Bank Marketing Show

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.

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.

What bank marketing looks like in 2030 — and what to build now.

The in-person experience is the community bank superpower, but customers touch you digitally more than ten times for every branch visit. Dan and Chris pull together a lot of this year's threads around one question: if someone only knew your bank from its digital presence, would they recognize it when they walked in?

We’ve looked at 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.

You're doing the media part. But are you doing the social part?

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.