Building A Customer-Led Growth Strategy

With the recent collapse of our nation's regional banks, the steady rise of entrepreneurship, and the convergence of traditional FinServ brands and FinTech Disruptors, it’s more important than ever to recognize that the SMB customer’s needs go beyond bank deposits and withdrawals. The SMB customer has never had more brands to choose from and the brands that understand their needs the best will be the brands that win the market.

Our latest category entry point (CEP) research collaboration with The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute uncovers what SMB customers really care about when they’re in-market for business banking and payment products, including which brands dominate which CEPs and which whitespaces are open for the taking. Read the full report to learn how to adopt a financially framed, customer-led growth strategy, specifically:

Why mental availability is the most important brand metric that FinServ companies should track
How CEPs help build mental availability
Where to place your bets based on the competitive landscape

Insight 1

Only the mentally available brands get remembered, considered, and ultimately chosen. The data shows that only a small number of buyers are in-market at any given time and when they are, they tend to consider and buy only the brands that they remember.
Insight 2

Your brand is more likely to be remembered when linked to relevant buying situations or Category Entry Points (CEPs). CEPs are a process of elicitation and elimination to land on the buying situations that matter most to your brand.
Insight 3

Mental Market Share is a function of Mental Penetration and Mean Network Size. What that means is that in order to build Mental Availability, you need to increase both the depth and breadth of your CEP associations.
Insight 4

SMBs aren’t just exposed to B2B ads across their media; your brand’s B2B ads are also competing against B2C ads for the SMB’s attention and memory. Any brand’s SMB-targeted advertising efforts are strongly influenced by their brand counterpart’s B2C/Retail halo.
Insight 5

You have to evaluate your brand against your competitors to understand where your mental advantages lie. Then you can optimize your creative and media plans against the right CEPs.

Building A Customer-Led Growth Strategy

Category Entry Points In Business Banking

Research Readout

Ready to apply B2B Institute principles to your marketing strategy?