252
✹
501 Killer Marketing Tactics
258. Banks—Reach Out and Touch Objective Increase customer frequency and service use Target Existing customers
Banks are among the worst businesses at neighborhood marketing, and this makes no sense at all, since they do most of their business in their neighborhoods. They spend millions on advertising, and I have rarely seen a bank ad that didn’t use the same tired wording and concept: “Your Friendly Neighborhood Bank.” And they don’t work very hard to distinguish themselves by name, either. The two banks that I do business with have never once asked me what I need. You’d think a bank officer would come and visit with me and say, “Look, you’re a really great customer. Here are the five services you use. Here are ten more that we would like to tell you about. We would like to develop a further relationship. We know you have money set aside in a money-market account. Why don’t you let us set up a trust account for your kids through our trust department?” They’ve got all these products, and they know just about everything about me—where I live, what I spend, what I save. They’ve got a builtin market to sell the other products. They could so easily mine the gold that they already have inside their four walls. Most customers are worth so much more to a bank. There is no excuse for a bank not to have outreach officers whose sole job it is to call customers with potential and offer to discuss their needs, or just say, “Thanks for banking with us. By the way, we are running a special on CD rates this month.” Banks can also take advantage of some of the other marketing tools in this book: running promotions with other businesses, offering gifts and coupons good at client businesses to loyal customers, sending out a periodic newsletter, offering Internet service in the lobby, and serving fresh coffee to waiting customers. It’s all Marketing 101.