What Can the Music Industry Teach Financial Brands About Digital Growth?
by Audrey Cannata on August 18, 2020
Flashback to the early-90s. Green Day, Mariah Carey, and Janet Jackson are blasting through the boom-box in your room as you try to capture your favorite song in split-second timing on your cassette tape. Fast forward a few years and the revealing of the CD-R allowed consumers to “rip …
How Financial Brands Can Confidently Guide People Through Their Post COVID-19 Financial Struggles
by James Robert Lay on August 5, 2020
Health crisis. Financial crisis. Societal crisis. Mental health crisis. The perfect storm of crises hitting people all at once combining together to create exponential chaos and confusion. First, we have the health crisis itself. This pandemic is not going away anytime soon. From the …
How Can Banks and Credit Unions Reduce Financial Stress in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
by James Robert Lay on August 3, 2020
Confused. Stressed. Overwhelmed. How does money make you feel? Research continues to find there is a tremendous amount of shame in talking about money. And this is before COVID-19 turned our world upside down.
Banks and Credit Unions Can Use Courage to Guide Consumers Through this Brave New World
by James Robert Lay on July 30, 2020
The world that we knew no longer exists. The world that is coming, that we are living through right now, will be the new normal. You can move forward with confidence in this brave new world. How might you ask? What can we do to effectively break free from the confusion and chaos of th …
Does the Financial Industry Really Need Another Book?
by James Robert Lay on July 30, 2020
According to Google, the total number of books ever published is an impressive 130,000,000. That’s a lot of words to read and countless more letters to process but I digress. So, the question is: Does the world really need another book? Specifically, does it need another marketing boo …
What Does Digital Growth Really Mean?
by James Robert Lay on July 30, 2020
This is one of the most important, if not the most important question financial brands should be critically thinking about. The vast majority of bank and credit union leaders simply don't understand the concept of digital growth. That's OK. Digital growth builds on top of established …
The BANCER Strategy Circle for Financial Brands: Using the Consumer Journey to Optimize Sales
by James Robert Lay on July 28, 2020
Eighty-four percent of financial brands have not mapped out digital consumer journeys, according to our research at the Digital Growth Institute. Why is this such a problem? If you don’t have a digital consumer journey mapped out, just think what it means for the person on the other e …
As a Financial Brand, Focus on Consumer Personas, Not Demographics
by James Robert Lay on July 20, 2020
Financial brands are all about the numbers. So it makes sense that when you want to define and segment your audience, you turn to the hard data of demographics. But demographics are missing something very important: empathy. Let me show you what I mean. I’m going to describe a target …
Story Marketing for Financial Institutions: Be the Helpful Guide, Not the Hero
by James Robert Lay on July 13, 2020
See if you can spot the difference between these two commercials. In the 1980s, there was a famous Duracell commercial featuring toy bunnies banging on cymbals. Gradually, all the bunnies ran out of batteries… except for one.
Digital Adaptation: How Financial Brands Can Overcome Their Fear of Change
by Audrey Cannata on July 9, 2020
“The longer we can't go out, the longer they say, ‘Any person you meet could be a carrier of the virus,’ the longer that goes on, the more this transformation becomes habitual.” -Jim Marous The world as we know it has turned upside down. Changes are happening at an exponential pace. J …