Bank Marketing Show
Welcome to the Bank Marketing Show, the podcast that engages and informs you for success in today's marketplace. It's the show that will make you a better marketer with trends, tactics and inspirations from experts and industry leaders. If you're wanting to impact your personal success and position your company as the best choice in your market, you're in the right place!
Episodes
If someone walked past wearing your bank's tagline on a t-shirt, would anyone in town recognize it as your bank? For most banks, the answer is decidedly no. But there's real value in distilling your brand down to it's most memorable elements.
Patrick Dix spent 25 years in broadcast journalism before joining Shazam, where he's now...
A tornado. A big event coming to town. A system outage. A competitor getting acquired. Sooner or later, something unexpected happens, and everyone at the bank is asking, "How do we get the word out?" Most banks don't have a plan for these moments.
In this episode, Dan and Chris walk through marketing's role when the unexpec...
The headlines say 65% of marketing jobs won't survive AI. The same kind of headlines many years ago said ATMs would kill the teller. What actually happens is different: the job survives, but the job description doesn't.
Dan and Chris look a few years down the road at what the average community bank marketing department will look ...
Every community banker says some version of the same thing: "If we could just get them into the lobby, we'd win them over." And they're right — the in-person experience is the community bank superpower. But customers touch your bank digitally more than ten times for every one time they walk through the door. If your website reads like a rate sheet and your social feed is a b...
We've looked at and designed hundreds of bank websites over the years, and 9 out of 10 – maybe even 9.9 out of 10 - lead with products. "Here are our accounts." "We're a better option." "Here are our rates." They're digital brochures — and they all say the same thing.
Nobody wakes up wanting a checking account. They w...
Scroll through any community bank's social feed. You'll find rate posts, holiday closures, "we're hiring," and the occasional stock photo with a tagline. But one thing you usually won't find is high post engagement, because there's not much to engage with. Most banks do the media part of social media well, but need to focus more on the social part.
Read more
At most community banks, marketing puts out ads and tries to pull people in the door. Lending makes calls, shakes hands at Chamber meetings, and occasionally asks marketing for a brochure. Both teams are trying to bring more business into the bank, but only coordinate infrequently.
Community banking is built on relationships, but...
Last episode, we told you to go ask AI about your bank. If you did, you probably didn't
love what you found. We gave you some actionable next steps, but we go much further
into the "Now what?" this week.
Most of the mass market AEO advice out there is written for e-commerce companies
and big local service businesses that live and die on web traffic. Community banks don't
operate that way. AI ...
Go ask ChatGPT or Claude who the best bank in your town is. Or ask Google AI where to get a small business loan in your county. See what comes back. If your bank isn't in the answer — or worse, if a competitor is — that's not a future problem. That's happening right now, every time a potential customer asks AI for a recommendation instead of typing "bank near me" into ...
Every community bank knows they need to differentiate. But how? Most banks skip the hard part — figuring out what the market actually looks like from the customer's perspective — and jump straight to writing a tagline. The result? Messaging that sounds like every other bank in town.
The answer is whitespace: the gap between what your competitors are saying and what your ideal customers actually need to hear. Find that g...
You can't fake culture. You can put posters in the break room and bring in an ice cream
truck on Fridays, but your employees and your customers will know the difference. Real
culture is lived, not declared — and when it's real, it shows up in your marketing without
you having to force it.
Peter Ort is EVP and COO at MCS Bank in central Pennsylvania, where he oversees
operations, de...
AI isn't going to replace your entire marketing team tomorrow. But it is going to change what you do, and how fast you're expected to do it. It's already reducing marketing hiring and eventually will impact team sizes. Banks and bank marketers that start learning these tools now, will get ahead of slower-moving competitors (both smaller AND larger ones) who are stuck in analysis paralysis about what to do. And,...
AI can write your tagline in 5 seconds. Should it?
Not in 5 seconds, because you'll sound like every other bank. AI gives you the average of the internet, and the average community bank's marketing is, well, average.
Dan and Chris break down what bank marketers should actually be doing with AI right now – how to add your human judgment, local feel and emotional nu...
Every bank has checking accounts and loans. Every bank says they care about relationships. So when your marketing sounds like every other bank's marketing, why would anyone switch? They won't. The way to stand out isn't to shout louder — it's to get specific. In this episod...
Opening a new branch is a huge investment — a new build can run into the millions. Most banks do the demographic research, study the traffic patterns, and pick the right spot. But then when it comes to actually marketing the thing? They show up with a grill in the parking lot and call it a grand op...
Every bank says they want to stand out. But most don't go beyond tweaking a logo, or updating colors, and continue to rely on the number of years in business to build trust. That's important – but no longer enough to differentiate your bank against the thousands of others w...
The "We Tried That" Problem
Real quotes:
"We tried Google Ads and they didn't work."
"We did SEO for a couple months and nothing happened."
"Direct mail was way too expensive for what we got out of it."
If you've heard, or said, any of these – this episode is for you!
We break down...
Every community bank has checking accounts and loans. So the age-old question is, how do you stand out? First Financial Bank figured it out: they went deep in one niche, and then kept going, building many specialty lending divisions and driving massive growth.
In this episode, Amber Murphy, VP and Marketing Director at First Financial Bank, shares how FFB's niching strategy transformed their marketing from generic to pow...
Chris and Dan sit down with Candie Simmons, founder of CL Simmons Consulting, to talk about the people problems that slow banks down: communication breakdowns, the gap between being a great producer and being a great manager, and why marketing and compliance don't have to be at each other's throats.
When it comes to advocating for the future of community banking, few voices carry more weight than Rebeca Romero Rainey. This week we had the privilege of sitting down with Rebeca, the President & CEO of the ICBA, for a candid and thoughtful conversation on where the industry is heading.
Top of mind for us all is how community banks can stay strong amid competition from fintechs and non-bank players. Rebeca's vision is tha...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.