The role of the bank marketing function is continuing to evolve to become more critical to overall enterprise, according to a new survey of bank marketers conducted by American Bankers Association. However, a considerable gap still exists between the broad and growing responsibilities of the function compared to how marketing is measured and evaluated. Here are some highlights:
Marketing is regarded as an important function
Consistent with last year’s study of the same topic, the marketing department continues to report into the organization at a very senior level, as 93 percent of this year’s respondents report to a c-level executive or executive vice president. Sixty percent report directly to the CEO. Additional evidence of the essential nature of the function is that 52 percent of marketing leaders report attending all or most senior leadership meetings, defined as CEO-direct-report meetings.
The role is broadening considerably from traditional marketing and communications
An important and encouraging finding of this year’s study is that marketing’s responsibility is evolving and expanding into areas that are viewed as essential to future growth of the enterprise. While we would expect marketing to have responsibility for advertising (98 percent), branding (95 percent), and communications (92 percent), critical areas such as marketing strategy (89 percent) and public relations (86 percent) also fell within the vast majority of the respondents’ domains.
What is particularly interesting is that emerging and essential areas such as digital channel management (website and/or online account opening at 76 percent), data and analytics (48 percent), social media management (95 percent) and marketing technology management (CRM, MCIF, and/or marketing automation at 51 percent) were also part of marketing’s responsibilities. This clearly supports the trend seen in other industries that the marketing function is taking on a growing responsibility in customer data analytics and insight which then drives more intelligent and personalized marketing efforts, typically through the digital channel.
Another trend to watch is that customer experience was mentioned by 47 percent of the respondents as being housed in the marketing function. Marketing has represented the ‘voice of the customer’ for years in many financial organizations, but the fact that this has been formalized in nearly half the institutions represented by this year’s survey is an important finding.
Some critical ingredients are missing
This year’s survey reinforced the fact that marketing is for the most part still viewed as “an expense to be managed, rather than a revenue growth function.” This was most dramatically revealed when respondents explained how marketing’s success is determined. See the responses and read the whole article on ABA Bank Marketing.
