resilience to succeed.

Questions about your products and services, or “What is it that my business does best?”

A great business starts with products and services that meet a genuine need and offers them to your customers in the best possible way. These are the questions you’ll need to answer.

  • Do I understand who my ideal customer is, and what they need from my business?
  • Have I validated our products and services to check that they solve a genuine problem?
  • Have I tested, tweaked and refined our products and services so that they are as good as they can be?
  • Do I have a consistent brand and visual identity that builds trust?
  • Do I know the best channels to make my customers aware of what we offer?
  • Have I built a community of early users?

If you can answer these questions confidently, you will create products, services, and brands that meet a genuine need, create trust, and add value for your customers.

Questions on your knowledge and expertise, or “I don’t need to make every decision myself.”

As a startup, you will want to have access to knowledge, and experience from several different sources. Use this expertise to guide you when you’re making decisions.

  • Do I have investors that I can speak to that can share insight and knowledge?
  • What are my co-founders and employees good at and how can I best use that expertise?
  • Do I understand the results of my decisions and the impact they have on the business?
  • How should I react when growth slows or stalls?
  • What is the best way for me to delegate tasks to others?
  • Am I collecting the right metrics and feedback and using them to help decision making?

Remember that there are people that can help you, and they want to see your business succeed as much as you do.

Questions about the culture, tools and processes to let you scale, or “We’re doubling business every quarter, and we’re on top of it.”

If you want to be successful and grow rapidly, you need to put the right culture, tools, and processes in place now to help you scale up.

  • Do I have a simple business structure that can be easily expanded as needed?
  • Am I communicating regularly with my people to let them know what’s happening?
  • Have I built a culture of trust and am I listening to my employees?
  • Are our business processes and tools as simple as possible?
  • Am I tracking progress and do I have realistic targets in place?
  • Do I have the best employees, freelancers, or outside experts in the right roles, with the right amount of accountability and ownership.

Good hiring and communications practices, combined with a simple organizational structure, active feedback and the right processes and tools will help your business thrive.

This is only a taster of what you want to think about, and starting to answer these questions will help you firm up the right ideas and approaches in your own mind.

One of the first things you’ll need to think about is “How do I share my business, ideas, products, and services with the world? How do I get my message out there?” That’s something we just might be able to help with.

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The Department of Justice is looking at your website – are you ADA compliant?

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Compliance. It’s a word that finance managers are all too familiar with. We know it might cause a slight sinking feeling, but compliance guidelines exist to protect everyone — You and your customers.

That’s why it’s vital to understand the impact and implications of the new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines issued by the Department of Justice. In short, it’s about making sure your banking website and online presence is easy to access and use for visual and hearing impaired customers (and that’s good for everyone).

It matters for two pretty big reasons:

  1. It shows your commitment to all your customers and making their banking experience as easy as possible.
  2. It protects you from legal action — Businesses with websites that fail to meet ADA / DOJ requirements have been fined or sued (ouch).

The problems visual or hearing impaired people have with using websites.

For most people, using a bank website is easy (especially if they don’t forget their password!) They visit the site, enter their login details, get into the online banking app and pay their bills, check their statement, and manage their finances. If you’re blind or visually impaired, that gets a lot more difficult.

They may need specialist tools like braille or tactile interfaces, screen readers, voice activated navigation, and specialist software. When they arrive at a banking website they may run into more frustrations because the site isn’t coded properly to work with their hardware and software.

If your customers are hearing impaired, they will run into problems with audio content, or if they needed to call a service center to get issues sorted out.

It’s these problems the DOJ\’s guidelines are trying to solve, and they’re serious about it.

How do you know if your website is ADA compliant?

The simple truth is, if you need to ask whether your website is ADA compliant, it probably isn’t. For example, does your website:

  • Allow navigation completely by keyboard (not using a mouse)?
  • Have rich alternative descriptions for any pictures or visual elements on your website?
  • Explain what’s happening in customer service videos, purely through audio?
  • Provide sign language interpretation for audio content?

These are just four examples from the over 70 requirements the DOJ has. Ultimately, it comes down to the question: Is your banking website completely usable by all of your customers, regardless of their ability or disability?

Why your bank website needs to get compliant

Your bank website needs to be compliant by 2018. If it’s not, you’ll run into several big problems:

  • You could get sued or fined by the DOJ for non-compliance.
  • You could fall foul of equal rights laws.
  • You could get negative publicity and a bad brand reputation.

In short, getting compliant isn’t an option if you want to stay in the clear.

Relax, we’ve got this

We understand just what it takes to get your banking website ADA compliant. We also understand you just don’t have the time. That’s why we’re here to help — We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

The Department of Justice is looking at your website – are you ADA compliant? Read More »

4 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Brand Awareness

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You’ve heard that social media is a powerful tool for your brand. You’re ready to make content people love to share, but without those first fans, how do spread your message?

Choose the right social media networks

There are hundreds of social networks, but they aren’t all useful to you. Don’t spend your time putting yourself out there on a dozen networks. Find the ones that provide the best results and focus.

Facebook is the most common, but some brands fine it hard to get their content in front of fans if it’s not “sexy.” Instagram is designed for striking visual content and interaction, but there’s no real way to send traffic to another website. LinkedIn is designed for professionals who want to further their careers or find a job. Pinterest is best for visually pleasing subjects that need to be linked elsewhere, like crafts, recipes, and tutorials. Tumblr is for… Well, Tumblr is Tumblr.

Find influencers and exploit their fan base

When you don’t have much of a brand, you need to get your content front of eyeballs. The best way to do that is to leverage the fan base of someone who has already done the hard work.

First, find popular accounts with similar fan bases. Then, collaborate with those accounts so they share your content. You won’t have much to offer in return, so your content has to be stellar (something their fans would love to see) or pay for the privilege.

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Don’t sell too hard

People aren’t using social media to buy products. As much as the social networks would like that to be an avenue for sales, they just aren’t effective. If you’re looking for a clear ROI from your social media marketing efforts, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Social media is about putting yourself in front of your fans with value. At least 80% of your content should be about the customer, not about you. What are their problems? How can you offer information, links, or images that solve those problems? You don’t have to get fancy here. Sometimes the user just wants to be entertained.

Use paid campaigns

Technically, you can build an audience on any social network without investing anything other than time. But who has time? Each social network has their own ad platform. You’ll have to decide which is right for you. In the case of Facebook, for instance, you can pay to have Facebook push your page on other people. On Twitter, you can buy a promoted tweet that forces your content into people’s feeds.

No matter which platform you use, always use their targeting options. Drill down as deep as you can to stretch your money as far as possible. You only want to show your content to people who care.

Post often

At first, it may seem like you’re publishing for no one. Once a few start trickling in, maintain a consistent publishing schedule. Many would-be fans check out your content before committing to make sure you’re worth their interest. If they see you post infrequently or irregularly, they won’t both.

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Be engaging and responsive

Social networks are just that: social. People expect to talk to brands. They want to interact with you because they love your content or product. If you don’t respond, they’ll stop engaging or unfollow from your page/account.

However, if you delight your fans by replying to their comments, liking their content, and making yourself a part of their lives, they’ll reward you by spreading your message to their fans.

Always remember: social media is a tool. And like all tools, it’s only as effective if you use it. Don’t sit around and wait for results. Be active. Be social.

Need some additional guidelines and tips – give us a call!

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Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take?

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As we covered in our last article, getting your website ADA compliant by 2018 is critical if you want to avoid problems (read; big, big problems) from the Department of Justice. Here’s a quick refresher.

Essentially, the DOJ wants all banking websites to be fully accessible for visual and hearing impaired people by 2018. If your website isn’t ready, you could run into issues with fines, getting sued, equal rights laws, and bad public perception. You don’t want that to happen, and neither do we (really, we like you).

So, what does the DOJ mean when it says you have to get your website ready? Glad you asked.

Making your website accessible — What the DOJ wants

The DOJ has several requirements under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. That’s a bit of a mouthful so we’ll break it down. This comes in two delicious compliance favors — The changes the DOJ requires, and what that means in terms of getting compliant.

Changes required by the DOJ under the ADA

There are over 70 (really!) specific requirements so we’re just looking at the high-level areas. Here are the direct quotes on what each one involves.

  • Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
  • Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable.
  • Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
  • Robust – Content must be robust enough so it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Now, that list doesn’t look very easy to understand (we know!) so here are some examples of what they mean in practice.

Perceivable — ADA Compliance

  • Provide text alternatives for any non-text content — Having text descriptions of any images or interface components, making sure there’s a good text alternative that can be read by screen-reading software.
  • Captions / sign language for prerecorded content — Videos and other media will need to have captions and / or sign language so hearing impaired people can get the information they need.

Operable — ADA Compliance

  • Keyboard navigation — Your website should be completely usable and navigable using just a keyboard (i.e. There’s no requirement to use a mouse to access any specific part of your banking website.)
  • Accessing media — Users should be able to easily pause, rewind, and interact with all the media (video, audio, and other) on your banking website.

Understandable – ADA Compliance

  • Language of the webpage — The language on a specific webpage can be easily updated according to a user’s needs.
  • Ease of use — A website must have consistent navigation and be easy to read and use.[/cs_text]

Robust – ADA Compliance

  • Make sure all of your website enhancements for ADA work with all client browsers or other ways people access your website.
  • Make sure your enhancements work with the various specialized hardware and software that visual and hearing impaired people use. (e.g. screen readers, braille interfaces, speech recognition etc.)

You probably don’t have the time to do all this (I mean, there are 70 requirements, and they’re not exactly… simple). That’s why we’re here.

Relax, we’ve got this

We understand just what it takes to get your banking website ADA compliant. We also understand you just don’t have the time. That’s why we’re here to help — We’ve already helped banks like Litchfield Bancorp and Collinsville Savings Society, and we’re here to help you.

Get in touch today and we’ll explain exactly how we’ll make your bank website ADA compliant. Get yourself some peace-of-mind.

Getting Your Banking Website ADA Compliant – What Does It Take? Read More »

Why You Should Be Using Drip Campaigns

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When someone subscribes to your email list, it’s important to capture their newfound interest by making a strong connection. The best marketers use drip campaigns to quickly interact with new fans in a short period of time.

A drip campaign is an automated series of emails sent to your subscribers. The emails are sent on a specific timeline or based on user actions. There’s no denying their effectiveness. The email marketing app Emma found that targeted emails are far more likely to earn clicks than general broadcast emails. In fact, links in drip emails are clicked 119% more often.

Drip campaigns typically begin with a welcome email that reminds the fan how they signed up and what they can expect from you. Further emails can take different shapes depending on your goals. A campaign may introduce your fans to your best content or answer common questions about your product or service. Some campaigns are almost entirely educational, designed to deliver tremendous value to subscribers.

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The most common structure of drip campaigns is called lead nurturing: an email course that solves a subscriber’s problem. The fan signs up on your website because he’s interested in the information you promise. They involve five to seven emails with a two-day delay between each. Marketing automation experts at Drip report that lead nurturing creates 50% more customers ready to buy.

Throughout the emails, the campaign offers information that soothes the reader’s pain points. Each email should end with a call to action, usually a link to additional content or offers on your website.

Toward the end of the course, position your product or service as a logical solution to the problem with calls to action that encourage the visitor to sign up. By this point, you should have offered enough value that the reader considers you an expert.

As you begin to craft your email series, use these guidelines.

DO understand your reader. You have to create your copy to solve their problems. First, you have to know what their problems are.

DON’T be sales-y right away. If you hit your fan too hard with sales copy, you’ll turn them off from the experience. You must provide value first.

DO end every email with a call to action. Just because they’re done reading doesn’t mean they’re done engaging. This can be a link to a blog post, a social action (like, share, follow, etc.), or a link to a landing page.

DON’T rush the reader down the buyer’s journey. For instance, content that compares your service to competitors should come after you convince the user they need a service like yours in the first place.

DO move the user into your broadcast list once the drip campaign has completed. Most email marketing applications offer procedures like this.

We\’d love to hear your feedback on drip campaigns – on successes, failures, or even programs that you like or dislike.

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Banks and the social media compliance debate

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We work with several financial institutions, and we know that one of their main concerns is compliance – How do you make sure that what you’re saying in your Facebook or Twitter feeds meets all of the rules, regulations, and guidelines of the financial industry? Compliance can be a headache, but that shouldn’t stop you having a good social media presence.

We’ve got a solution we think you’ll love. Here’s why you should consider adding social media and social selling to your marketing.

The way to make sure your posts are compliant is to be proactive – You need to create and manage a proper editorial calendar and have a solid review process for your content. Run your content calendar, posts, blogs, and social media strategy by your compliance department.

They’ll likely provide some advice on how to phrase your posts, what to add, and what to remove. Make sure the person responsible for your social media profiles has regular conversations and check-ins with your compliance team. That way you can ensure everything your publishing has a seal of approval.

As a local bank or credit union, you’ve built up a great reputation in your area. Targeted marketing is a good way to get noticed and to encourage personal and business customers to come to you, but that’s only half the story. If you want more chances to sell your financial products and services, you need to seek out and act on opportunities — We’ll explore exactly how you can do that.

If you’re a commercial lender, your main purpose is lending money to expanding businesses. In addition to income from loans, you can upsell other products like financial protection, insurance, retirement planning, and more. The question is, how do you find those expanding businesses in the first place?

Fortunately, there’s some good technology, which, combined with some tips and tricks, can help you create some powerful leads for your banking services. In this article we’ll cover three main areas – LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Twitter, and other social media.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

As the largest social network for professionals, LinkedIn is already a strong resource for businesses. Hopefully you’re already making the most of your bank’s LinkedIn presence, but today we’re going to focus on one specific part of the platform, LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you collect together prospects from across all of LinkedIn, whether you’re connected to them yet or not. It has built in algorithms to help you identify potential clients and businesses who might be in need of your bank’s financial products. It helps you understand where people are changing roles, when organizations are launching new initiatives, and how a business posts about any changes.

You can bring all of this information together in one place so you can start having informed, relevant conversations with the people that matter — The decision makers in your target businesses. It helps you put context around these conversations too, building trust with your potential clients. Combine this with insights into your professional network, other’s profiles, and lead recommendations, and it becomes a very powerful tool for finding commercial banking prospects.

Twitter

You might not think of Twitter as a way to find business banking opportunities, but used correctly it can be a great way to connect with potential customers. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

  1. Follow the Twitter profiles of any businesses and professionals in your target geographical area.
  2. Review your Twitter feed to see what people are sharing — Are they discussing new opportunities, products, services or research?
  3. If they are, engage with them — But here’s the trick — Don’t try to sell them anything. Provide useful financial advice, professional banking support, and insight. The idea is to build up trust.
  4. Once you’ve built up that trust, you can suggest products and services to help them achieve their business goals.

It’s vital that you don’t just promote your banking products and services — That can turn people off very quickly. Instead, you want to spend time building up a good reputation and strengthening your expertise and authority.

Other social media

Finding leads isn’t just limited to Twitter either. Facebook, Instagram, even Pinterest can be good places to find new banking customers, if you know how to look. As with Twitter, start by identifying the people and businesses in your local area and connect with them.

Then, spend some time cultivating relationships — Share genuinely useful financial information and links to your Facebook page or Pinterest board. You’re looking to build a brand focused on financial trust. As you add to that content, you’ll get more visibility and potential customers will start to see you as the “go to people” for advice on their money.

As you can see, these tools can help you rapidly expand your banking market. When you start out actively seeking leads, and engaging with them in the right way, you’ll be able to build trust which will lead to more sales of your financial products and services.

Still feeling a little hesitant on tackling social media? Give us a call – we can set up a training session with you and your banking team.

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Yes, LinkedIn can be edgy

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Man, you are missing out if you haven’t tapped into this… I can’t tell you how many times a day I preach about the power of LinkedIn. If you do sales, are looking for a job, or need to expand your network of business peeps – LinkedIn is where the party is 24/7/365. It is by far the BEST place to prospect for B2B connections – yes, I said the BEST.

Oh…and if you HATE cold calling – like most of us, LinkedIn should be your BFF. I don’t cold call – never have, and never will. Sure it works, it’s a numbers game. You make enough phone calls and knock on enough doors eventually someone will say YES. That YES could take 100 phone calls – which is A LOT of time. Or you could make other people work for you and send you referrals. That’s what I do.

Those of you are still saying – yea, I’m not wasting time online when I could be picking up the phone…

  • 450 Million users are on LinkedIn as of this writing, and every second 2 new users sign up. It’s is the biggest “Chamber of Commerce Networking Party” in the world – sans the cheap wine.
  • It’s like a multi-level marketing company or a giant pyramid. You are at the top but the REAL power is in the base. It’s not who you are connected to – or Linked to – it’s who THEY are connected to
  • Six Degrees of Separation – If you use it correctly, one of your connections will know someone who can introduce you to your #1 prospect. WARM REFERRAL – far better than the COLD CALL

Tips:

  • Use the paid version if you are in Sales Beast Mode – such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator – it’s absolutely worth the money
  • If you own a business – Please, please, please have an active business page and post relevant stuff on there. People do look – they really do.
  • Your LinkedIn profile is by far the MOST important part of your personal digital brand.
  • LinkedIn isn’t a Ronco Rotisserie oven – you don’t set it and forget it. You need to nurture, spend time with, and embrace your LinkedIn account – DAILY.

Companies that get it on LinkedIn…

According to our pals at Hubspot – here are some of the top LinkedIn Pages out there – we tend to agree. (see the full list here)

Coca-Cola – With almost 1 million followers, Coca-Cola notes in the Hubspot article that they get great traffic from their LinkedIn Posts, more so than Facebook, and to some degree Twitter. Hmmmm….If I were a betting woman, I would have said that LinkedIn wouldn’t be as high a traffic driver for them – but they make it work. HOW?

They understand the audience – it’s professional, so they tie in professional business stories into their content for LinkedIn. Posts go back to their website Coca-Cola Journey – check it out! Interesting stuff! To some degree – edgy. The posts aren’t necessarily about soda at all – but about the audience and what they care about.

Hays – They claim to be the #1 Recruiting firm on LinkedIn and they aren’t afraid to shout it from their rooftops! Just like Coca-Cola – they post relevant content that drives traffic back to their blog. High engagement rates prove that what they are writing is exactly what their audience wants to read. It’s actually quite that simple!

We aren’t claiming it’s easy to be one of these top dogs. You have to understand your clients and your prospects before you can attempt to create & curate content that is relevant to them. (BTW – that’s what we help you figure out!)

LinkedIn, for companies, is more than just a place to find good employees, it’s a place to let your brand shine and to engage your clients and to woo your prospects.

Ready to get rolling?

Give us a buzz or use our contact form so we can make LinkedIn an addition to your digital marketing strategy.

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How to Get New Bank Customers with Beautiful Content like Blogging

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We all know that switching to a new bank can be…well, painful. The more accounts you have, and the more you automate the banking experience, the higher your retention rate. That’s great for your existing customers, but it doesn’t help when it comes to attracting new people to your business.

Most banks offer similar products and services, so creating a unique value proposition isn’t easy. What’s the secret sauce? How do some banks increase their retail numbers without putting lots of pressure on their service teams?

It’s all about telling a story and making it personal. Your customers and prospects want to feel like you’re speaking to them, that you “get them.” It all comes from your content – Understanding what you write and where you publish it are important, knowing WHO you are writing for is critical.

Let’s dive a little deeper…

Know your Target Client Profile (TCP) – What’s the demographic of your current customer base? Who are the potential customers you want to add? Where do they live? What is their socioeconomic background? Are they business customers? Retail? It’s critical to have a deep understanding of exactly who you want to reach – Their interests, aspirations, lifestyle choices, financial understanding and more.

Think like your TCP – Your content needs to be relevant to your TCP. What is most important to them? What’s going to grab their attention? How will it help? Will it answer their questions? Does it provide genuinely useful information? What will they read? How will they read it? When will they read it? A 20-year-old and an 80-year-old are going to have very different needs and ways of accessing content.

Create great thought leadership and product content – Thought leadership content is where your customers will get the most value. It’s about giving them insight, valuable information, and resources to help them understand and manage money better. When you combine that with information on your products and their benefits, you create a solid content strategy.

Share short, sweet, accessible, and relevant product information on your website – Your website is the place for your product information – make is easy to find and mobile friendly. Your bank’s website should also highlight your staff with pictures and bios. It helps your customers to relate to you, and people buy from others they know, like, and trust.

Blogging is the Grand Poohbah of content – Every bank should have a blog – It’s where your thought leadership and awesome content lives It’s where your staff can shine, and it’s what you will share on social media.

Keys to Blogging Success

  1. PLAN – Have an editorial calendar based on your TCP and your value proposition – Who are you going to write for, and what are your going to write about? Create five or six content areas where that you’ll develop. They might be: Your culture and team – Stories about your employees, what makes them tick, and what they bring to your business. Retail customer information – Speaking to your retail customers directly about the things that matter to them. Retirement planning, mortgages, insurance, loans, real estate, the economy, tips for protecting your home in winter, safety, etc. Financial education and guides – Creating guides, checklists, tools, and resources to help you customers get the most out of their money. Business customer information – Talking to business owners about what matters to them including business bank accounts, small business financing, insurance, etc. Community – The work you’re doing in the local community including sponsorship and other activities. Financial news – Talking about the economy, the stock market, and other interesting areas.
  2. SHARE – Build your brand and expand it through stories. The more people who see your name and your team, the quicker they will connect.
  3. CONNECT – People leave banks because they don’t feel the love. Intriguing content that speaks to them helps them feel connected, which makes them more likely to switch.
  4. REPEAT – For content to really hook your prospects, they need to see it over and over again. Be constant and consistent. Post regularly, share on social media, and get your name and brand out there.

Good examples of banking blog content

Here are some ideas on the type of content your retail audience would find useful:

  • Financial planning and budgeting — Financial planning in everyday life and making sure you’re saving enough. Budgeting for big life events.

• Dealing with loans and overdrafts — Responsibly managing credit and debt, including understanding interest, minimum payments, and credit limits.

• Investing — Ways to invest money including bonds, the stock exchange, index trackers, mutual funds, and other investment products.

• Retirement planning — How to plan for a good retirement including IRAs, 401Ks, and other pension plans.

When you can bring together great content with a good understanding of your audience and share your content in the right way, you’ll start to create momentum. You can capitalize on that, use it to win you new customers, and keep them happy.

If you need help writing your content or want to bounce some more ideas off us – give us a shout – that\’s what we\’re here for![/cs_text][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]

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6 Steps to Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy

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Winging it just doesn’t work when it comes to marketing – ever. You need a strategy, one that is well thought out and you need an action plan. That means you can’t just say – yea, I’m going to toss some posts up on Facebook, pay for a couple ads in the newspaper and hope I sell something. Trust me that “plan” will more than likely fail.

Here’s what you should consider (hint hint – what you really need to do right now!)

#1: Figure out who you are – why do people buy from you?

What sets you apart from the competition – what makes you special. No, you can’t say “Because we are awesome, have great customer service and well, we are awesome!”.

It’s time to write your value proposition statement, your narrative statement, and your mission statement – whatever you would like to call it. It’s time to write it. Here’s how to get started – write these things down and from the “words collected” formulate your statement.

  • What is your niche market – what do you do differently than your competition?
  • List some words that describe your company culture
  • List some words that describe your product or service
  • What are your company’s SWOTs – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
  • What are you selling: Convenience, Quality, Cheapest Price – you can’t do it all – decide what it is and Rock it!
  • What do your customers really want?

All of your messaging & content will be centered around this statement.

#2: Who are your customers?

I call this determining your “Target Client Profile” – again let’s make a list:

  • Make a list of your top customers and your favorite customers – they could be different. Your top customers are the ones you are generating the most revenue from. Your favorite customers are the ones you love and wouldn’t mind spending happy hour with on a Friday afternoon.
  • Determine the demographics of both these groups: Age, Sex, Socio-Economic Background, Location, lifestyle – etc. the more detailed the better
  • B2B folks – are they in a certain business niche? Size of company, # of employees etc.
  • B2C folks – How much money do they make, what types of cars to they drive, what type of jewelry do they wear – again – the more intel you have the better

Now – take all that information and create your perfect customer profile – ones that pay you the most AND the ones you like the best.

All of your messaging & content will be targeted to this group.

#3 What do you want to Achieve? – what are your Marketing goals & KPIs?

This is pretty simple – what do you want your marketing to do for you? Increase sales by 20%, increase brand awareness for a new product by 10%, hire new employees? It can be whatever you want – but it has to be measurable as we will assign KPIs to it – or Key Performance Indicators. This will tell you if your marketing is working or not!

All of your goals will be set around getting your relevant content about your mission to your target client profile.

#4 Determine your Customer’s Journey

You will want to have a marketing strategy that targets all stages of the customer’s journey

  • Investigative stage – your prospects are considering buying what you sell and they are out there getting information
  • Consideration stage – they have narrowed it down to a couple vendors but haven’t made a decision
  • Negotiation Stage – This is the buying stage – the deal isn’t closed yet
  • The Buy – enough said
  • Post Buy – keeping them happy and turning them into Brand Evangelists and referral sources

Look at your business – and look at your customers’ journey. Are there certain triggers for each section. If you are in retail – we all know Black Friday is a BUY day – but leading up to that day – how will you touch your prospects during those other stages? What is your messaging? Who is your target client?

#4 Determine your Budget

This will vary based on your goals and your business. There is NO magic number here. You can definitely market on a budget – but you can also make a bigger splash with a lot of dollars. Think Geico

#5 Determine how you will get your messaging OUT

What “channels” will you use to get your messaging out. Based on your Target Client Profile and your mission – who will you be targeting in each of these venues (you don’t have to use all of them!). Be conscious of your budget – Super Bowl Ads might not be realistic! Ideally you want a good marketing mix – in the end, if the content isn’t relevant to the audience, it won’t matter where you put it!

  • Digital Marketing
  • Emails
  • Social Media
  • Website
  • Video
  • Print Media
  • Radio
  • TV
  • Word of Mouth
  • Networking

#6: Set up your Editorial & Content Calendars

I like to be proactive, it’s so much easier that way!

For our clients here at Red Barn, we:

  • Create a 1 year calendar – with an overview of our content strategy that aligns to our mission and is targeted at our Target client profiles
  • Create Quarterly buckets for content ideas and KPI’s around them
  • Create monthly content calendars – this is specifically what we are going to post on social, blogs to be written, web content, radio content, bill boards, etc.
  • Determine the workflow on how it will all happen
  • Leave room for opportunistic happenings etc.

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Creating New Banking Customers – The Art of the Email Drip

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If you oversee the marketing or sales for a bank or credit union, you’ve probably placed your fair share of ads in local newspapers, had some promotions on the local radio show, and launched a fabulous Facebook page. Hopefully, you’ve gotten some feedback, adjusted your strategy, and carried on. One marketing avenue you might have overlooked is the quiet, simple, inexpensive, humble email.

It’s true that email marketing sometimes gets a bad rap – Many are afraid of clogging their client’s inbox, being lost in a sea of spam, or getting an “opt out” notification. Fortunately, there’s a solution – Send emails that aren’t all about selling. Instead, focus on building trust, showing expertise, enhancing reputation, sharing great information, and being useful to your customers. Sneak in a subtle call to action here and there by all means, and you’ll find it effective. That’s why “Email Drip Campaigns” work really well for banks, credit unions, and financial institutions.

Why email drip campaigns work

Email drip campaigns are more successful than standard email campaigns because they’re not directly selling something. People are put off by overly “salesy” messages, so drip campaigns avoid them. An email drip campaign will:

  • Share genuinely useful information with your customers and potential customers.
  • Reinforce the name and brand of your bank or credit union with your customers.
  • Show that you understand the needs of people who may require your services.
  • Alert people to news, information and other content that could be useful to them.
  1. A customer or potential customer provides you with their email address, and agrees to get emails from you.
  2. You create a strategy for sharing useful banking and financial information with email recipients and create a series of emails.
  3. You send out emails on a periodic basis according to your strategy and timetable.
  4. Customers and potential customers read these emails and choose to act on them.

We call these “drip campaigns” because they’re designed to work over time — A slow reinforcement of your bank’s brand, expertise, and authority showing how you can help out your personal and business customers.

The type of information your bank could share

Here are some examples of the type of content that does well in email drip campaigns:

  • Simple advice on household budgeting and how to make money go further.
  • Financial planning for vacations and special events, especially at seasonal times of the year.
  • Clear information on investments and how customers can start making their money work for them.
  • Information on the housing market in your local area and whether it’s a good time to buy or sell.
  • Explanations of good money management, including credit and debt.
  • Business centric articles on succession planning, the economy, company culture, and more.
  • Advising people on savings, insurance, and other key areas.

Of course, you can mention your products and services in these emails, but that’s not the point of sending them out. Instead, you’re providing genuinely useful, actionable information to help your customers make better decisions. As a result, they’ll trust you more, and people simply prefer doing business with organizations they trust.

The information you provide doesn’t need to be limited to your emails either. You could have a blog on your website that the email links through too, and where you expand on key information. That also has the benefit of “search engine optimization,” meaning the content could show when people search online.

If you want to learn how to create an affordable lead generating magnet for your bank or credit union – why not give us a call? It’s what we do – We’re lead generating machines here at the Red Barn.

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