Consumers gravitate toward community banks in part because they enjoy supporting locally owned businesses. That relationship should be reciprocal — as customers support your bank, give back to them by supporting their community. [Continue]
While younger generations happen to be primarily big-bank customers, it’s not necessarily because they like to. Big banks capture their attention by focusing their marketing efforts on their “superior” technology, which overshadows smaller community banks. The truth is consumers across all generations prefer the localized, personal service they receive from community institutions. [Continue]
Breaking Banks, the No. 1 fintech podcast in the world, relies on word of mouth for marketing. Instead of creating sound bites highlighting products and services, banks seeking to reach customers through audio content should embed financial products into an examination of a customer’s bigger journey. [Continue]
Though podcasts on everything from sports to true crime are popular, and some of the larger banks do have them, they’re not yet standard among community banks. Here are 10 to try. [Continue]
At any given time, one-fifth of banking customers are researching where to buy their next product or service, and 42 percent of those who left one institution did so because they received an offer or took notice of an advertisement from a different financial institution. [Continue]
People pick their bank in part because they can reach their banker when needed. Why not convert that into a brand that tells both a personal story and the story of the bank? [Continue]
Technology has changed banking — retail bank visits are forecasted to drop by 36 percent by 2022 while mobile transactions are expected to increase 121 percent — and it’s changed how customers interact with their banks. [Continue]
As more and more banks take advantage of convergent technologies and cross marketing, including retail banking, investing, insurance, mortgage and college financing, they’re pushing the hell out of “tell and sell” — and pushing consumers right to the edge. [Continue]
In a big shift from a few years ago, deposits are again coveted by most banks. For a while, many banks were so flush with cash they actually turned away customers who had large sums of money to deposit. But today loan demand is up and other investments are competing for those deposit dollars. Note the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently topped 23,000. [Continue]
The Nobel Prize in Economics awarded Oct. 8 to professor Richard H. Thaler for his behavioral economics work on irrational financial decisions confirms the Money Anxiety Theory and its application in banking.
Research in behavioral economics shows that money anxiety is a major factor impacting financial decision-making. The 2013 book, “Money Anxiety,” which I wrote, demonstrates how money anxiety shapes our financial decision making. For example, when money anxiety is elevated during recessions, people tend to shift money from higher yielding bank accounts to much lower yielding bank accounts just to feel that their money is more readily available. This is a phenomenon known as “mattress money.” [Continue]