Delivering a Strategic & Holistic Bank Marketing Solution

Attracting New Customers Is More Challenging Than Ever

Intense competition, disruptive technology, and generational shifts have come together to accelerate change in financial services. It’s becoming harder to get people to change their banks – only 4% changed banks in 2018, down from a high of 8%. Intensified competition and the current low interest rate environment are compressing margins. COVID-19 is accelerating the shift to remote banking, and millennials have now overtaken baby boomers as America’s largest generation. Focusing your strategy and ensuring your message breaks through to your marketplace are more important than ever.

To grow and thrive, you need a clear path forward and an affordable way to implement the changes required. It’s critical that you have an experienced and trusted partner with a proven approach that can help you build a foundation for achieving your objectives and long-term success. Our team combines seasoned bank executives (CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs) with strategic marketers and creative innovators who will help you implement holistic solutions to win hearts, minds, and market share even while change in financial services accelerates.

Marketing Drives ROI

Princeton Partners is a financial marketing consultancy and creative agency that strives to be your trusted advisor and partner. Our team includes experienced bankers and seasoned marketers. We understand your business, the banking business. Members on our team have been executives of banks. We know and understand the challenges and risks facing bank Boards and management because we’ve been there.

Before we propose any solutions, we work to understand your situation: your customers, market, performance, strategic objectives, and organizational goals. Using a comprehensive discovery process, we can then understand who you are and provide the best solutions for your institution.

We use research and data to drive planning, uncover new insights, and create big ideas. We design and execute marketing campaigns leveraging best-in-class data and programmatic platforms that are normally accessible only to the world’s largest companies – and we do it with transparency, accountability, and collaboration with our exclusive partner firms.

Our partners work on every account, so you always get C-suite level insight and skill. Whether your need is to develop a strategic plan, refresh or reinvent your brand, accelerate product or service innovation, or build a digital marketing program to drive prospects through the funnel, our approach gets results.

1990 – 2010: The Bank Expansion and Consolidation Years 

During this period of rapid branch expansion and consolidation, we helped many large regionals manage and transition their brands. We worked with several community banks to support their local marketing before they were rolled up in an acquisition by Summit Bancorp. We helped Summit and its acquirers as it rolled into Fleet Bank and National Westminster Bank on its way to Bank of America. We also helped Chemical Bank grow prior to its acquisition by PNC. We did the same for Midlantic Bank, also acquired by PNC. After PNC acquired our seven-year client, United Trust Bank, we then helped PNC in its de novo expansion and revamped the local marketing of all under-performing branches in a seven-state footprint. 

2010 – 2020: The Brand and Digital Marketing Innovation Years 

During the Great Recession, we helped institutions refocus on their business and brand vision and define their role in the marketplace. We ventured into parallel markets helping institutions like Federated Investors, Golub Capital, Penn Mutual Insurance, PMA Insurance Group, and Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey to define their brand positioning and hone their messaging and marketing to create visibility and traction, both internally and externally, in creative and cost-effective ways.

We also established a brand framework to help Peapack-Gladstone Bank (PGB) grow and to bridge the worlds of wealth management and retail banking. We helped Huntingdon Valley Bank (HVB) with their Mission, Vision, and Values and created their new branding as they prepared to go public. And we worked with the leadership of First Commonwealth Federal Credit Union to leverage their values and purpose to create a culture ready to embrace innovation and growth. All three institutions (PGB, HVB, and First Commonwealth) have experienced outsized growth and their leadership understands the tangible impact of our work.

Capabilities