It was inevitable. During the branding roundtable discussions at the ABA Bank Marketing Conference a couple weeks ago, the topic of “bank branding and ROI” came up. I can’t say I was surprised.
I won’t pretend like I have a magic formula for guaranteeing, for instance, that your bottom line will increase $256,975.34 if you spend $50k on “bank branding.” It is indeed famously hard to measure, and for good reason. Let me tell you why it’s hard to measure…and why you should stop trying.
Asking “what is the ROI on bank branding” is like asking “what is the ROI on breathing?” It’s not a project, and you don’t have a choice. You’re doing it right now, whether you call it “branding” or not. How? Because each minute of each day, you’re shaping the experience people have with you, and telling them what you stand for. It’s impossible not to. The problem isn’t that you’re not branding, it’s rather that you don’t have a strategic, conscious plan for it. You’re still doing it, but haphazardly and without focus.
Like breathing is to living, branding cannot be extracted from the bigger process of simply being in business. You can’t itemize it out and look at it separately–it’s inextricably linked to everything else you’re doing, from HR to training to operations.
It’s important to stop thinking of bank branding like you think of bank marketing, like direct mail. Direct mail has a calculable ROI. You spend $5k on a campaign, and you better get $15k back (just a simple example), or else you simply don’t do it. Branding, on the other hand, isn’t like that. You couldn’t stop doing it even if you wanted to.
Plus, branding doesn’t have to cost a bunch of money. “Branding” isn’t about dropping $100k on a new logo and brochures. Branding is simply being conscious about the way you shape the experience for people–about intentionally standing for something.
Brady, what do you think?
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