Approximately 1.9 billion people around the world are online, with about 266 million of them located in North America. Yet, the majority of bank marketing executives at the 142 FIs surveyed don’t know how much their company spendings on online marketing, or estimate that spending at 0% to 5% of the bank’s total marketing budget.
To say the results of The Financial Brand’s study on online marketing released today are shocking is a gross understatement.
As our friend Jeffry Pilcher, The Financial Brand’s author, put it:
Most financial institutions invest almost nothing in online marketing (or have no clue).This suggests one of two things. Either banks and credit unions don’t take online marketing seriously enough yet to invest in it, and/or they believe that online marketing doesn’t require a significant investment.
There are several important data points to consider. 22% don’t track or measure their online activities, while only 8% do so all the time. And while 45% of banks and credit unions don’t have any online marketing staff, 46.4% of the 154 respondents’ FIs have a Facebook page. This data suggest a sort of me-too, check-the-boxes approach to online marketing. More proof: “While most financial institutions embrace email marketing, a surprising 31% don’t,” The Financial Brand reports.
Banks should be doing better, a lot better.