Online banking should be promoted online to build awareness and bag new accounts. But don’t throw money away in 1998. There are many low-cost ways to garner attention. Let the mega-banks burn cash educating the marketplace while you invest in high-return niche marketing strategies.

Of course, you’ll need more than good products and good services to make a name for yourself in cyberspace. You’ll have to let people know what you do. Fortunately, there are a number of very affordable ways to do this.

The three areas where you can get the most bang for your buck nest year are:

• events (on and offline)
• employee training/incentives
• PR/marketing to stimulate “word-of-mouth”

Events

Event sponsorship is an age-old marketing technique. Use the hype surrounding cyberanything to gain free publicity for your event. A couple ideas:

1. Develop an “online banking class in a box” that you provide to community colleges and other adult education firms to teach night classes in online financial management. Develop special offers that allow participants to try your online services for little or no cost.

2. Stage an “online banking day” or “personal financial management conference” at a convention center or hotel. Consider pooling resources with other financial institutions and/or Internet service providers.

3. Develop a series of online events such as chat sessions with local executives or money-management experts. You’ll probably have a small group actually participate in the session, but you’ll get free publicity citing your Web address. As an added bonus, the online transcripts from a conversation with a high-profile business exec might end up widely linked to from other Web sites. You will need to contact other Webs to make them aware of new transcripts posted online. It helps to provide a brief (25-word) synopsis of the material that they can post on their site along with the link. Don’t forget to include the date the conversation took place.

Employee Training/Incentives

You would probably be amazed at the Internet skills some of your employees have picked up on their own time. Find ways to get these experts involved in your online efforts.

4. Develop an employee online banking “evangelist” program. Evangelists get their own Web site e.g., www.yourbank.com/patsmith/ , special biz cards with e-mail/Web addresses, and other perks. Sales incentive programs could provide free computers, high-speed Internet access, software, or other prizes.

5. Encourage all employees to become PC/Net savvy. Subsidize costs of Net access, computers, modems, etc. Provide financial incentives (such as contests) to get employees to use your online banking program (even though they can get the same info at work).

Publicity/Marketing

Online consumers love to find something useful to do online (perhaps to feel less guilty about all the time spent in the ESPN SportZone). And when they do, they want to share their success with others. Harness this powerful word-of-mouth advertising by creating something compelling for users to talk about:

6. Schedule a time to individually walk reporters through your Web site so they’ll know where to look in the future for quick info.

7. Offer basic account access for FREE (you can charge for value-adds such as bill payment) to make it very easy for a consumer to recommend your program to a friend.

8. Make it easy for your customers to refer others to your Web site. You can easily set up an “E-mail to a friend” button on your Web page. All the user does is enter their own e-mail address, their friend’s e-mail address, any comments, and hit enter (see sidebar on next page for an example). You could also test a customer referral incentive, though this may not be necessary if you make it easy enough. You must acknowledge and thank all referrals.

9. Run a sweepstakes tied to online banking/bill pay usage. Not only does this reward your current customers for using your service, it’s a good way to get the attention of new prospects. Bank of America and Security First Network Bank have both used this technique in the past year. Both used prize pools of $10,000 or less. You could emulate the credit card usage sweeps that crop up each fall by automatically entering each bill payment transaction into the contest. Winners would get their bill paid for free.

10. Test, test and test Web-based advertising and promotion. While it may be premature to launch a Web advertising blitz next year, you need to start trying different approaches. Test animated banners, sweepstakes, teaser campaigns, search engine ad buys, etc. Find out what works and what doesn’t in preparation for an all-out assault in 1999. And be creative in your media buys. It’s a buyer’s market for another year or two, so negotiate everything.