ABA Bank Marketing Budget Survey: Digital Dominates
By Mark Gibson
Jhe key finding from the ABA’s latest survey of bank marketers is that digital marketing is king. Not only does digital media receive the lion’s share of the budget increase in 2022, but it also ranks highest for return on investment. This article summarizes some of the key findings from the survey and includes additional insights from two banking marketers for more in-depth insight into some of the more important findings.
The survey, conducted ahead of ABA Bank’s September 2021 marketing conference, focused on marketers’ expectations for budget decisions in 2022. We received over 120 responses from various marketers banking, whose positions ranged from assistant and specialist to marketing. Director and Marketing Director.
Digital budgets are growing
The ABA first asked where banking marketers plan to increase their budgets for 2022, and the top six slots were reserved for digital marketing channels. Digital advertising came first, with 87% of respondents saying they planned to increase their spending, followed by search engine marketing, social media, and then content market.ng.
Where do you plan to increase your marketing budget for the coming year? Select everything related to it.
We spoke to Sheila Estes, Vice President, Head of Marketing and Communications at Cambridge Trustto better understand why so many marketers are increasing their investments in digital marketing.
Estes sees digital advertising as having a number of advantages over traditional advertising.
“You can test and customize the creative in real time,” says Estes. “You can target more accurately and more efficiently, including modeling lookalikes. You can use programmatic media buying and quickly see what’s working and shift resources to optimize your spend. »
Sheila says Cambridge Trust is embracing digital marketing for a wide range of business unit campaigns, including commercial loans, CRA mortgages, wealth management and retail deposits. She notes that each campaign resonates with different metrics.
“We measured the increase in traffic of each campaign, and some of them are more responsive to direct offers and responses (consumer endorsements) than others, which are longer sales cycles (commercial and heritage) . We see digital media playing an important role in all of them.
Digital offers the best performance
The second major finding of the study is that bank marketers believe digital media delivers the best return. Digital advertising and search engine marketing continued to dominate the top two spots, while social media and email overtook content marketing.
Ranking of supports by best performance (average average)
We reached out to another banking marketer to better understand what top performance means to her and why digital is dominating the field. Gianna Porter is Head of Digital Experience at Machias savings bank in Maine, and is responsible for everything digital in the marketing department.
Porter believes the best return translates to ROI on your marketing investment. And she says digital marketing is much more quantifiable.
“Digital media is more measurable than traditional media,” Porter says. “You implement a program and either you see visits to your landing page or you don’t. Then you can see how many of those people will actually apply using your digital app.
Estes agrees. “There’s more ability to track and quantify results,” Estes says. “In terms of defining the best return, it’s simply: how much business did it generate in terms of new customers and accounts?”
Porter went further: “Because we can measure our ROI, executives see our marketing department from a completely different perspective, and the money speaks volumes. And when they see that we can make money in the bank, they will allocate more budget to marketing.
“Our website is our digital branch”
The third major theme uncovered in the survey is that marketing departments are turning into the sales units of banks. The majority of banks surveyed have online applications for consumer mortgages and deposits. And half of them have a budget for continued digital growth and website improvement. The combination of digital account opening infrastructure with the marketing commitment to digital growth results in a powerful driver of revenue growth. Marketing places digital advertisements to attract leads to the website, and the website is designed to encourage people to open the product online.
Does your bank have an online application for the following? Check all the boxes.
Do you have a budget for continued digital growth and improvement of your website?
Porter adds, “We’re really like salespeople. We are literally building a digital branch on our website. We’re redesigning our website to become a living ecosystem to nurture content, nurture and nurture leads while leveraging content and inbound marketing. We plan to create a personalized experience for each website visitor.
Marketing is starting to call digital plans
The final conclusion of the survey is the culmination of selling more through the digital channel and being able to measure the impact of the marketing dollars invested. Marketing now has a seat at the table when digital delivery and sales programs are being discussed. As Estes puts it, “Marketing plays a bigger role in sales, actively partnering with our lines of business to help them generate leads and achieve their sales goals.”
Survey respondents fully endorsed this view. Nearly 80% said they had significant or absolute influence over their banks’ electronic/digital delivery strategy and programs.
How does marketing influence your bank’s digital strategy and programs?
The fact that marketing influences digital delivery and sales strategy and plays a central role in its implementation (running advertising to attract people to online applications) may help explain why most banks have chosen not to reduce marketing budgets during the pandemic.
Has your marketing budget been cut due to the pandemic?
Overall, the results of this survey indicate that the marketing function is both increasing its role in revenue growth and improving its influence within the organization. And that’s good news for bank marketers.
Mark Gibson is Principal Consultant atCapital Performance Group, a strategic consulting firm that provides consulting, planning, analysis and project management services to the financial services industry. He can also be reached onLinkedIn. All charts from ABA Bank’s 2021 marketing survey.
