We know banking.
We work exclusively with community-based financial institutions so we understand your business and the challenges it faces. We see the big picture and with our expert knowledge, we can uncover and interpret opportunity to craft effective strategy tailored to your situation.
For special projects and initiatives that demand more than incremental growth to be considered successful, our Go-to-Market Planning approach creates a winning customer experience for the right customers while driving the highest possible sales at the lowest possible cost.
Discovery
Market Analysis
Audience Definition
Opportunity Definition
Brand Definition
Brand Positioning
Marketing Strategy
Goal Definition
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INSIGHT
What happens when, after a century of achieving growth in its legacy markets, your community bank maxes out its potential? That was the challenge for one Midwest community bank. They needed to look for new ways to grow without putting their current franchise at risk.
Some initiatives demand more than incremental growth to be considered successful. Our Go-To-Market approach focuses on creating a winning customer experience for the right customers while driving the highest possible sales at the lowest possible cost.
STRATEGY
To help our client achieve their objective, Galapagos utilized a unique and comprehensive methodology that incorporated industry-leading analysis and relevant demographic, psychographic, and firmographic data to review new markets for potential and fit. After identifying several potential locations for consideration and consulting on different market growth models the bank could deploy, the bank’s executive team agreed on an approach that could generate a staggering 80% of their future bank-wide growth opportunity from one specific market.
But an analysis of the types of customers and businesses in this market showed that its composition was markedly different from the bank’s current markets. Using the same strategy in this new market would be doomed to failure. The 150+ year old bank’s brand and customer experience would need to be positioned very differently.
EXECUTION & MEASUREMENT
Working with the Galapagos team, the bank decided on a specialized LPO approach that focused on Wealth Management, Commercial, and Mortgage, then took the necessary steps through strategic talent hiring and the development of a new professional services office to add this high-potential, higher-income market to the mix.
To further support a successful market entrance, Galapagos rebranded the bank in a way that illustrated the unique value proposition of the new office and engaged those higher-income retail and commercial customer segments that the bank prized. Once the approach was finalized, Galapagos developed a go-to-market plan, utilizing a unique mix of digital, targeted, and in-person communications to create awareness and successfully position this bank’s highly engaged, expert local team as the preferred option for Wealth Management, Mortgage, and Business banking. In the three years immediately following the market entrance, this market has been responsible for almost 90% of the bank’s overall growth.
