Bank Advertising for a Competitive Environment
by Jim Avery BIO AND CONTACT INFO
In this era of competition advertising for your bank has to work harder than ever. The Internet has made it easier for your customers to open an account with a bank in some distant state. The downturn in the economy has made people more conservative with their money. If you are reading this article today, it means you are in the banking business in Oklahoma and realize it is going to be tough to make the same numbers you did last year at this time.
Your advertising has to be compelling enough to convince new people to come in and open an new account. It also has to reward your current customers so that they wonąt move their account to one of your competitors down the street.
I've been asked to write a column once a month to give you some hints on how to make your advertising better. I'll do just that. I've been in the advertising business for over thirty years. For the first seventeen I worked for advertising agencies, primarily in New York and Chicago. For the past fifteen, I've been an academic. I am now a professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. This first introduction should give you a flavor of what to expect in the months ahead.
Advertising must be both creative and strategically correct in order to be "the best it can be" (like the
Army's great advertising campaign line). There is a spectrum to all advertising. On one end is creative advertising, and on the other end is strategically correct advertising. Creative advertising is advertising that commands attention. It is new, fresh, innovative. It is easy for this advertising to communicate its message. People want to find out about the bank because the advertising captures their interest. But sometimes this advertising misses because it does not address the needs of those who want the advertised service.
On the other end of this spectrum is advertising that is strategically solid. It delivers a solid business idea. It will give people a specific reason to buy that is usually important to people because it is the product of a great deal of consumer research. It can also be boring. While there is a good chance that the advertising will target an audience with a real need for this product, there is a low probability that anyone will look at the advertising long enough to get the message.
Good advertising should be somewhere between the two extremes on the spectrum. It should be interesting enough to get your attention, but at the same time it should execute a solid business plan. There are few rules that govern the creative side of advertising. About all that can be said is that when it is finished it shouldn't look like any other advertising and it should command a lot of attention. On the business side we can be more specific. The advertising should cover three key points. They are:
The Target Audience: This is the group of people that are most likely to be interested in buying the product or service. This is not necessarily the person whose name is on the account. We usually describe these people demographically (i.e., Women 18-34), but psychographics (i.e., Vegetarian) can also be useful.
Factors that Motivate Purchase Behavior: This is a rank ordering of the criteria your target audience uses to make a decision how they will choose a bank. In the banking business, this usually has something to do with convenience.
Unique Characteristics of the Brand: This describes how your bank is different from all the others with which you must compete.
These three pieces of information become the foundation of all good advertising. The first point describes the best prospect with whom communication should take place. The second describes why these people want the product/brand and the third differentiates your bank brand in the marketplace.
The first piece of information addresses who will buy the product or Brand. The relationship between the second and the third is the reason why people will ultimately buy the product and this will always be addressed in all good advertising.
The bottom line is that the best business communication is advertising that maintains a balance between being creative and being strategically correct. The old Benton & Bowles advertising agency used to say "It isn't creative unless it sells". That is what good advertising is ... creative, fresh, innovative, for a good solid business reason.
So here is the end of the first column. I hope you found something useful, some facet of advertising that will help you to improve your business. Since advertising is getting more expensive all the time, we can only hope to get smarter about our advertising. In the months ahead this column will seek to address issues and concerns in advertising, and how best to resolve them.
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