Why shouldn’t marketing be expected to do better every year?

After the cost-cutting binge of the last two years, financial institutions now need to work at maintaining and growing customer revenues.

However, the commoditisation of financial products and services means that all players are subject to strong pricing pressures. So rebuilding margins is at least as important as growing volume.

Marketing is often seen as an act of faith, with unhelpful arms races between competitors.

But marketing cannot be immune from the discipline of demonstrating a measurable contribution to desired business outcomes.

In these constrained times, the cost-effectiveness of marketing matters more than ever.

OCP and Blonay have collaborated in a research initiative aimed at deepening insights into the effectiveness of marketing in the retail financial services industry.

Our approach, based on structured discussions with industry players, replicated OCP’s research into wrap propositions, published in in FTfm in 2007 and repeated in 2008.

Read more about our research note on Demonstrating marketing effectiveness in financial services.