Going big for small business


Methods, skills, and techniques applied:

  • Marketing strategy, budgeting & planning

  • Multichannel marketing (digital, direct mail, paid media, experiential)

  • Data-driven segmentation, marketing ROI analysis, and campaign optimization

  • Matrixed stakeholder management

  • Cross-functional collaboration & indirect leadership


 

The smallest big budget

Your directive is to make a top 10 bank with a strong consumer brand the preferred bank for small business owners. You’re given millions of dollars to make it happen. Piece of cake! Also, your competitors are outspending you by multiples, you have a wide range of products to promote, and the business has a shifting acquisition strategy. Oh, and one month (May is Small Business Month) that is make or break.

I joined TD Bank at an exciting time. The brand had a well-established local footprint and track record of creating human-centered experiences. The business was solid and disciplined, the marketing talent was impressive, and investments were being made in digital capabilities. Focusing all of that energy into a Small Business Month campaign was a fun challenge.

Here’s how I led the team’s approach…

Prioritize the value prop

Banks offer a wide variety of valuable financial products and services, but to time-crunched small business owners, the options can be overwhelming. That’s why we made the small business specialist the hero of our value proposition. A real person who would connect with small business owners — to understand their needs and ambitions — and show them what the bank had to offer. That became the anchor of every tactical piece of creative and call-to-action. Focusing on that value proposition also allowed us to punch above our weight competitively and tell more human stories across all channels, including new media partners like Cheddar.

Shift to digital

The tried and true channel for bank marketing is direct mail. It has a proven, measurable ROI that can strengthen a campaign’s success. It can also eat your entire budget. And with digital account and loan applications coming online, investing in owned and paid digital marketing channels was the smart pivot to remain competitive. This didn’t mean turning off the printers though. It meant identifying new funding models and digging into performance metrics with analytics and media partners to determine the appropriate mix and acceptable level of risk. Diversifying our channel strategy gave us the ability to expand our segmentation and localization efforts in more creative and impactful ways.

Make way for the masters

Working in any highly matrixed corporate environment will expose you to many masters. Not masters in the “boss” sense, but true masters in their subject matter expertise. Masters in sales, product, strategy, customer service, media, content, creative, analytics, direct mail, brand, retail, and many more. Attempting to manage those masters can prove to be a humbling experience. Instead, trusting each team member to apply their specific strengths as either inputs or outputs of an integrated strategy became hugely important. We were able to move more quickly toward a collective success that focused less on our internal process and more on the value we were delivering to customers.

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