News Article - August 11, 2009

By Preetha Pulusani, CEO, DeepTarget Inc. www.deeptarget.com

The prevailing wisdom calls for "tough measures for tough times". This is the time to look at all costs and see where savings can be had. An easy cut is marketing costs. It's easy because much of marketing spent over time has been "fuzzy" in its benefits and not easily measurable. Traditional marketing dictated a high level of mass "shotgun" marketing using traditional media such as newspapers, TV, radio and direct mail. Unfortunately, if financial institutions are strictly working with conventional marketing means and media, management is right to scrutinize the cost/benefit of campaigns and expenditures in order to make cost adjustments. It becomes unavoidable.

The fact of the matter is that around the world, in every industry, there is a shift that is occurring in marketing. One visible example of this is the impact of audiences shifting in a major way from printed newspapers to online ones. In an interview in 2007, Bill Keller, the New York Times Executive Editor said - "But the Web audience is growing at a great clip, while print circulation is not. And online revenues are growing faster, too, albeit from a smaller base. If the trend continues, there's little doubt that - "eventually" - online becomes the main business".¹ There is no doubt anymore that this trend will continue, is there?

Marketers around the world - in any industry sector - need to reassess and reconsider their marketing plans and budgets.There are two different but related areas of consideration that should be of utmost importance to every marketer:

1. Where are people spending more time today? [See chart below²]. And related to this, where will they be spending more time tomorrow?

2. How do we make our marketing campaigns more relevant and measurable?

¹http://publishing2.com/2007/07/17/newspaper-online-vs-print-ad-revenue-the-10-problem/ and other sources

²Forrester Research U.S. Online Marketing Forecast 2005-2010, 08/05

Virtually in all domains, what you will find is that the time that individuals (including your members or your customers) spend online is higher than you thought, and is increasing at a fast clip. That does not mean that you abandon all forms of traditional media overnight, but it does mean that you can benefit greatly from beginning a well-thought out transition that mixes and matches both traditional and new media. In turn, this should lead to a well-thought out and measurable digital marketing strategy for the future.

As you look at your options for marketing online, look to your Online Banking, eLerts, eStatements and Email as great new channels and opportunities for increasingly communicating with your members as well as marketing products to them that they have a high probability of interest in. Ask yourself questions like these:

• Is your Online Banking experience personalized to each of your customers?
• Are you reaching out and cross-selling your online bankers effectively today?
• Are you keeping up with your competition in the world of online banking?
• Can you track the results of your marketing campaigns?
• Is your ROI greater than 100%?
• Are you exploring the potential of using your online banking environment to increase your revenue 24 X 7?

As you begin to address these issues more deeply and discover innovative new marketing solutions to ensure that you are optimizing your marketing efforts in an integrated fashion across multiple digital channels (such as Online, Email, Mobile, etc.), you will also begin to reap the benefits of getting more concrete measurements than you have had in the past. This should transcend mere PPC ("Pay Per Click") statistics and should be telling you how much revenue and profit your new marketing initiatives are yielding.

Based on recent experience, with the right solution, your expectation should be that you will achieve an ROI north of 300%.When that happens, something magical occurs. Instead of looking at cutting marketing budgets, you will be encouraged to increase your successful initiatives!

As marketing guru Seth Godin (read his blog here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/), says in one of his blogs, "Do Ads Work?³" -

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

And he adds:

How often do you hear the marketing person say, "That's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"?

Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...

In summary, it's true, that tough times may well call for tough measures. But, here's a very nice bonus - tough times can also force us to re-examine the way we work and thrust some good changes on us. These, in turn, end up making us and our organization better and stronger for the future. And, sometimes, that's just worth it.

³ You can read this entire blog "Do Ads Work?" here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/do-ads-work.html