Mobile Banking Moving into the Fast Lane

Consumers, start your cell phones! Mobile banking services in the U.S. appear to be poised to triple by 2009 (Aite report), or to double by 2010 (Sybase report). Despite research finding differences, one thing is clear: U.S. banks are ramping up efforts to make consumers aware of mobile banking, consumer clearly want the service, and that means bank marketers are ready to put technology and marketing dollars behind it to get you the consumer to adopt it.

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Results vs. Costs

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
– Peter Drucker

The quote above is from Peter Drucker’s book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The book was first published in the 1980s, and it was re-released a couple of years ago. It is still sound advice. If you want to improve business, marketing and innovation had better lead the way. Considered by many as the preeminent business consultant and author for decades, Drucker is the person who coined the term knowledge worker.

Considerable effort should be spent on measuring the success (or failure) of marketing and innovation. Why? Another famous Drucker quote answers that question: “What’s measured improves.”

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The Agency Of The Future Is Arriving Too Late

I keep reading all these stories about the agency of the future. Like this one, and this one, and this one.

Who has time to wait for the future? Most businesses want new ideas and thinking that can help them now. They don’t have time to wait while some marketing firms attempt to evolve.

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CMOs And The Bottom Line

A new Stuart Spencer study of senior-level marketing executives has confirmed what many in business already know: the CMOs number one priority is influencing the bottom line (Ad Age story here). The complete results of the survey will be released today at the CMO Summit in Florida.

According to the study, other critical innate or learned qualities necessary for today’s CMOs include:

• Being a risk taker
• Willingness to make tough decisions
• Good problem-solving ability
• A strategic, customer-centric orientation to marketing
• Digital focus
• Multichannel and cross-industry experience

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Social lender Zopa voted “most threatening non-bank competitor”

While social or peer-to-peer lending isn’t new (in Internet time), what is new is the recognition Zopa received this month as the world’s “most threatening non-bank competitor.”

Amidst the steady stream of stories about the worsening credit crunch and tightening lending standards, Zopa’s style of social or peer-to-peer (P2P) lending stands as a virtual beacon for beleaguered borrowers and serves as a potential investment alternative for would-be P2P consumers-turned- lenders. Traditional banks beware!

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