The Best Bank and Credit Union Super Bowl Commercial Ever

You’re a financial marketer who has been inspired by Sunday night's Super Bowl 50.

And your inspiration comes not from the modern-day gladiators but the 30-60 second commercials that filled the time between runs and passes.

As you settle back in your office to start the week, you replay your favorite spots on YouTube and post a couple to your social networks.

All of a sudden, a text message interrupts your viewing pleasure.

It’s your CEO.

A smile spreads across your face as you read they just convinced your CFO to give you $5 million to buy a spot for your bank or credit union to run during next year’s Super Bowl.

You can hardly contain yourself as your mind races to think about the story your Super Bowl commercial will tell. You think about all the awards your commercial will win and how jealous other financial marketers will be of you.

But then your logic kicks in.

And while the right side of your creative, emotionally driven brain wants to brutally tackle and defeat the logical left side of your thinking, your reasoning takes over as you consider alternative ways you might invest the financial gift your CEO and CFO have bestowed upon you.

Your mind and emotions drift back to reality as you realize that while awards are nice, awards do not have a positive impact on the bottom line. And it is more important for you to move the needle because you know that proving the value of your marketing to your CEO and CFO will help you get additional funds and budget in the long run.

While you may have never had $5 million to put towards a Super Bowl commercial, you think about all the traditional broadcast marketing tactics of the past that have been expensive and difficult to prove the value.

You know that push marketing channels, like TV and radio, are interruptive and no longer have the impact on consumers they once did. That’s because consumer behavior has changed, including the way they shop for financial services.

Build a Digital Marketing System

If you called me to share the good news about your $5 million marketing budget windfall, I would first remind you this is only for the ad buy. You would still need a budget to produce a Super Bowl worthy spot.

So instead, I would recommend you return $4.6 million to your bottom line. With the remaining money, you can build a financial digital marketing system over 12 months that delivers many more leads for a fraction of the cost.

Next, you should invest some dollars into a Digital Marketing Blueprint to document how to:

• Define your digital marketing vision and budget to achieve goals for growth. 
• Personify key consumer segments your digital marketing system will target.
• Position your financial products beyond a list of commoditized features.
• Determine the staff and processes required for your digital marketing system.
• Define digital journeys to guide consumers from awareness to conversion.
• Select the digital marketing technology required for your digital marketing system.
• Establish a process to produce digital stories that emotionally connect with consumers.
• Improve digital distribution to communicate with key consumer segments.
• Quantify digital marketing success with KPIs tied back to your goals for growth.

With a documented digital marketing plan, you will find the clarity and confidence needed to courageously commit to digital marketing. You will leap ahead of your competition as over 70% of banks and credit unions do not have a defined digital marketing strategy. The vast majority of financial institutions instead jump right into implementing digital marketing tools and tactics. And as Sun Tzu noted, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

So if your CEO was to give you $5 million to buy a commercial for next year’s Super Bowl, you can now tell them there is a much better way to invest these dollars and forever change how you market your financial institution.

Just imagine the surprise on their face when you tell them you want to return $4.6 million to the bottom line because you will follow a Digital Marketing Blueprint to build a system that will be refined and optimized year after year instead of a basking in early February’s 15 minutes of fame.

Make a Positive Impact on Your Bottom Line for Less

Before we discuss the digital marketing tactics needed to implement your digital marketing strategy, let’s dig a bit deeper into audience reach.

Traditional broadcast channels, like TV, radio, print, and billboards, love to talk about audience reach. In the past, marketers were happy to buy access to these audiences because it was fairly easy and could be done with a couple of phone calls. Traditional broadcast channels were also more than happy to throw in some free creative to seal the deal.

But just how effective is this approach when considering consumer behavior has changed when it comes to shopping for financial services?

Let’s go back to the Super Bow example for a moment and pretend you are selling Doritos.

It is estimated that 120 million people tuned into the Big Game. But don’t count on everyone who watched the game to see an ad during commercial breaks. This year, it was estimated that 30% of viewers will be on their phone during the game, especially commercial breaks. At this point, you're down to 90 million people.

Let’s assume that about 50% of the remaining viewers will miss the ads during a commercial break because they were talking to friends, eating, grabbing a beer, or going to the bathroom. Now, your audience reach is down to 45 million people.

Instead of spending $5 million to rent access to an audience of 45 million people for 30 seconds, I’d like to show you how this could be done over the course of 12 months through the development of a digital marketing system.

For comparison sake, this would mean I would need to drive 3,750,000 visitors to your website each month over the course of a year with your digital marketing system. Assuming the average conversion rate of 1% on your website, I’ll have helped you generate 37,500 new customers who bought your $2.50 bag of Doritos each month. That’s $1,125,000 million in revenue over the course a year.

This is where it gets fun.

Through digital marketing technology, I know exactly who these customers are now and can track their digital behavior. I can help you continue to grow a relationship with them to drive even more direct sales with almost no cost of sale to you. And if I can convert just 25% of those 37,500 individuals into buying one more bag of your Doritos each month, I would help you create another $281,000 in monthly revenue.

In summary, you would realize a monetary return on this hypothetical marketing exercise of $1 million on a $400,000 investment. Not too shabby considering that with your digital marketing system detailed above, you would never have to invest millions of dollars to maintain your revenue stream. All you would have to do is continue to optimize and refine your digital marketing system to stay connected to your customers and ahead of your competition for less than ever before.

Investing Your Dollars in a Digital Marketing System

So assuming you have bought into my idea that you can make a positive impact on your bottom line for less by building a digital marketing system, let’s review what this system might include for your financial institution.

A Website That Sells
The very first thing that has to be improved will be your website. It is the heart of your organization going forward. Gone are the days of getting by with a glorified online brochure. It’s time to invest the time and dollars needed to build a website that sells to help guide consumers through their buying journey.

You will need much more than a nice looking responsive designed site. Both your website’s content and the technology it is built on should change depending upon your financial institution’s key personas and where they are in their buying journey for a particular product.

Recommended investment: $100,000

Content Marketing
The goal of your content marketing will be to help first and sell second. Over the course of a year, you will become a digital publisher with a purpose to build your digital community as you unite consumers and local business together. With a mix of blog articles, Ebooks, and videos, your unique lifestyle-focused content will transcend traditional financial topics found easily with a Google search.

This will help fuel local SEO while positioning you as a subject matter expert that will help guide consumers past their questions and concerns and towards their hopes and dreams. And unlike traditional marketing campaigns, the content marketing assets you produce will be used for years to come as consumers enter different stages of their buying journey.

Recommended investment: $120,000

Digital Advertising
As you produce content that helps first and sells second, and use the StorySelling methodology as your guide, you will need to distribute these stories through digital advertising. But don’t think this type of advertising is like traditional broadcast channels. You will use digital advertising to target specific market segments with specific lifestyle needs.

The goal of these ads is to position you as the subject matter expert offering help and guidance. Instead of advertising a direct product offer, the ads will promote some piece of helpful content, like an Ebook, to generate an inbound lead. Once this lead has been cookied, you will then remarket this prospect as they move through their buying journey, serving different ads that guide them along the way.

Recommended investment: $100,000

Marketing Automation
As your content marketing and digital advertising start to drive leads to your website that sells, your marketing automation platform will help you manage the increased lead volume. With pre-planned workflows, you will send personalized emails to guide consumers through their buying journey.

You will also be able to track your digital leads’ behavior and empower your sales team as they receive notice of their intent. Like content marketing, your marketing automation platform will be an asset that provides value as it is refined and optimized for years to come.

Recommended investment: $80,000

What’s the Best Bank or Credit Union Super Bowl Commercial?

The best bank and credit union Super Bowl commercial ever produced is one that was never produced.

In this fun, hypothetical example, we have made a lot of assumptions along the way to show you there are more effective ways to reach your audience than through traditional marketing channels.

While these traditional channels do help to serve a purpose in certain circumstances, they do so at a much higher cost while also being harder to track and quantify the impact they have on the bottom line.

As modern financial marketers, we must be held to higher standards to prove the impact our marketing has as we learn what works and what does not. By helping first and selling second, you will grow financial institution and leap ahead of your competition as you promote more than “great rates” and “amazing service.”

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ABOUT CU GROW

CU Grow is the financial services industry's most helpful digital marketing resource. They are leading financial institutions around the world on a mission to simplify digital marketing so banks and credit unions will grow through training, planning, and implementation. Since 2002, CU Grow has guided over 420 financial institutions, including Italy's largest bank, as they share research, insights, and methodologies that are rooted at the intersection of digital marketing technology and consumer behavior. 

ABOUT JAMES ROBERT LAY

James Robert Lay is the CEO of CU Grow and since 2002, he has helped guide over 420 financial institutions around the world on a mission to simplify digital marketing, so banks and credit unions will grow.

 James Robert has been named a CUNA "Credit Union Rock Star" as well as a "CU Times Trailblazer 40 Below". Kapost recognized him as one of "32 Texas Marketers You Should Follow" on Twitter while Docurated named him one of the "Top Marketing Automation Resources."

James Robert has spoken at over 120 industry events where he has shared research and insights with thousands of financial executives who repeatedly rank him as one of the highest rated speakers. 

James Robert is often quoted in many industry publications including US News and World Report, the Breaking Banks radio show on Voice America talk radio, NerdWallet, The Financial Brand, The Digital Banking Report, CU Times, CU Journal, Credit Union Magazine, CUES Magazine, Independent Banker Magazine and CO-OP THINK Magazine.