Traditional bricks and mortar facilities are being visited less as the use and importance of online and mobile devices continues to increase according to Intuit Financial Services' 4th Annual Financial Management Survey released yesterday. According to the survey, while a large percentage of consumers still manage their finances offline (45%), the percentage of consumers using online services from their financial institution has continued to increase annually; increasing 11% since 2009 to 38% in 2011.

The main reason consumers said that they don't visit their bank branch as often as they used to is because they are visiting their FI's website and use their online banking tools (76%). These online banking tools are so important that one-third (33%) said they would switch their relationship to another institution if there were better online tools offered elsewhere.


The importance of online tools was reinforced by Brett King, author of the bestseller Bank 2.0 and founder of direct mobile banking start-up Movenbank at this year's BAI Retail Delivery Conference in Chicago. "Banking is quickly changing from a place you go to something you do everyday," stated King. He provided a chart from the American Bankers Association and Nielsen Research that illustrated the channel migration occurring today and projected in the future.

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According to Forrester Research, the number of consumers using the Web to research, buy and manage their financial products has grown steadily. In 2009, 63% of US online adults who researched a financial product did so online, with the number increasing over the past two years. Virtually all products were researched, from mortgages and student loans to savings and checking accounts. Interestingly, more than a third who researched products did so exclusively online.

The Web provides inherent advantages when researching and applying, including the convenience of being able to research whenever the user wants, the ease of comparing providers, and in some cases the ability to open the product or service in real time. While the use of the Web is correlated to age categories (with Gen Y using the Internet more frequently), all age groups are increasing their use of online and mobile channels to evaluate options before purchasing financial services.

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For my whole career, both in marketing and sales, I have understood the concept and importance of the sales funnel. Conceptually speaking, the traditional sales funnel starts with awareness being generated at the top of the funnel (the widest part) and then having the prospect work down the funnel through the stages of interest, consideration, commitment and eventually having a sale made at the narrowest part of the funnel. The funnel framework worked fairly well in providing the foundation for understanding what metrics should be concentrated on and where resources should be deployed.

But what happens in a world where prospects have so many more tools at their disposal to evaluate your offerings on their own or where they skip stages of the process all together?

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One of the biggest challenges facing small business bankers, mortgage loan officers, corporate bankers and trust officers is the ability to keep pipelines filled with qualified, sales ready leads. While marketing may execute programs that feed the funnel at the top, sales teams within the bank are still tasked with determining which leads are qualified and nurturing these leads in an environment where buyer behavior is less predictable and the evaluation of alternatives is being done more and more online and through social media.

In many cases, bank marketing and sales team are executing with conflicting strategies while working toward a common goal of generating sales. Leads are often provided by marketing before they are 'sales-ready', while sales is accused of not closing enough leads generated by marketing. This creates departmental conflict and lower sales team engagement due to the expectation of poor lead quality. In most cases, if a lead is not immediately sales-ready, no nurturing of the lead ev ntakes place resulting in program failures.

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Even with this potential, most banks are viewed as underserving the small business market according to research from Barlow, Aite Group, JD Powers, Greenwich Associates and others. The perceived brand of large banks (assets of 50ドル+ billion) became especially tarnished due to big banks' questionable financial stability, slower responsiveness to small business requests and perceived dwindling appreciation for the small business customer. As a result, more small businesses than ever state that they are willing to consider a change in financial institution partner.

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As the focus on marketing spend is magnified and marketers are asked to do more with less, marketers are continuing to increase their online and social marketing strategies, according to the CMO Council's 2010 State of Marketing report.

The global affinity network, which surveyed 600 of its members from across the world and representing most industry verticals, found that 46% of its members ranked investing in digital demand generation and online relationship building as a top initiative for 2010. The survey also found that 62% will be crunching customer data to improve segmentation and targeting. Most of the respondents plan on doing much of the heavy lifting internally or by specialized outsourced providers.

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