I believe that people want to work with people who “get them” and are all about their success.

In this series, I’m going to show you how you can transform the marketing ROI so that every dollar you invest gives you $5–$20 back (or more) to your bottom line.

If you’re the kind of banker who feels like your marketing department is already targeting the very best, low-risk, high-profit prospects—and they’re getting them—you’ll love this because I’ll show you how to speed that up.

If on the other hand, your marketing people are fabulous, but they’re doing the things they learned in marketing school (not their fault), then listen in.

If they haven’t been educated on how 50–120% of your bottom line comes from your Top 100 customers, and they don’t know what to do about that, you’re going to be tickled because I’ll show you how to optimize their hard work.

Or if you think, maybe half of your marketing is returning a positive ROI, but you can’t explicitly prove what half and how much, well, this is your lucky day because you are going to discover that there is a fresh new world of marketing that really delivers.

There are a few recurring challenges almost every bank faces with getting and proving ROI from their marketing budget.

1. There is usually no good system in most banks to prove what marketing is working.
2. Your marketing people are being judged by the board and employees based on how much “stuff” is visible—on radio, TV, etc., but most of those things aren’t going to deliver you a Top 100 customer (and convince them to pay you a premium). In fact, most “visible” marketing has proven to have a negative ROI.
3. Most marketers are doing what they learned in marketing school or doing what the people before them did. They don’t know what they don’t know—that traditional marketing rarely moves the profit and safety needles up. It’s not their fault—they just haven’t been exposed.

Just know, you’re not alone on this—it’s everywhere.

But today is your lucky day!

There are three steps you can take to help your marketing team do what your board and shareholders want—more profit, increased NIM, lower efficiency ratio, and more fee income.

Step 1: “Clone” your Top 100 most profitable customers

UNLIKE so many marketing “projects” like branding, brand awareness and rate advertising that create one outcome that is guaranteed every time: Less profit—you want to get your team to understand that since your Top 100 customers account for 50–120% of your profits, it’s important to get 100 more just like them. Incidentally, we’re taking a group of bank executives through the entire process of identifying their top 100 highest-profit-potential prospects at our next live event. There’s still time to join them (just be sure to bring 4–5 executives to really get this done right).

Step 2: Build deep reputational equity, so they can’t wait for your team to call

Once you’ve identified the psychographics and firmographics of your 100 most profitable customers, it is your marketing team’s job to build reputational equity with those people. It should NEVER be mass marketing—it should feel like a one-on-one conversation that is all about the prospect. Focus on what’s valuable to them—not on the 103 nifty features of your business checking account.

Step 3: Stop “traditional” advertising (seriously)

Do Steps 1 and 2 effectively, and you’ll realize that your traditional marketing is doing nothing more than attracting rate shoppers. You can wait until this has proven the concept. One CEO told me he thought I was nuts when I told him he could cut the marketing budget by 80% and double the marketing results in one year. He only told me about it a year later when he called to say it worked. I get it. It’s hard to let go of what you HOPE is working until you’ve proven something else works.

So, three steps.

1. Put everything that can’t prove ROI on trial for its life.
2. Identify your top 100 prospects and then “kiss them on the lips until they chap.”
3. Third, take the things that can’t prove ROI and say goodbye. Then, celebrate having a marketing machine that cranks out profitable customer, after profitable customer, after profitable customer.

By creating a marketing “franchise” system that produces a predictable increase in profit with less risk, you can sleep well at night knowing that your bank is safe and will be around for a long time.

Make sure you tune in for the next episode, where I’ll share with you the research about the highest ROI investments you can make in marketing. I’ll also share the order for rolling them out (get them out of order, and you’ll never reach the results you want).