Bank Marketing Show

Hosted by Chris Bates & Dan Novalis

Business Marketing

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Episodes

122

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

The BANK MARKETING SHOW, the podcast that engages and informs you for success in today's marketplace. It's the show that will make you a better marketer with trends, tactics and inspirations from experts and industry leaders. If you're wanting to impact your personal success and position your company as the best choice in your market, then you're in the right place!

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60 recent

October 2, 2026Episode 12243 min

Ep 122 - Patrick Dix - What's Your T-shirt

If someone walked past wearing your bank's tagline on a t-shirt, would anyone in town recognize it as your bank? For most banks, the answer is decidedly no. But there's real value in distilling your brand down to it's most memorable elements. Patrick Dix spent 25 years in broadcast journalism before joining Shazam, where he's now Vice President of Client and Association Engagement and runs the Shazam Speakers Bureau — coordinating 120 speaking events a year across the country. He joins Dan and Chris to talk about why community bankers tell incredible stories at dinner and then genericize it to "strength, trust, commitment" on their ads, and how to close that gap. In this episode: • The t-shirt exercise: how to boil your bank's brand down to something your community can recognize at a glance • The three categories nearly every community bank ad falls into • How to not speak banker: what to do when you want to say things like "well-capitalized" and "remote deposit capture" • Who's your "Mabel"? Knowing exactly who you're talking to before you tell the story • The high school football ad that cost almost nothing and reached every aunt, uncle, and grandparent in town — plus why stories are remembered 22 times more than facts About our guest: Patrick Dix is Vice President of Client and Association Engagement at Shazam, where he runs the Shazam Speakers Bureau — coordinating about 120 speaking events a year and personally presenting at around 50. Before Shazam, he spent 25 years in broadcast journalism and holds a degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. If you attend state banking association conferences, odds are you'll run into him soon. Resources: • Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickdix/ • Shazam: www.shazam.net • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com • Contact: contact@bankmarketingshow.com

September 24, 2026Episode 12128 min

Ep 121 - When The Unexpected Happens

A tornado. A big event coming to town. A system outage. A competitor getting acquired. Sooner or later, something unexpected happens, and everyone at the bank is asking, "How do we get the word out?" Most banks don't have a plan for these moments. In this episode, Dan and Chris walk through marketing's role when the unexpected happens. Positive or negative, you need to think through the practical questions: who decides what to say, who approves it, where to say it, and what your response says about your brand. How you show up is one big way your bank builds trust, and saying nothing can destroy trust fast. In this episode: • What kind of plan you should have for unexpected events, and what belongs in it • Matching the channel to the moment: what earns a red alert banner vs. a social post vs. a sign at the drive-up • The campaigns you forgot were running: why your scheduled posts and digital ads need a look before anything goes out • How one bank became its town's news source after a tornado, and why staying silent might be the riskiest move of all Resources: • Want to talk through building your bank's response plan? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com

September 9, 2026Episode 12034 min

Ep 120 - Marketing Department in 2030

The headlines say 65% of marketing jobs won't survive AI. The same kind of headlines many years ago said ATMs would kill the teller. What actually happens is different: the job survives, but the job description doesn't. Dan and Chris look a few years down the road at what the average community bank marketing department will look like — what work disappears, what takes its place, and why community banks come out of this shift with a bigger advantage than they went in with. The big banks will automate everything and sound like it. The community bank marketer who pairs AI leverage with genuine local presence ends up more differentiated, not less. But only if you start building the muscles now. In this episode: • What disappears from the marketer's plate, but why it doesn't necessarily mean jobs disappearing at community banks • What fills the space: the work that actually differentiates a bank, and the internal role most marketers haven't stepped into yet • Why niching finally becomes practical for banks that could never justify the content lift before • A simple homework assignment to find out what you could hand off this month Resources: • Watch our AI webinar and related episodes at bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com • Contact: contact@bankmarketingshow.com

August 31, 2026Episode 11934 min

Ep 119 - Where Marketing Meets Main Street – Making Your Digital Experience as Good as Your Lobby

Every community banker says some version of the same thing: "If we could just get them into the lobby, we'd win them over." And they're right — the in-person experience is the community bank superpower. But customers touch your bank digitally more than ten times for every one time they walk through the door. If your website reads like a rate sheet and your social feed is a bulletin board, they'll never want to visit your lobby. Dan and Chris pull together a lot of threads from this year — AI, competitive analysis, social, the website-as-brochure problem — around one question: if someone only knew your bank from its digital presence, would they recognize it when they walked in? Your best CSR wouldn't hard-sell a mortgage customer on a checking account. Your digital channels and homepage shouldn't either, they should connect with them as a human. In this episode: • A question every bank marketing team should ask about their digital presence • A practical way to use AI to find the user experience gaps you're too close to see • How to use what your branch staff knows about greeting customers, to help shape your website • The thing your bigger competitors can't replicate, and how to make it the heart of your digital presence Resources: • Want to brainstorm your digital experience or hear best practices from other banks? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com

August 17, 2026Episode 11829 min

Ep 118 - Your Website Is a Brochure (And That's the Problem)

We've looked at and designed hundreds of bank websites over the years, and 9 out of 10 – maybe even 9.9 out of 10 - lead with products. "Here are our accounts." "We're a better option." "Here are our rates." They're digital brochures — and they all say the same thing. Nobody wakes up wanting a checking account. They want to stop paying fees, save for a house, or grow a business without losing their local banking relationship. In this episode, Dan and Chris make the case that the fix doesn't need to involve a new from-scratch website, you just need to reframe your copy and content. Lead with the customer's problem, not your product's features. The product details still matter, but they're not the hook. In this episode: • The difference between leading with your product and leading with your customer's problem • How to rewrite a product page without a redesign, and how even a few sentences above the feature table can change everything • Why this matters even more now that AI is answering customer questions Resources: • Want help with a competitive analysis or AI visibility project? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com

July 31, 2026Episode 11733 min

Ep 117 - Beyond The Hashtag

Scroll through any community bank's social feed. You'll find rate posts, holiday closures, "we're hiring," and the occasional stock photo with a tagline. But one thing you usually won't find is high post engagement, because there's not much to engage with. Most banks do the media part of social media well, but need to focus more on the social part. The banks getting real traction on social don't post much about products. They post about people, community, and live events. This week, Dan and Chris talk through how to stop posting like a bank, and how to turn social media from a broadcast channel into actual conversations. In this episode: • How the social media algorithm works against you (and other banks) • The litmus test: would a human actually stop scrolling for this? • How to get real stories flowing from your branches back to the marketing team • Why compliance doesn't have to kill creativity — and a free FFIEC social media compliance overview you can request • Giveaways, content buckets, and the 15-minutes-a-day approach to real engagement Resources: • Want the FFIEC social media compliance overview? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com

July 20, 2026Episode 11621 min

Ep 116 - Marketing and Lending

At most community banks, marketing puts out ads and tries to pull people in the door. Lending makes calls, shakes hands at Chamber meetings, and occasionally asks marketing for a brochure. Both teams are trying to bring more business into the bank, but only coordinate infrequently. Community banking is built on relationships, but the relationship between marketing and lending is often not given the attention it deserves. In this episode, Dan and Chris make the case that connecting these two teams gives a bank serious advantage over others still operating in silos. In this episode: • Why marketing and lending are running on parallel tracks at most banks — and what both teams are missing because of it • Three ideas for connecting inbound and outbound marketing and sales efforts • How marketing can make a lender's cold call a warm one • What lenders can give marketing that no amount of research will surface on its own Resources: • Want to talk about how your marketing can better support your lending team? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com

July 6, 2026Episode 11532 min

Ep 115 - DIY AEO

Last episode, we told you to go ask AI about your bank. If you did, you probably didn't love what you found. We gave you some actionable next steps, but we go much further into the "Now what?" this week. Most of the mass market AEO advice out there is written for e-commerce companies and big local service businesses that live and die on web traffic. Community banks don't operate that way. AI visibility is still important, but there are some things you should do differently when your goal is trust-building and engagement, versus maximum web traffic. Dan and Chris break it down into four concrete steps you can do on your own, starting this week, with no budget and no developer. In this episode: • Four steps to improve your AI visibility, that you can do now • Why your local competitors and digital competitors are not the same • A technical step that nearly no community banks have done, that you can have AI write for you • How getting started puts you ahead of 90% of community banks Resources: • Google's Rich Results Test for checking your schema: search.google.com/test/rich-results • Want a deeper AI visibility audit? Reach out: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com • Contact: contact@bankmarketingshow.com

June 22, 2026Episode 11430 min

Ep 114 - Can AI Find Your Bank

Go ask ChatGPT or Claude who the best bank in your town is. Or ask Google AI where to get a small business loan in your county. See what comes back. If your bank isn't in the answer — or worse, if a competitor is — that's not a future problem. That's happening right now, every time a potential customer asks AI for a recommendation instead of typing "bank near me" into Google. This isn't a traditional search ranking issue. People are having conversations with AI — asking real questions in plain language about real problems. And AI is answering based on what it can find. If your website says "your trusted financial partner" and nothing else, there's nothing for it to work with. In this episode, Dan and Chris walk through how to audit your bank's AI visibility, why most community banks are invisible in AI results, and what to do about it — starting this week. In this episode: • How to audit your AI visibility right now — and why you should search as a customer, not as a banker • Why generic messaging makes you invisible to AI — and the difference between ranking for a keyword and being the answer to a question • The thin content problem: why a bullet-point feature list isn't enough anymore • Why getting specific about your geographies, your customer types, and your specialties makes you more findable — not more narrow • Who you're competing against online may not be who you think you're competing against on the ground Resources: • Reach out for a deeper AI visibility audit: contact@bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com • Contact: contact@bankmarketingshow.com

June 5, 2026Episode 11322 min

Ep 113 - Finding The Whitespace

Every community bank knows they need to differentiate. But how? Most banks skip the hard part — figuring out what the market actually looks like from the customer's perspective — and jump straight to writing a tagline. The result? Messaging that sounds like every other bank in town. The answer is whitespace: the gap between what your competitors are saying and what your ideal customers actually need to hear. Find that gap, and you have a marketing message people will pay attention to. Miss it, and you're just adding to the noise. In this episode, Dan and Chris walk through a four-step process for identifying whitespace in your market and turning it into messaging that resonates with the customers you're trying to reach. The process builds on the AI and competitive analysis topics covered in recent episodes and the Kadince webinar — including a live competitive analysis demo available at bankmarketingshow.com. In this episode: • Why most competitive analyses don't lead anywhere useful — and what to do differently • A four-step process for finding the messaging gap your bank can own • The difference between digital whitespace and on-the-ground competition — and why both matter • How AI fits into this process without replacing the thinking • A simple test to know if your messaging is specific enough Resources: • Watch the competitive analysis demo in the AI webinar at bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Show: www.bankmarketingshow.com • The Bank Marketing Minute (Newsletter): www.bankmarketingminute.com • Contact: contact@bankmarketingshow.com

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