It goes without saying that the current economic climate poses significant challenges to marketers, in particular those in the Financial Services industry. New regulations, increasing competition, mobility of customers, and the rapidly emerging world of social media, all add up to a chaotic marketing environment. However, one thing that remains fairly consistent is the number of people visiting their Bank or Credit Union branch every month. As such, having a well crafted Digital Merchandising strategy can pay huge dividends. Some of the key benefits include:
- Improve the Overall In-Branch Environment
- Target Messaging to Specific Customer Segments
- Achieve Message Consistency Across Entire Branch Network
- Lower Cost of Production of Marketing Materials
- Greater Control Over Message Delivery
- Increase Speed and Success of New Product Introductions
- Improve Delivery of Training to Increase Sales Productivity
Maximize Available Data
One of great advantages of Captive Indoor Media’s system is that it enables you to leverage existing customer or member data to more accurately target messaging. An MCIF or CRM system contains plenty of information that can be used to maximize your Digital Merchandising strategy. For example, you should be able to gather basic data on:
- Branch Traffic Patterns
- Heaviest time slots (e.g. 9-11 am, 11am-1pm, 1pm-4pm)
- Customer segments visiting the branch in those time slots
- Average Time in Branch
- Demographics
- Product Mix of the customers/members visiting the branch
Using the data from above, one can begin to determine overall trends and the best times at which to reach specific people who visit the branch. These trends will help guide the selection of content, product focus, content schedule, show duration, and the weighted distribution of content in the show.
Content Mix
The follow is a very simple example of how the mix of content can be determined by simply knowing the average time spent in the branch.
- Each product file is :30 seconds
- Each "Entertainment" file is :30 seconds
- Weather & News files are 1 minute & 30 seconds each
Calculations
- Average In-Branch Time = 12 minutes x 60 seconds = 720 seconds
- 65% Targeted Product Ads = 720 x .65 = 468 seconds (or 16 files)
- 25% Weather & News = 720 x .25 = 144 seconds (or 2.5 files)
- o 10% Entertainment = 720 x .10 = 72 seconds (or 2 files)
As the example illustrates, we were able to quickly determine that we need to build a show containing 16 product files, 2 weather and news files, and 2 entertainment files. Marketers can go several layers beyond this and begin to identify specific files within these categories that would best target the desired audience.
The flexibility and dynamic nature of Digital Merchandising make it a very powerful tool. With a little bit of data gathering, analysis and planning, marketers can achieve outstanding results.
