Expanding from a regional footprint to a national presence is a major inflection point for any financial institution. The opportunity is large, but so is the risk of misreading new markets or overlooking the needs of loyal customers who helped build the brand.
Leadership teams are often left asking the same questions:
This case study highlights how a regional banking institution partnered with our team to answer those questions before investing in a national campaign.
National expansions can come with a lot of uncertainty. Even if there is a clear business need for a national campaign, there needs to be a strong understanding of the competitive landscape to understand how to address your potential customers. There also needs to be equal attention focused on preventing alienation of your current customers. A finance/banking institution came to us with this precise problem. While they are a strong regional institution, they were interested in a national campaign to grow their company. Their leadership felt unsure about the opportunities available and how to position their offerings to capture new customers. What they needed was customer research to understand their current and potential customers.
To address these questions, we designed a custom project that combines aspects of competitor analysis, customer research, and concept testing to gain a comprehensive understanding of our client’s business from multiple perspectives. The project’s focus was on understanding the competitive landscape, identifying the institution’s strengths, and determining areas for improvement. To answer strategic questions, the project employed two online surveys: one targeting the national audience and another targeting its current customers.
After meeting with the client to understand their specific business context and research needs, we designed the two surveys to help gauge the various research questions from different angles.
We first worked with our client to identify their ideal target demographic, the key people they need to win over to make this national launch successful.
As the national survey was targeting very high-level respondents, this required a white glove surveying approach with our team personally verifying, scheduling, and assisting the respondent through the survey. This helped guarantee a strong response rate despite the difficult/niche audience.
The customer survey was targeted at a provided list of clients’ current customers. We advised our client on personalized reminders to guarantee a strong response rate. To gain richer analyses, we included variables to capture the customer’s engagement level with the client to understand how various service levels affect customer perceptions.
The surveys were completed by 200 national participants and 134 current customers.
The client was given a topline report summarizing the key findings, including an executive summary of key themes and a question-by-question breakdown of the responses received by multiple key segments/cuts. We also delivered two debriefs with QA to further discuss the findings with their leadership team.
The findings revealed information on the competitive landscape and how our client sits relative to their competitors. From this research, we gained data-backed evidence to confirm which company is strong in which region and how target audiences view them.
By comparing the customer to the national data, we revealed a story of where they are now to where they are going with actionable steps to help guide their future launches.
It also highlighted the steps needed to engage customers at each step of the customer journey. These results were subsequently presented at their board meeting and used to guide their national launch by adjusting their camping messages. This research also helped the client save time on developing new business.
Drive Research is a global market research firm. If you are planning a regional or national growth initiative, our team can help you understand your market, your competitors, and the customers you most need to reach. Share a bit about your goals, audience, and timeline, and we will recommend a custom study design that fits your needs and budget.
