Pub. 6 2018 Issue 3

Issue 3. 2018 13 Then, one day a very smart marketer decided that she would put this same baking soda in a box with “Fridge-N-Freezer” on the front alongside a tagline that read, “30 Days of Freshness in Every Box.” She also decided to charge $.10 more per box. And guess what? People started paying $.10 more a box just to have a picture of a refrigerator on the front of the packaging! Then this very smart marketer de- cided that if people would pay more to have a picture of a refrigerator on the front of the box, they might pay even more to have a picture of a cat on the front. After all, people spend millions of dollars each year on their pets. They put a picture of a cat on the front of the box advertising it as “Cat Litter Deodorizer” with “Activated Baking Soda” and started charging over one dollar more per box! (I love the tagline “Activated Baking Soda.” I wonder who would buy non-activated baking soda? I guess people are willing to pay more for their baking soda to be activated!) This proved to be so successful that before you knew it, baking soda was in every aisle of the grocery store with many different product names and profit margins 10 times that of the old-fashioned baking soda in the plain old box. This brings us to banking. I’m sure you are wondering, what do green bananas and baking soda have to do with banking? Well, it has everything to do with banking! For hundreds of years, banks have marketed and advertised themselves as plain old generic banks. A few got creative and started calling themselves community banks. Throughout history, we have given our kids piggy banks for them to put their money into as a savings account and taught them how to take it out in a real emergency (when it was time to buy some candy). Most of us have grown up believing that you put your money in a bank and the bank keeps it for you until you need it. Histori- cally, banks advertised CD’s and money market accounts to get us to put the money in the bank, and promoted personal and business loans to lend it out – all while making a small margin in the middle. As other “bank like” businesses such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Ven- mo, Square Cash and Bitcoin have become popular, smart bank marketers will need to apply the “green banana” concept to the banking industry. We need to realize that every individual and business has different banking needs. For example, a large apartment community collects dozens of checks every day throughout the month. And each day, the apartment manager leaves at noon to take the checks to the bank and go to lunch. But before they go to the bank, they make cop- ies of the checks and fax them back to headquarters to let them know which residents have paid their rent. Some more progres- sive apartment managers are scanning the checks and emailing them to corporate. Both of these solutions are inefficient. A smart bank marketing manager would target those apartment communities with personalized and customized marketing materials that explain how their bank can eliminate the pain of copying checks, faxing or emailing checks and going to the bank every day to deposit them. These marketing messages would talk about the many benefits of mobile phone deposits or remote deposit capture and even include the apartment community’s name or logo. It might even show the apartment managers how to promote direct deposit and online bill pay to their tenants. A smart marketer could even create an additional piece target- ing the apartment community’s corporate headquarters, making them aware of the potential liabilities of having their managers driving around town with thousands of dollars on hand at any given time. The marketer could promote how corporate head- quarters can track everything from their PC, tablet or phone seamlessly, while using digital technology and digital channels to build engagement and trust. The smart bank marketer also knows how to use the data they have at their fingertips to promote other products and services. They can look at cash flows to determine if the business needs short term financing. Maybe the business is growing and needs a real estate loan. Or maybe they have a lot of cash sitting in the bank and need help with investments. Consumers want their banks to know them, look out for them, take care of them, and help prepare them for the future. And, of course, customers utilizing mobile deposit and remote deposit capture are prime candidates for online bill pay and e-statements. In fact, that same smart marketer could develop an “Apartment Banking” product line that promotes all of the bank’s services that an apartment community could use. They could even buy the web domain name ApartmentBanking.com for $9.99 and use it to promote their apartment banking product. (This name is still available, but you’d better hurry!) The bottom line is this: there is no reason you can’t have an Apartment Banking product – just like you can have “Cat Litter Baking Soda.” And this doesn’t just apply to apartment communities. You can target different industries with this same concept. Find out what each industry needs that is unique and position your products around them. Find the pain and position your bank as the solution. Sure, your bank can work with any industry, but you’ll get more business – and possibly better margins – by positioning and marketing yourself in different “aisles.” n