National scale can win the cost game in retail banking. But in today’s world of consolidation, margin pressure and digital sameness, local relevance wins the strategic advantage. This isn’t nostalgia for “your friendly good old hometown bank.” It’s disciplined,...
Since Y2K, conventional wisdom suggested that e-commerce would steadily diminish the role of the physical storefront. Yet even as digital platforms command a growing share of transactions, we’ve noted that physical locations remain indispensable. The storefront now...
The top 6 of the metrics that matter Part 3 of the “Marketing as a Profit Center” Series In the first two articles of our series, we established that marketing must move beyond vague goals like “brand awareness” or “engagement.” To become a true profit center,...
For too many businesses, marketing remains an expense item—a necessary cost of doing business – not a strategic driver of profit. But what if marketing wasn’t just an expense? What if, instead, it operated as a profit center—accountable for delivering measurable,...
3 Tips to turn a head-on contest with fin-techs to your advantage An announcement from SoLo Funds, a fin-tech company that operates a digital peer-to-peer lending service, could serve as both a warning and an opportunity for traditional banking institutions. SoLo...
If end-of-year sales results against the 2024 marketing budget were lackluster, it may be time to shift thinking on budget planning. For decades, a rule-of-thumb for setting marketing budgets has reliably been a simplistic percentage-of-previous-sales formula. We’re...
