Targeted bank branding involves taking a suite of banking services that the bank already offers, identifying a niche market, and tailoring the existing products to this specific niche market. Let’s look at a couple of examples of this. Targeted bank branding can be very effective and powerful.
Transcript
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[0:10:11] How to Get Started
Hi, I’m Brent Farley. I’m the managing member of Farley Law and today, let’s talk a little bit about targeted bank branding. Now, I like this topic because the concept is relatively simple and it’s not necessarily expensive to implement, but the outcome can be very effective and very powerful. Targeted bank branding, the way I like to talk about it is, let’s take a suite of banking services that the bank already offers, and let’s identify a niche market or a particular market where we can take the existing products and tailor them to some degree, so they work better for that particular target market.
[0:49:18] Examples
Now a couple of examples of this you might be familiar with is, one is Bankers Lender out of West Texas. They offer banking services and products for other bankers. It may sound a little funny, but I think it makes a lot of sense because I don’t think every banker who’s working for a bank wants all their loans and deposit accounts with the same person who’s their employer. So, I think that’s a great idea. One of the more entertaining ones you may also be familiar with is Redneck Bank. I believe they’re out of Oklahoma. Take a look at those. You might get an idea of what I’m trying to talk about here. The idea is, usually what happens is, the bank will find a deposit account and they’ll find a loan product and some payment services and take those products, will tailor them in such way that they make a lot more sense for a particular industry, or a particular set of professionals, or even a particular set of consumers. And what I think you’ll find is that if you, as a bank, if you take a look at your existing customers and people who walk in the door, you’ll identify market segments, and those market segments often have particular needs that aren’t fit with ‘cut-and-dried’ banking product or service. They don’t quite fit within the normal bucket. But, if you take the way that the deposit loan is structured, the underwriting is structured, and you shift it a little bit, usually very well within normal credit quality standards, you can offer a product that fits much better within that particular industry or within that particular demographic or industry group.
[2:22:10] Personal Example
The easiest example for me to talk about is attorneys, mostly because I’m an attorney. And for that, I’ll give you one personal example. Quite a while back, when I graduated law school, I wanted to buy a home. So, of course, I approached several different lenders to shop around a little bit and see what might be available. The bank that got my loan offered a very flexible product. They were willing to rely on an offer of employment and they offered a low down payment with flexible source of repayment terms. I think it was an adjustable-rate mortgage at the time. Wasn’t the lowest rate, but it was competitive, and it made the most sense for us at that time. And they were willing to work with us. And so, might not surprise you, but later on, I noticed that every time I had a credit need, or I needed a deposit account, or I needed something else banking wise, I’d walk on down to the bank or I’d give them a call and they’d get the first bite at the apple. Didn’t always go with them on every product or service, but pretty frequently I did.
[3:34:04] Program and Bank Names
And so, the idea is to take the existing banking products and services that you offer, get to know a particular market segment, and make sure you understand what the needs are and what the challenges are with working with the banking world for that industry, and then see if you can’t make some reasonable and prudent adjustments to make sure that banking products fit their needs. And I think you’ll find a lot of success in that particular strategy. Particularly because it doesn’t take a huge technology investment. It doesn’t take a lot of lead time. It just takes some careful thought and placement and planning. The other thing that you can do with this sort of strategy is, we’ll talk about the branding piece is, you can put a program name behind it. You can call it your attorney lending program. You can call it our attorney division of the bank. You can, even if you want to take it this far, you can establish a trade name for the bank. That’s right, a bank can operate under a trade name like other businesses can and you can run a suite of banking services under a very specific name that might even have different branding from the bank’s normal branding. And so, that’s what you might see from folks like Bankers Lender or from Redneck Bank. There are banks behind those names, but they use a different set of branding on the front end because it makes more sense for that particular demographic.
[4:59:10] Conclusion
Anyways, I hope you found this topic interesting. I hope you’ll take a minute to see if that makes sense for your bank, your financial institution. Thanks, we’ll talk to you next time!
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