Bank marketers share insights into their challenges, successes

Editor’s Note: BankBeat reached out to 15 marketing professionals to ask how they manage today’s marketing challenges and learn how they make the most of today’s opportunities. This is the first in a three-part series capturing their responses.There was a time when all a bank had to do to gain new customers was to offer them a gift. A new toaster perhaps. Or a coin bank. Add a tray of cookies and a pot of coffee to the lobby and you made coming into the bank an occasion. Gas was a lot cheaper in those days. So were toasters..But banking is a complex operation, and the art of inducing increased business has given way to the sciences: Social science, behavioral science, and computer science, including artificial intelligence.Like all professionals who work in banking, marketers have had to adapt to the complexities, modifying the proverbial promise of “perfect toast” to something more compelling, and then pitching it through multiple channels. They’ve had to amp up the outreach, incorporate video technology, deploy avatars and chatbots — to not only think outside the box but reinvent it, and fill it with items that are relevant to today’s customers, people so distracted they may give but five seconds of their attention before swiping past something the marketing team spent months developing.Some of the marketing professionals BankBeat reached out to lead or are part of a six-to-nine-person marketing team; others are the sole marketers at their bank, with a few performing marketing duties while functioning in a different role at the bank. We asked them about their creative process, how they balance tradition with innovation, how they are using AI, and how marketing fits into their bank’s overall strategic plans. Here is some of what they shared:First, there’s the creative processIf the marketing person at the bank is idling at the window, staring into some vague middle distance, don’t just assume they are loafing. Creativity takes time and thought, “and some back and forth,” said Karina Wiatros, VP, director of marketing and communications at BankIn Minnesota, the community bank trade association. “The best ideas come from communicating with other people,” not sitting in a bubble, she added. That can be a challenge for marketers inside the region’s smallest banks where the marketing role fills less than one full-time position.A marketing committee that consists of a commercial loan officer, head of human resources, an operations support assistant and an IT assistant helps Samantha Hvidsten, retail and marketing manager, AML CFT officer, at the $125 million First National Bank of Moose Lake, Minn. “We can hear what people on the digital banking side or the lenders are hearing,” Hvidsten said. She also manages the bank’s tellers, giving her insight into customer preferences. In Moose Lake, a town of 3,000 people, marketing can take the form of newspaper ads and local sponsorships (plus social media); these are traditional channels but they carry the water, said Hvidsten, who spends approximately 25 percent of her time focused on marketing.The marketing committee at $179 million Lakeview Bank, Lakeville, Minn., is a relatively new development, said Theresa Anderson, communications specialist, who joined the bank four years ago with nearly three decades of banking experience. Anderson focuses heavily on event planning and meets with her committee every four to six weeks to talk about upcoming events. She relies on her own customer outreach as well as the frontline bankers to inform her approach, “so I’m not overlooking an opportunity.”While not officially dubbed a “marketing committee,” Holly Christenson, VP Cash Management at $107 million Key Community Bank, Inver Grove Heights, Minn., said the bank’s senior management team, of which she’s a part, provides feedback on her ideas and engages in ongoing communications about upcoming events.Brainstorming is “kind of a hodgepodge,” said Christenson, who didn’t know marketing would be on her plate when she accepted her role. Marketing uses roughly 40 percent of her time, she said. She calls herself a “well-rounded banker with no marketing experience,” adding that the depth of her banking knowledge makes up for her growing marketing savvy.There used to be a marketing committee at the $185 million, three-location New Market Bank in Elko New Market, Minn., but Karen Ramola, VP of retail banking, who spends 30 to 40 percent of her time on marketing, said she spent too much time “reporting” to the committee and was still left to her own devices to execute. “But I’ve always loved marketing and sales,” said Ramola, who closes her office door when she needs to focus on the creative.New Market Bank had engaged a one-person consultancy for day-to-day marketing tasks. That relationship has concluded but the framework the firm created allows Ramola to build on what she called “pretty static” campaigns.Getting a “boots on the ground” perspective from retail and commercial lenders at North American Banking Company’s six branch offices is critical for Tim Martinson, AVP marketing for the $1.35 billion Roseville, Minn.-based bank. The bank’s EVP of retail, Kelley Mickus, provides his oversight and guidance, and its AVP of HR and Compliance, Mary Klug, proofreads and reviews creative to ensure everything is compliant.“Because we operate in the crowded Twin Cities market, where there are national banks, community banks, regional banks, credit unions, etc., our primary focus is building brand awareness,” Martinson reported.For larger banks with marketing teams, ideation and collaboration is more formalized. “We actively cultivate a collaborative ecosystem,” said Danielle Bateman Girondo, CMO at Midwest BankCentre in St. Louis, Mo. The $2.75 billion bank’s eight-person marketing team hosts a vendor summit annually to “share strategic priorities, brainstorm and co-create how marketing will show up in the year ahead,” Bateman Girondo said.St. Louis Park, Minn.-based Bridgewater Bank’s nine-person marketing team works actively with its product team to ensure “we’re implementing products that meet the clients’ needs, we’re anticipating the clients’ needs, and we’re understanding the product mix in the market, and also how our competitors are assessing products as well,” said Jessica Stejskal, SVP of marketing.“Our team closely collaborates with various areas within the company, including sales, retail and business banking, insurance and wealth management,” said Amy Radcliffe, marketing manager and head of a three-person team at $1.37 billion Bank Midwest in Spirit Lake, Iowa. “This collaborative approach fosters productive brainstorming sessions and enhances our ability to effectively work across different lines of business within the organization.”.Collecting data from customers, peers, vendors, even other industries, and looking at hot topics, trends and strategies is the approach taken by Saasha Peterson, marketing coordinator at $602 million, Mankato, Minn.-based BankVista. “The foundation of our marketing efforts stems directly from the goals established by senior leadership and the board,” she said. She likened the process to building a skyscraper. Across the board, input is filtered through bank personnel and leadership, making its way to those whose job it is to turn objectives into outreach. The trick for bank marketers, then, becomes how to get noticed and move the needle. It’s a unique challenge because of the commoditized nature of the product.