In this episode of the Believe in Banking podcast, Gina and Juliet spotlight news about how major banks like Chase, PNC, and Bank of America are making significant investments in expanding and renovating their branch networks, demonstrating the continued vitality of the branch channel. They also announce the upcoming report “The Payoff & Process of Branch Investment: Maximizing ROI for Financial Brands,” coming in November, which explores what makes branch investment successful. One critical component of ensuring ROI for the in-person banking channel is branch marketing. Effective branch marketing leverages proximity to deliver marketing messages that strengthen relationships with customers or members, drive awareness of the financial brand, and promote local growth to ensure institutional success. Gina and Juliet discuss best practices in branch marketing, including employing a zonal framework for design and merchandising, which spotlights the right place, right message and right delivery for branch marketing and how targeted messaging is the most effective means for creating customer connections.
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Intro: This is Believe in Banking, a podcast series for decision makers, influencers and leaders, featuring experts taking on the financial industry’s most pressing issues with insight and empathy. The podcast features information and conversations designed to enlighten and empower.
Gina Bleedorn (00:18): Welcome to our podcast for Believe in Banking. I’m Gina Bleedorn, President and CEO of Adrenaline.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (00:25): And I’m Juliet D’Ambrosio, Chief Experience Officer at Adrenaline.
So Gina, I’m so excited to start to tell the world about our next report coming up, and I think this is a great place to just get into it a little bit, even as a tease. It’s called the “Payoff and Process of Branch Investment,” and we look at how you maximize the ROI for financial brands. You’ll remember a few months ago we published a report, the “ROI of Rebranding,” which helped us answer the question in an unmistakable and utterly quantitative way on how branding and how rebranding and institution can drive out-of-industry average success in terms of growth – member growth, customer growth, CAGR. This one is the branch-focused corollary that looks at answering the same questions. These are questions we hear every day from our clients.
We have a channel that is the most expensive channel in terms of delivery. We know that we have to make an investment. We know the investment is significant over time. What do we get out of it? What can we point to that can say that this investment is worth it? And that’s so important as we are having those conversations not only with executives, but with their boards. And so this report looks far and wide, giving both quantitative and qualitative looks really at the ROI of branch investment.
In this reporting, some of the statistics that we found, some of the trends are stunning, really sort of unexpectedly pointing in favor of the ongoing vitality of the branch channel. Eighty-six percent of all consumers have used a physical branch in the last year, and 50% of consumers say that they would be uncomfortable with a bank that had no local branches. And I think it’s also really interesting when we think about switching and the idea that 31% of consumers have switched banks due to branch closures in their markets. So, all of those bits and pieces of insights are leading to this idea that the branch is the most vital channel in terms of acquiring new customers and deepening relationships with existing ones.
Gina Bleedorn (03:09): I cannot wait to see it, especially because a lot of the trends and data are in some ways even counterintuitive. And the industry needs to hear them right now at a time when certainly the largest banks in the country are going into a surge of branch investment, of branch attention. And so especially for regionals, communities, credit unions, it’s really important to understand what’s happening in the broader landscape and make sure your organization is not behind. I cannot wait to see it and share it.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (03:48): We’re publishing this report in November, so Gina, you don’t have long to wait to be able to see it. And we’re also going to be talking about it on the podcast, really going into detail about the findings. So, I’m looking forward to that as sort of a lead up to this.
You mentioned the word counterintuitive, that a lot of these findings seem counterintuitive. There has been so much focus on the online – digital transformation, digital channels, fintechs – when we think about where the branches are today. And some of the headlines that we are seeing from the biggest institutions, Chase PNC, both making headlines by their very clear investment in their branch network, both in new builds, market expansion, renovating, and refreshing their existing networks. We just saw another headline like that.
Gina Bleedorn (04:46): Yeah, BofA who had made an announcement a little over a year ago made a second one. They’re about to open more than 165 branches, what they call financial centers by the end of 2026, expanding into Kentucky for the first time. They are one of many that are following this trend. I think it’s been a combination of the rate environment and also the lack of capital and lack of raised capital that is now changing. That is turning into a really powerful force of money going into the physical branch network.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (05:26): Yeah, it’s interesting to see where they choose to expand. You mentioned Kentucky. Thinking about PNC who announced earlier this year, they’re spending almost a billion dollars between now and 2028 and it sort of almost feels like 2025 already. So, that’s really just in the next three years, a hundred new branches in their existing markets and renovating 1,200 locations nationwide. Jeff Martinez, who is their EVP and head of branch banking says that PNC is looking for markets where a new branch will be able to show a profit within three to five years. So, they are going in with a very smart strategy driven by data, by analytics where they are finding the best opportunity in which to grow.
Gina Bleedorn (06:17): We’re honored to be working with PNC in helping them on this mission. What PNC realizes that I think many institutions do not or do not realize as much as they should, is maximizing the branch via marketing and cross-sell within it. Certainly the design of it, the merchandising and being in the right place of course precede that. But once you’re in the right place and you have the right overall layout, you need to create an environment that enables your staff and your customers to engage in your products and services and hopefully expand share of wallet because there are far fewer visits to the branch. So, when those visits happen, they’re far more valuable and you have to maximize them. The idea of branch marketing and of treating the branch as a channel, in some ways your most valuable channel, is something that we think the industry needs to get on top of, and fast.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (07:26): Yeah, Gina, I love the way I’ve heard you describing the purpose, which is for branch marketing. The exterior of your branch is your beacon and it’s for acquisition. The inside of your branch is about your brand and it is about cross-sell; it’s about deepening. When we think about branch marketing, we’re really thinking about all of that holistically inclusively as a way to really unlock the power of the branch for both of those. Tell me a little bit more. I love to hear you tell this story about how branch marketing works. What are the pieces and parts and how is it different than other forms of marketing?
Gina Bleedorn (08:11): I will tell you and I like to talk about it, because it’s actually not complicated. It’s just often overlooked or not focused [on]. And so I think it’s such low hanging fruit to be able to do it and do it right. And it’s a combination of the right message, in the right place in the space, and then delivered with the right cadence and consistency. Typically that is in the form of digital marketing playlists. Now, what is really hard about branch marketing more so than most other channels, akin to perhaps very top of funnel awareness marketing, it’s hard to track because it is one-to-many. It is not at all one-to-one.
You have to think very differently about the outside of your branch versus the inside of the branch. Just as you said, Juliet, the outside is the beacon and the billboard, the outside is for acquisition and understanding that the branch is your #1 driver of consideration, maximizing the billboard effect with marketing in addition to your brand signage. Everything else about the branch and how it looks, that is the objective on the inside. They are already your customers. So, there you are not selling checking accounts for the most part anymore. You are trying to deepen share of wallets with other products and services. That means you have to think about those two things very differently for starters.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (09:49): And it gets into when we start talking about the outside versus the inside into zonal strategy. I love the zone framework because it really represents best practice for how you intentionally design and orchestrate the customer experience. So, yes, it’s marketing, but it’s really about that experience and it is the combination. I’ve always thought of psychology of your customers or the people walking into the branch, their journey. What are they looking for? What are their needs at each phase of their journey within your branch? And it’s the combination of that overlaid with the branch needs, the staff needs. What did they need to be able to do the best job possible throughout by helping to shepherd that experience along and the financial organization’s needs. What do we need to accomplish at every zone?
The Attract zone, which is the exterior; it is the entrance. The Engage zone where someone begins to look around, orient and see where they are and make the choices about where they go. Sometimes they are waiting and hosted. The Transact zone – whatever that transaction looks like, whether it’s typical teller line or not. And then the Consult zone, which are where those deeper, one-on-one more private conversations are held. And so the branch marketing, looking through the zonal strategy, what we’re trying to do is focus right place to the right message, to the right type of delivery. What’s the right channel that we need to use or the right delivery mechanism at any one of those points. And I think that by having a very intentional approach to your zoning strategy, it really is a framework that can be used, replicated, and allow for scale and cohesive experiences, whatever your branch network looks like.
Gina Bleedorn (12:04): Building off of that last piece, Juliet, with the delivery. When you think about delivery, you really have three macro areas to deliver what we’ll call marketing. One is statically – in the form of fixtures. They can be on the wall, on a desk, on kiosks, or freestanding. The second is digital, as mentioned before, digital signage. So TVs on walls, playing, moving, marketing messages, not playing CNN, by the way. And the third is collateral. So anything that a customer can take outside of the branch. And it’s important to think about these delivery channels very strategically so that you are designing their use to be #1, what’s going to be the most efficient for the bank to deliver. And #2, what’s going to be the most effective in getting eyeballs.
When it comes to static, these are more appropriately for longer term messages that might be more brand in nature that are not changing out as much and they become more of a fundamental backdrop. More marketing-y, promotional, real time seasonal education, edutainment, all of those things then become or should be in your digital signage. So, digital is now just the standard for branch marketing. You’re really not going to gain any attention competing with customers’ phones unless you have something digital and something moving on the wall. Really digital signage is the primary standard delivery vehicle now for any true marketing in the branch. But that last piece too, collateral, you need far less of it, but there are certain pieces like product grids, like promotional give ones we like to say instead of take ones and in some cases actual product brochures when you’re trying to open relationships.
But really you don’t need that much collateral anymore and anything you do have should be given largely to a customer instead of just racks of brochures that are no longer compliant and gathering dust. If you think about these things more intelligently, you’ll have much more effectiveness in actually reaching the customer.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (14:29): Yeah, one of the words that you mentioned, Gina, is less, and it is a truth universally acknowledged, I think by our clients at least the ones who come to us for help with their in-branch marketing, that they got a lot of stuff. They’ve got a lot of stuff going on in the branch. And when I say stuff, I mean the dust-gathering collateral, but I also mean what we hear is that their lines of business are all fighting sort of for attention within the branch. And so the idea that we’ll have a ‘more is more’ approach actually diminishes the effectiveness of all of the marketing. And so what we found through very clear research is that the fewer but very targeted and intentional message strategy within the branch can actually be far more effective. It has higher recall, so customers or members coming out will actually remember what they’ve seen if there’s only a few key messages that they are seeing.
That’s really the piece of the overall in branch marketing strategy that focus on message allocation, which has a less is more approach. And also empowers marketing teams, branch marketing teams to be able to balance all the needs of their line of business leaders who want to be heard and seen and highlighted within the branch. Everyone gets their moment and because there’s less noise happening, it can be far more effective.
Gina Bleedorn (16:14): And a quick way to think about the categories of your programming on your digital signage playlists, you want the right mix of, in the macro sense, marketing and non-marketing content because in a way your marketing is the commercials and the non-marketing is the actual things people are interested in and want to see. And that non-marketing turns into things like education, teaching them about tips, tricks, advice, et cetera. That certainly can and should tie into whatever products you are marketing.
But think about education as a key non-marketing category, also anything local. And a lot of this can be done with feeds and automation. So, you have local, you have education and information, then you have marketing products and services. And then on top of that, you need a semblance of just brand – echoing your brand, your values, your proposition – and that mix is what keeps the channel alive and what makes the channel interesting in engaging customers in the branch.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (17:26): It’s interesting, we mentioned PNC before. We also have recently worked with Flagstar Bank, one of the biggest mergers of 2023 moving into 2024, and PNC Bank, who has recently gone through a rebrand. And both of those used the opportunity to look at their in branch marketing holistically and strategically to deliver everything that we just talked about. A choreographed way to think about the zones and to align the message to the place, to the delivery, to the person to help those conversions be as successful as possible. And then post conversion day and looking forward into the future, they have now a framework to strategically use their branches for a deepening of customer relationships.
Gina Bleedorn (18:31): The advantages of successful branch marketing that again, I think are low hanging fruit that many are not taking advantage of, it’s increasing your share of wallet. It is increasing your top-of-mind relevancy. It’s helping you expand the purpose of the branch from just transaction to advice giving. It is connecting the brand that you stand for to the branch experience. It’s helping with just visual experience continuity between branches. And its increasing not only customer advocacy, but even staff education and advocacy. Ultimately, the goal is leveraging this in-person proximity to deliver information that’s relevant to the consumer, made for the moment, and get credit for giving them that information because they’re inside of your environment. And so this is the type of way to maximize the power of the investment in your physical channel.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Believe in Banking, a podcast series created to empower decision makers, influencers, and industry leaders in financial services. Be sure to also join us on our flagship site, believeinbanking.com.