Posted by Luke Owen on Wed, Feb 24, 2010 @ 09:34 AM
I was reminded of the LiveSolid.com website during a recent conversations with Jeff Pilcher of The Financial Brand. The site was built by SunTrust Bank in Atlanta, Georgia. It's a big blue site that unless you look carefully you'd never know it was created by SunTrust. Why a bank wouldn't want to make it clear that they were associated with such helpful content is beyond me.
But then I took a further look at their own website at www.suntrust.com. As I dug into the retirement section I stumbled upon their retirement microsite. This site is very well put together and is a great lesson in how to create compelling online content that pulls your audience in and eventually can lead them to wanting to meet with one of your professionals.
Lets take a look at what happens when we first enter the site. At first we are met with four personas:
- Gettting Started: A young professional in his late twenties to early thirties.
- Making Progress: A successful looking businessman in his late thirties to forties
- Approaching Retirment: A successful looking businesswomen in her late forties to fifties
- Retired: A well groomed man in his sixties looking relaxed and ready to take a long, long vacation
Scrolling your mouse over any one of these characters will open up a dialog box that describes each persona and where they are in life. Chances are if you look similar to any of these characters the descriptions are dead on.
After hitting continue on the box you are brought to a page where you can read related articles or play with tools to help you understand how much you might need in retirement based on your current lifestyle. You can also click on a "Begin" button and a series of questions will come up. Pretty simple questoins such as "Do you currently participate in a 401(k) or an IRA?" After you finish answering the questions, which are short, they give you a quick and dirty look at roughly how much you may need in your retirement years. It's a compelling way to keep the reader around to want to learn more about how to ensure they have this much when it comes time to retire.
But one of the most important aspects of this whole microsite is its ability to make it easy to schedule a call. In the top right of the site remains a static image showing a person and some options for getting started - call, submit a request or send an email. The form itself is short and simple to fill out, not requring a ton of detail that can often turn customers away.
I myself would try and make this contact process a bit more personel. The image of the women doesn't seem REAL and gives off a generic vibe. You want the visitors to this section of the site to feel special and by showcasing the actual professionals who they will be talking too goes a long way.
In the end, this is a big bank putting a lot of time and money into constructing an online content microsite. But it doesn't need to be this flashy. If you position content in a way that compells the visitor to want to read more, then you've taken care of half the battle. The next part is putting in place a successful capturing process so the referrals flow in and the dialogues take off.
Posted by Luke Owen on Tue, Feb 02, 2010 @ 08:34 AM
Imagine you went to your doctor one day and he/she diagnosed you with a minor sickness but one that required a set of treaments to help cure. Instead of your primary doctor detailing the steps you should take a new person walks into the office and begins to tell you what you should be doing. Now, how would that make you feel about your primary doctor?
Change up this story and instead replace "doctor" with your primary "bank". With social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook gaining popularity among bank marketers, those in charge have been forced to come up with creative ways to find content that will keep their audiences entertained. And often times this means looking outside the institution to build up a healthy library of content. Now, think back to our doctor story at the beginning and you'll start to understand where I'm going with this post.
Does this mean that you should never refer people to someone elses site? Of course not. In fact, this helps to show that you don't just think about "YOU" all the time. A key factor in winning more business from clients. But the more I monitor bank and credit union messages through these social media tools, the more I realize that they almost never link to their own site unless it's to a micro-site that was setup for a specific campaign. Or they may steer you to branch location pages, contact pages or other service related pages.
A key advantage to linking to your own content is the control you have. For example, you could link to a page of content that talks about how in 2010 clients can convert their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA and then have action steps in the article such as "talk to our financial advisor today" or "download a free guide on this topic". This opens up the opportunity to generate referrals from your content strategies.
I often here bankers say how they're the "trusted financial advisors" for their communities. Wouldn't it seem counterintutive then to always steer clients to someone else who happened to write an intriguing article around a timely financial topic? If this was under your brand it would have more of an impact on the client and he or she would see you not just as a place to do transactions but also as a place to get answers to all their financial questions.
Yes, there are compliance hurdles for putting financial content under your own brand. But in the long run, it's worth the time and money to ensure this is in place otherwise you'll be seen as just the messenger and not the solution.
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Posted by Luke Owen on Thu, Jan 28, 2010 @ 02:38 PM
If you had any doubts about the average American consumer knowing what diretion they should take after retirement, two recent surveys conducted by Putnam and Prudential should help shed some light.
In the Putnam survey they found that 52% of respondents were in need of a better understanding of how much income they would need to maintain their lifestyle in retirement. As for the Prudential survey, one figure showed that 47% of those enrolled in 401k plans said they were unsure as to what types of investments are best to generate income in retirement.
Learn more about these two surveys at Financial Advisor
This reinforces the opportunity that banks and credit unions have to help their customer base become more knowledgable on financial topics. They should be making this type of information easy and readily accessible at all of their touch points - website, branches, email, mail. Those who are their first to help these individuals understand their options without putting product first will be the one who wins over their relationship.
Posted by Luke Owen on Tue, Jan 26, 2010 @ 11:19 AM
Trader Joe's has come up with a new lager they call Simpler Times. While it may not be at the top of the drinking list for beer aficionados, the name itself is ingenious. People today are in desperate need of a time when life was easier to understand. Today's complexities have clouded many of our own judgments and one area where people have clearly been out of touch is their own personal finance.
This is why you're seeing all this talk about Personal Financial Management tools and people like Aaron Patzer, new CEO of Quicken and founder of mint.com, talking about the simplicity these tools bring to ones financial life.
Tomorrow's State of the Union will surely gain the attention of not only average citizens but also those tied to financial reform. They'll be looking out for things like "consumer protection agency" and "too big to fail". There's also been talk from the Obama crowd forcing banks to offer what they call "plain vanilla" mortgages (Read more about this in the New York Times). No matter what happens, I think that we can all agree on one thing - the simpler the better.
This is not just to please the bounty hunters in Washington but it's also to please the customer. People want simple, easy to understand answers to questions they have about their financial needs. The more complex a product the more likely they are to second-guess their decisions. And the last thing you want on your hands is a hesitant client. A decision made in the presence of uncertainty leads later on to finger pointing when times are bad. Just ask your investment advisor how many calls he or she received after the market tumbled in late 2008 asking what they did wrong.
This approach of simplification stems from the product itself to the content that helps educate the client on what it can do for them. One of the biggest challenges when writing financial content is how and when to leave the banker jargon behind. There are some terms you can't leave out but when necessary, make sure to provide a brief definition or have an easy way for the client to see a glossary of terms.
Whether the client is online or in the branch, put this easy to read and understand educational content front and center. Most people have become numb to things like product brochures - unless, of course, it's a product they know they need and want. But most people are unsure of what products they need. All they know is they want to make sure their families are protected, their kids get a good education and to retire with peace of mind and perhaps an ice cold Simpler Times to enjoy those relaxing years.
(Image credit: @joefoodie)
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Posted by Luke Owen on Wed, Jan 20, 2010 @ 12:53 PM
Overall, First National Bank and Trust Company in Wisconsin has a pretty standard bank site - rates, personal and business banking overviews, about us, online banking login, etc. However, there is a bright spot with the wealth management blog. This group has a good start to building a foundation of helpful online content.
It's not the easiest blog to find. You have to click on wealth management so right away you know only people actively researching wealth management topics will be visiting this blog. Because of this, the bank is missing out on a number of customers that may very well be interested in some of the subjects discussed only they're not actively thinking about or concerned about them while doing online banking or other research on the site. According to an article in the October 2009 issue of the Community Banker, Little Changes - Big Difference, "nearly 95% of visitors to a bank home page visit to login." By not showcasing all the great, helpful information available to these frequent users of online banking, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to deepen your relationships.
The wealth management home page in general has some positive content marketing strategies. They have a column that describes Investment Management. They have attractive "tiles" in the left-hand column that promote helpful article topics such as "7 ways to plan for retirement". They have a video series with Dennis Staaland, the department head, called Your Money Minute. Online video is becoming more and more popular among online marketers as consumers become more comfortable with watching online video on a regular basis.
The blog has one critical attribute - it never directly talks about the banks own products or services. Each article has one goal in mind, to provide helpful and relevant information to the immediate audience.
What I would suggest to this bank is that they add a few more images to their posts. People react faster to pictures then they do to words and it will keep the reader around for a longer period of time if there are images to support the content. I'd also tell them not to be afraid to link back to relevant pages within their wealth management section on the bank's website. Especially to pages that showcase the professionals who can help with the topics being discussed or to a short form they can fill out to have someone follow up to discuss the topics further.
Remember, content alone is not going to bring you more business. You have to position and market it in a way that triggers people to want to read more. And most importantly, capture the activity to maximize the opportunities from those reading your information online.
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Posted by Luke Owen on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 @ 03:35 PM
In our top influential bank and credit union marketers of 2009 post, there was a clear connection between those on the list - most seemed to use social media tools. But do you HAVE to use these tools to be successful in today's marketplace?
Ironically, on two different social media sites - LinkedIn and BankInnovation.net - this exact debate took place. The discussion on LinkedIn became so heated that as of this post there were 1,311 comments!
The question posted on BankInnovation.net was, "Which is better? Social media marketing or email marketing?" In the end, the group discussion that ensued came to agree that both are equally important. While it may be harder to quantify social media efforts, it's still an important part of the mix because in these spaces you're connecting and having dialogues with people where as in email you're talking to your audience. JJ Hornblass, the originator of this question, said it best at the end - "Is there a conversion rate to a branch officer greeting a customer in a branch? Of course. Can we quantify it? Better yet, do we need to quantify something as basic as having a relationship with a customer? While the parallel is not exact online, the essence is similar. It's that fundamental."
The LinkedIn discussion, started by Kevin Conway, had the headline, "Social media for business is CRAP!" This was started in the eMarketing Association Network group so you can imagine the responses to this statement. But Kevin was also on to something here. In my response to this question I started out by claiming that Kevin is right, in certain cases. Take my father for example, he sells employee benefits to small and medium size companies. He's been doing so for over thirty years in the tri-state area surrounding Philadelphia and has built up a network of contacts that are worth more then any fancy list service available. Do you think he has time to start twittering? Or to create a fan page on Facebook? You could make the argument that all your small business lenders, trust advisors and personal bankers are just like my father and all this talk about social media is a big waste of time. To Kevin's credit, his statement goes on to explain that he's not completely against the use of social media, he just has yet to be convinced of it's true ROI potential. Perhaps I could have steered him to Hubspot's ROI stories for businesses using inbound marketing techniques, which in large part consists of social media activities.
As we confirmed in the first discussion, social media is all about developing and nurturing relationships. If you're going to adopt these tools, you have to go in with this mindset and then think to yourself, who is our target? Who are we going to create and nurture relationships with in these spaces? Should we require our lenders, advisors and personal bankers to be on Twitter?
When you get down to brass tax, using social media is not going to make or break your bank. In fact, even if you do use social media, if all you use it for is to shout about your products and services then you're doing more harm then good.
What banks and credit unions do need, however, is compelling content. No social media expert can argue against the fact that it all begins and ends with this one element.
You could say that using social media gets this content out in the public eye faster then the old traditional model. However, if you have the budget for a healthy mix of social media and traditional media, which most banks do, then this is by far the best approach for a bank or credit union to take. In a recent mediapost.com article, "Will Traditional, Social Media Blend", Len Stein, a PR veteran from Visibility Public Relations said, "...the most effective reputation-building campaigns begin with coverage in traditional media, move into social media channels and go viral across the blogosphere and Tweetmemes."
(Image credit: Matt Hamm)
Posted by Luke Owen on Wed, Dec 30, 2009 @ 09:41 AM
What made people on this list so influential is how they're adopting to the new rules of marketing and PR. You may have heard us use that phrase on this blog before. If you're new to these rules, we recommend reading the book by David Meerman Scott, "New Rules of Marketing and PR". The basic premise is that the old way of relying on big media to deliver your story and advertisements is no longer a functional model. While this may sound horrible to the traditional marketer, in reality it's a huge opportunity for every business, especially small businesses, to grow exponentially by letting go and diving head first into the new world. Some are using elements of content marketing, an essential ingredient to the new rules.
These banks and credit unions are showing signs that they're either moving in the direction of the new rules or in some cases, making it a top priority. But they're clearely ahead of the curve in the financial industry.
We most likely missed a handful of people that should be recognized. But the beauty of blogs and social media in general is the ability to voice your opinion so we encourage you to leave comments about institutions you feel deserve recognition.
This list is in no particular order.
First Mariner Bank - From social media staples such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr to their eNewsletter, this bank is clearly putting social media and content marketing at the top of their priorities.
AnchorBank - They've been twittering for awhile but just recently they launched their Facebook page. What's unique about their messages both on Twitter and Facebook is that they are moving away from your typical customer service messages - branch closings, openings, parties, etc. They have a lot of great online content that's educational in nature to help their followers / clients to better understand their financial options and they do a great job of merchandising this information out through these new cost-effective online channels. (DISCLAIMER: A Truebridge client)
Umpqua Bank - They have created a great local community vibe with their online campaigns. They also help people to better understand ways to save money with their Save Hard Spend Smart landing page. They built up a strong following on Twitter and they don't just talk about Umpqua services, they talk about local secrets and where you can find good deals. Chances are the places they're steering you are their own clients. This goes a long way with existing as well as potential clients.
Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union - They've solved the content problem by opening up group forums on their site. The last one I checked out had the title "Do you really need to be debt-free?" and it had about twelve comments from the community. They also leverage Twitter and Facebook to deploy messages that can lead to their group forums or also to landing pages such as http://www.bankintervention.com/. And finally, they have a blog that's focused on the younger generation called The Addison Cafe.
Affinity Federal Credit Union - They don't use Twitter or Facebook. But, in our opinion, if you display good content as a top priority on your website like Affinity does, then you're on the right track. One of their top four navigation bars is for "Advice & Planning". This section is full of great content where members can find answers to all their financial needs before taking the plunge to talk about Affinity's offerings. (DISCLAIMER: A Truebridge client)
Nicolet National Bank - There aren't too many banks that have created blogs but out of the ones I've seen, Nicolet has done an exceptional job at developing compelling content for their clients in what they call The Vault. As of this post they appear to just be harnessing the power of RSS feeds but I'm sure that Twitter and Facebook are not far behind in their initiatives.
Bank of America - Mostly known for using new online tools like Twitter for customer service, BofA has also developed some unique online campaigns. One example is Morris on Campus. It provides tips on things from dorm room tips, food tips and class room tips. They created a college handbook that you can download for free. The campaign was focused on getting kids to sign up for the CampusEdge Checking and Stuff Happens cards that gives you a one-time bank fee refund.
Wells Fargo - Like BofA, Wells Fargo is well known for using Twitter for providing customer service. But they're also on top of delivering compelling content through their blogs. This time last year they created the Wells Fargo - Wachovia blog to keep customers up to date on the latest merger activities. But since then they've added a few more blogs:
- Guided by History: Talks about the banks history and how it relates to the present and the possible future.
- Student LoanDown: Focused on the college student and the loan process.
- Stagecoach Island: A youthful game where kids can interact with each other. The blog is the main component to the site.
- Commercial Electronic Office: This is what they call their CEO portal. You must be a commercial client and need a password and username to access.
Jesse Torres / Pan American Bank - This is mostly for Jesse and not so much the bank - yet at least. As of this post their website was under construction. To learn more about the bank you can visit their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter.
Jesse recently became the president of this small community bank in Southern California, but Jesse has had his hands in the banking industry for quite some time. This past year he wrote The Community Banker's Guide to Social Network Marketing. Some of you may know that recently Pan American Bank launched a blog. They sent out a press release announcing the blog and many banking industry professionals, including Truebridge, noticed ads from Google on the site. Some ads even steered you to other banks, such as Bank of America! As of this post these ads were still in place. I still don't quite understand the rational behind this. Jesse responded rather quickly to all the chatter online, which goes to show you he understands how the new online world works. And while I still don't understand the Google ads, his blog is rather unique. Reading the articles you don't get a sense that you're reading a banker per se. And I think that's the point they're trying to make. Their goal is to stop acting like a bank, as one recent post proclaims. And I think the true meaning of this new kind of marketing is all about transparency and having open dialogs with your clients. It's also about giving away information that prior to the age of Google you would have wanted to reserve for in person dialogs. While I may not agree 100% with some of Jesse's techniques, he is clearly an innovator and someone to keep an eye on as the new landscape of bank marketing takes shape in 2010.
This list wouldn't have been possible without the direct help of Jeffrey Pilcher of The Financial Brand (@thefinancialbrand) as well as the other 143 and growing associates, colleagues, banks, credit unions, consultants, marketing professionals, etc. that we follow on Twitter. Join us on Twitter or LinkedIn. We'll see you in 2010!
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Posted by Luke Owen on Tue, Dec 15, 2009 @ 09:25 AM
I came across an article today in the Providence Business News that highlighted some local banks diving into the social media waters by creating fan pages on Facebook. What jumped out at me was not the fact that they created these pages, it was what these institutions thought about when they finanlly did have one up and running.
"How many people are going to want to read about bank products on Facebook", was a comment from one banker in this article. Of course the answer to this question is very few if any. The problem is not the realization that Facebook should not be used to pitch products, the problem lies within the actual thought of doing so.
Realizing they can't add their traditional marketing spin to these areas, some bankers are at a loss for knowing what to do with social media tools outside of announcing branch closings, openings, and other customer service messages. I'm all for using social media as a tool for providing customer service. And if that's all a bank or credit union wants to use it for and will take extra measures to ensure it's used properly for such activities, then that's fine. However, one area that banks and credit unions appear to be missing out on is the opportunity to deliver good, easy to read educational information on topics important to their clients - how to save money, avoid mistakes, the steps to take before buying a home, investing for your retirement years, etc.
In my recent post I highlighted some figures from Google showing that millions of people are searching for financial terms like "retirement" every year. People today are looking for help with all their financial needs and the events that have transpired over this past year help fuel this fire. The ironic part is that the institutions who eventually provide the consumer with the products and services that help with their needs are failing to provide the informaiton they're looking for first. This often leaves the consumers decision of which institution to select up to the most commonly known brand. And how many local banks have the brand power to go up against Fidelity Investments in the retirement market?
Today many publications are going out of business. Those left are having to cut back on their reporting due to low ad revenue. This gives banks and credit unions an enormous opportunity to step in and fill a void of valuable information that many consumers, especially small business owners, would appreciate. In our interview with Newt Barrett, he strongly agreed that banks have a window of opportunity to replace the disappearing local publications that use to be plentiful for the small business owner.
Not only will this build the banks brand as a place to go to get answers, but implemented right, a content marketing strategy can dramatically increase referrals and cross selling opportunities for all products and services, including investments and insurance.
It's time to start putting aside product marketing and start thinking first about content marketing if you're interested in testing out the social media waters.
Posted by Luke Owen on Fri, Dec 11, 2009 @ 01:23 PM
There are many consultants and marketing professionals that are talking about this new approach to marketing and PR. Some call it Inbound Marketing, Social Media Marketing or Content Marketing. What ever you call it, there are clearly those who don't believe this is the right direction for their institution. Today I'm going to highlight some of my favorite rationals as to why this approach is nothing more then a flash in the pan. I'm taking these from my experiences in the financial industry but I'm sure that many of these same excuses exists in other industries.
1. "I'd rather my sales professionals tell my clients what they need to know versus giving the information away for free."
This is a valid argument if you were living in the pre-Internet age. But the Internet has changed these rules drastically. Just ask your local newspaper how things are faring in the age of the Internet. People today have much greater access to information and because of this, it's changed their mindset. Now they don't just look for products when they have a need, they're doing more to anticipate their needs by gobbling up massive amounts of information on a regular basis. A recent study from the University of California showed that individuals consume 34 Gigabytes a Day! Roger Bohn, a professor of technology management and co-author of the study says in this New York Times article, "Print media has declined consistently, but if you add up the amount of time people spend surfing the Web, they are actually reading more than ever".
So the bottom line is, either you provide the information your customers are looking for or your competitors will do it for you.
2. "Nobody is going to read the information we provide"
This comes up more frequently in the banking industry because of the perception that financial information is boring and dry. This may be true if you're talking about watching TV shows such as SquawkBox or reading newspapers like the Financial Times, but the content banks should be providing is your basic run of the mill personal finance - introduction to investing and savings, how to buy your first home and the steps to take. To get an idea of how interested people are in financial topics, one of the more highly competitive areas is retirement. The term, "retirement", was searched 4,090,000 times in the United States this past year according to Google Adwords. And there is rarley a week or month that goes by where the search for information is slow as you can see from this graph taken from Google Insights for the term "retirement":
Learn more about this report at the Google Insight page.
But remember, this is just the single term "retirement". When people search they're often more detailed then just one word so you have people entering terms such as "401k retirement" or "retirement plans for married couples". You can imagine just by the shear volume of this individual term how much this subject is looked into by your customers.
3. "Why do I need all this content if it's already available. Won't we just be another needle in the haystack?"
A recent study was done by Custom Publications Council that showed 68% of individuals say custom publications influence purchases. For those not aware, custom publishing and content marketing are one and the same. What this tells us is that people are moved more by regular information then they are by advertisements. And many of these publications that use to rely on advertising are changing their business model because they're starting to recognize that this approach no longer works. The old days of slipping your message into these trusted publications through paid advertisement is going to slowly be phased out.
Instead, banks and credit unions that use to do the advertising can now become the trusted resource for information. However, your mindset has to change. Instead of just being the delivery truck of products that help the readers of the publications solve their problems, you have to first act like the publisher and provide the information before showcasing your products. This approach will build you as a credible resource for financial information and over time, it will better position you to win their business instead of losing out to bigger competitors who already have a brand name in competitive markets such as retirement.
This is a foreign mindset for many bank marketers and it's not an easy one to reverse. But those who are doing so are reaping the rewards and showing growth in a time when most of their competitors are shedding their assets left and right to stay afloat.
Posted by Luke Owen on Fri, Dec 04, 2009 @ 09:37 AM
In a recent post we discussed the concept behind Content Marketing. The approach is not necessarily new but with the technologies of today, mostly driven by the Internet, more and more companies can implement content marketing strategies without having to rely on the big media outlets like in years past. There are many individuals as well as companies that either use the same term or have another name for it such as Inbound Marketing. But a book that recently landed on our radar struck a chord here at Truebridge and we were lucky enough to have a chance to speak with one of the authors.
Newt Barrett, who co-authored the book Get Content, Get Customers with Joe Pulizzi, was gracious enough to spend some time talking with us about the future of marketing. Joe and Newt met while working together at Penton Publishing. But it wasn't until after they had left and were out on their own that they decided to pull their experiences together to write about the direction or marketing and PR for B2B and B2C companies.
The beginning of our conversation started out with Newt getting a phone call from his realtor as he and his wife are in the process of selling their home. I was curious as to how that's going since they live in Florida and according to Newt it appears to be turning around for sellers. But this flowed nicely into what the focus of our call was about which is how the financial industry is coping with the drastic changes occurring in the marketing and PR world.
The challenge is changing the mindset of marketers who have been doing the same thing successfully for one, two even three decades. Newt says the first thing you need to do in this new marketing world is to "think like a publisher". Newt goes on to explain:
"As a publisher, what you do is you get a group of people together who share a set of interests and concerns that are easily definable. They are deeply interested in information that can help them address those concerns or solve problems. They're looking for a source that can provide them with this information. In the past a publisher would find a niche, such as Penton where I worked on a supply chain operations project. This group of buyers is looking for ways to improve their operations. So we took a publication called Transportation & Distribution and transformed it into Logistics Today, which better defined buyer concerns. Once you define this group that has a common set of interests, you have to address whether or not they're interested in buying something. In this specific case, the supply chain group bought all sorts of trucking and logistical type of services. Then you go to advertisers and say, 'we have gathered all your buyers in one place and they trust us for helpful information and they're willing to buy products. Therefore, your advertising will be effective in our publication'."
Newt went on to connect this to how we think about our banks...
"If you think of a typical banking client, most of us don't really care about our banks until we need their help. But, when we do need a banker's help we REALLY need their help. We want information about how to solve our financial problems."
One big missed opportunity that Newt even thought about before he and I connected was that banks could "replace what is disappearing locally which is local business content." He goes on to say, "They can become a provider of really helpful business content with a focus on financials, but not necessarily exclusive to financial topics. They can then replace the publishers' role. But the real challenge is getting banks to start thinking in this fashion: First and foremost they are a provider of helpful information. Second, they have products to sell."
Newt feels this approach is not optional but rather essential for companies to be successful moving forward. This is especially true on the web since that is where most consumers go to first start their buying process.
When asked if he knew of any financial institutions that were taking the lead on this new approach he said that besides Northern Trust, who he talks about in the book, most banks are roughly the same across the board, especially when it comes to community banks. "We have lots of reliable, trustworthy, honest community banks here in South Florida," he says. "Most community bank sites tend to look a lot alike, provide the same competitive offerings, and highlight great customer service. What they frequently lack are real differentiators in terms of valuable content that addresses customer information needs."
Truebridge spends more time in the banking space than Newt so we do see a number of banks and especially credit unions that are leading the pack. We're proud to say that many are our clients. However, there are those who are adopting new marketing techniques, such as Twitter, blogs or online forums but these techniques are only half the battle. Most have yet to adopt the one mindset that Newt and many others feel is essential to success - to think like a publisher.
We continued for another half hour or so about the future of marketing and we look forward to continuing our conversation. Keep an eye out for more posts involving the great ideas and thoughts of Newt Barrett.