Five Reasons Financial Institutions Need A Marketing Plan

Financial institutions and planning ahead go hand in hand. So why is it that a solid marketing plan can often fall by the wayside?

Sure, marketing can be reduced to getting your services in front of people, but the reality is it’s much more than that: it’s how you connect with customers and find out how you can help them to build a lasting relationship. And a marketing plan is a vital part of building these connections.

As defined by HubSpot, a marketing plan is a roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given time. Marketing plans do a lot of things, but one of the most important is bringing ideas to fruition and helping you track results. It’s also a good way to stay mindful of your budget and the success of your overall campaigns. 

As tempting as it may be to slap a few posts on your social media or buy a few print ads in the local paper, we have four reasons for why financial institutions need to come up with a marketing plan. Read more.

Identify Your Goals

Imagine your business strategy as an umbrella. To make up the umbrella, you have different arms that help support it, like your budget and acquisition goals. Another important arm is your marketing plan. Your marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies in which you want to accomplish your goals while keeping the other arms of the umbrella in mind.

Let’s say you’re a bank or credit union and have an auto loan campaign coming up. Your goal is to bring in new loan volume that’s 15% higher than what you achieved with last year’s campaign. It’s a lofty goal. Without a marketing strategy and overall plan, it would also be impossible to achieve. In this instance, a marketing plan would tackle how to promote the loan campaign from start to finish, as well providing a clear picture of what you did well so that you can potentially use it again. 

Use your marketing plan to figure out what it is you want to do and why. Then do it.

Consistency is Key

Only marketing yourself when you need a business boost isn’t sustainable. While it may give you a temporary spike in new clients or loan application, it won’t benefit your business in the long run. Creating a strategic marketing plan means implementing it constantly so you can create a foundation. When you’re consistently marketing your bank or credit unions services and offerings, you’ll be able to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what’s truly growing your business.  

You can create this grand marketing plan but if you’re not sharing it with the world on a consistent basis, it’s unlikely that you’ll hit any of those bold goals you set out to achieve. 

Make Your Plan Measurable

So, you create a marketing plan but how do you know if it’s working? You can create KPIs (or key performance indicators) for your plan. KPIs are quantifiable, measurable, and actionable and should be closely tied to your goals.

Let’s use the auto loan campaign again as an example. Let’s say your overall goal is to increase auto loan applications, but by what number or what percentage? Are you comparing this year to last year? These are the questions you want to answer before launching your plan. When you start to get specific with your goals and how you’ll measure them, you’ll start to see results.

Making a measurable plan can help you understand what worked well and what can work for future financial campaigns.

Provide Clear Direction 

Digital marketing can work well for banks, credit unions and any financial organization, but you have to start with a plan that’s focused on clear objectives such as helping your brand stand out, get noticed, be memorable and connect with customers. For financial groups, where products are similar, an on-point digital presence can be that needle mover you need to stay competitive.

Developing marketing plans are the foundation for successful marketing strategies. If you need help buttoning up your experience tactics, give us a call! Our brand marketing team are experts at all things financial and can help you find your biggest opportunities for brand experience success.