At this year’s Massachusetts Bankers Connect Conference, I had the chance to deliver a session on something I’ve believed for years: bank marketing is one of the most misunderstood and undervalued functions inside most financial institutions. After spending 15 years as a banker myself, and now working with community banks across the country through my agency and through speaking and teaching with state banking associations, I’ve seen the same struggle play out again and again.
Senior leadership often doesn’t fully understand what marketing actually does, how broad the responsibility set is, or how deeply it ties into revenue. At the same time, many bank marketers unintentionally undersell themselves by talking in high-level creative language rather than showing marketing’s direct bottom-line impact through data, clear metrics, and actual financial results.
So when I was invited to join the panel discussion that wrapped up the conference, it felt like the perfect extension of my session, Marketing the Marketing: How to Get Noticed, Heard, and Taken Seriously. The final roundtable brought together a room full of bank marketers who were honest, energized, and incredibly insightful about where the role is heading. What made it powerful was that the conversation wasn’t just about tactics. It was about identity, expectations, culture, and the growing pressures on marketing teams that seem to widen every year while headcount stays flat.
The Words That Set the Tone for 2026
The group opened with a simple prompt posed by Shelley Regin of Country Bank that got us all thinking: Use one word to describe what 2026 looks like for you. Those single words told a bigger story than any long explanation ever could. Innovation. Evolution.
Prioritization. Strategy. Elevation. Foundation. Consistency. Proactivity. Determination. Execution. Digital. Opportunity. I’m sure there were more, but you get the idea of where the conversation was headed.
In those words alone, you can almost feel the tug-of-war that bank marketers are facing. There is optimism and ambition sitting right next to stress and overwhelm. There is a desire to innovate, but also a need to simplify. There is a push toward revenue-driving work while still keeping brand and communication consistent. There is hope for better alignment, better tools, and better recognition for the work marketers do.
But those one-word answers were just the beginning. As the conversation unfolded, several clear themes rose to the surface. Here’s a deeper look at what came out of the panel and what it all means for the work ahead.
Innovation: More Than a Buzzword
Innovation was one of the most popular words in the room, but the way the group talked about it was refreshingly realistic. Innovation isn’t about adding shiny tools for the sake of it. It’s about rethinking processes so new tools can actually help.
Several people pointed out that many banks try to “bolt AI onto” the same old workflows, only to be disappointed when it doesn’t magically fix anything. One marketer gave a perfect example. Their bank was uploading scanned images into an AI engine, which then had to run OCR before it could do any analysis. A tiny process tweak, switching from scans to PDFs, suddenly made the entire AI effort far more effective.
That type of re-engineering is the real meaning of innovation. It’s not about doing the same work faster. It is about doing the right work in a better way.
And that sets up one of the biggest takeaways from the entire session.
Innovation starts with asking better questions, not buying better tools.
Evolution: Navigating Leadership Change and Uncertainty
Another strong theme was evolution. Many marketers shared that their teams have
endured major leadership turnover. In fact, only a handful of people in the room still reported to the same leader they had two years ago.
That kind of instability creates uncertainty. It also forces marketers to work twice as hard to get up to speed with new expectations, new priorities, and new personalities. Several panelists talked about the challenge of advocating for marketing’s role when leadership itself is a moving target.
The honest takeaway was this:
Evolution is about building flexibility into your strategy so you can keep moving even when the org chart keeps shifting.
Marketers who anchor their plans to clear business outcomes are able to stay steady, even when the reporting lines aren’t.
Prioritization: The Battle Between Urgent and Important
Prioritization might have been the most relatable word in the room. Every marketer felt it. Teams are stretched wider than ever, often covering data, content, social media, analytics, website strategy, digital campaigns, brand, community events, video, internal communications, and product support.
And that’s all before lunch.
The real challenge is that banks still tend to prioritize historically important tasks that don’t always drive revenue, while newer high-impact opportunities like AI readiness, website modernization, and data-driven personalization get pushed to the back burner.
The tension came through clearly when one marketer said, “We know these things matter, but there is always something else on fire.”
Here’s the truth:
Prioritization is where marketing becomes a leadership function, not just a service function.
The more marketers tie their work to revenue, customer acquisition, customer experience, and measurable business outcomes, the easier it becomes to justify what gets done first.
Elevation: Telling Better Stories and Owning Revenue Impact
Elevation came up in the context of storytelling and impact. Several marketers talked about the satisfaction of not just producing creative work but driving leads, filling the
pipeline, and proving their measurable value.
One marketer told a great story about using bank data to influence product design. Instead of copying what competitors were offering, they used segmentation data to design products based on actual customer behavior. That shift earned them a seat at the table early in the process instead of being brought in at the end to “promote whatever the retail team cooked up.”
Moments like that elevate marketing from “the team that makes things look nice” to “the team that drives revenue.”
It highlighted one of the strongest messages from my own session:
If marketers want more respect from senior leadership, they need to speak in the language of outcomes: dollars, conversions, cost savings, funnel movement, and ROI.
Creative ideas get attention. Financial results get alignment.
Foundation: Strengthening the Core Before Building the Future
The word “foundational” was a reminder that you can only innovate, personalize, or
elevate if your core is solid. Clean data. Clear brand. Consistent messaging. Defined audience segments. Reliable analytics. Strong governance.
A lot of the work marketers want to do in 2026 depends on having the basics in place. You can’t build personalization rules if your data is messy. You can’t adopt AI responsibly if your processes aren’t documented. You can’t claim a strategic role if you don’t have metrics to support your decisions.
This theme dovetailed nicely with the EOS discussion that became one of the standout moments of the entire panel (more on that to follow).
Proactivity: Getting Ahead Instead of Catching Up
Marketers want to stop firefighting and start forecasting. But with short staffing and long to-do lists, finding space to be
proactive can feel impossible.
A few people shared practical ideas, like scheduling recurring time to review emerging trends, meeting monthly with cross-functional partners, or using AI tools to take repetitive tasks off their plates so they can focus on what’s next instead of what’s overdue.
The underlying goal is simple:
Proactivity allows marketing to lead instead of react.
Consistency: Delivering a Steady Experience in a Chaotic Environment
Consistency matters more today than ever. With customer behavior shifting and digital expectations rising, many banks are trying to build a recognizable and reliable
experience that doesn’t change every time leadership does.
Consistency came up in connection with brand, content rhythm, data use, and even internal communication. Marketers who create steady messaging, steady reporting, and steady experiences build credibility with both customers and colleagues.
Beyond the Words: The Themes Reshaping Bank Marketing
Once the group moved past the one-word snapshots, the conversation opened up into the deeper issues shaping what marketing teams are facing today. The themes that surfaced reflect a profession in the middle of a major shift. Teams are juggling new technology, changing expectations, evolving customer behavior, and a growing need to demonstrate real business impact. Here are the four big ideas that stood out once we moved beyond the opening round of words.
The EOS Accountability Chart Moment: Making Marketing Visible
One of the most powerful stories came from a marketer whose bank adopted EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System, created by Gino Wickman). She explained that the EOS system doesn’t lean heavily on the traditional org chart. Instead, it focuses on what is called an accountability chart. It maps all the functional responsibilities required to run the business, regardless of title or department.
When her leadership team went through the exercise and saw all the functions the marketing department was actually responsible for, the reaction was almost stunned silence. The workload was far more extensive than anyone realized.
That single exercise made visible something that had been hidden. It also justified new staffing and support because the leadership team could finally see what marketing actually does. I got goosebumps.
This is a lesson every bank marketer needs to hear:
If you do not show the size of your role, others will assume it is smaller than it is.
EOS simply provided a structure that made the invisible visible.
AI Agents: The Emerging Force Multipliers
One of the most energized parts of the conversation centered on AI agents. I shared examples from the Marketing and AI Conference in Cleveland about companies using dozens of specialized digital employees to produce content, generate webinars, create emails, build reports, and manage workflows.
The room was fascinated and also a bit nervous.
The idea is simple:
AI agents can give a one-person marketing team the output of a five-person (or more) team.
But the risk is equally real:
If you train an agent poorly, it will scale mistakes faster than any human ever could.
This is why process documentation matters so much. AI can only amplify what you’ve defined clearly.
Websites as Sales Engines, Not Brochures
The conversation also dug into website redesigns, personalization, mobile experience, and guided selling. Several banks are in the middle of major rebuilds. And while their vendors differ, their goals are surprisingly aligned.
The group kept coming back to three core needs:
- True attribution from ad click to application submission
- Personalization that doesn’t rely on authentication
- Mobile-first experiences that reflect how people actually bank today
We heard success stories about guided selling chatbots, personalization modules that boosted engagement by thirty percent, and clever ways of signaling consumer versus business intent.
Under all of it was the same message:
Your bank’s website is not a digital brochure. It is your primary branch. Treat it like one.
Process Capture: The Secret to Scale
One of the final insights we dug into was the idea that processes are captured, not created. If you document the process as you do it, even if it’s messy, you instantly create the building blocks for onboarding new staff, delegating work, or training an AI agent.
Most marketing frustration comes from invisible processes that live only inside someone’s head. Capturing those steps transforms chaos into capacity.
The Final Big Takeaway
When you stitch all the themes from this conversation together, you get a clear picture of what bank marketing really looks like heading into 2026.
Marketers are carrying more responsibility than ever. They are balancing innovation with foundation, evolution with consistency, and ambition with bandwidth. They want to drive revenue, earn respect, and create better experiences for their customers. They want to modernize without burning out. And they want their leaders to see them not as a cost center but as a strategic engine.
The room that afternoon wasn’t just full of marketers. It was full of people who care deeply about their banks, their customers, and their craft. And it was energizing to be part of a discussion where honesty, vulnerability, and forward thinking all showed up at the same time. And I got to be a part of it. Lucky me.
My hope is that this reflection helps carry the conversation forward. And if these ideas resonate with you as a bank marketer (or any other role in the bank that wants to understand marketing better), I’m always happy to continue the conversation. Whether through a deeper discussion, a workshop, or future collaboration with banking associations looking to equip their members for the changing landscape ahead. Get in touch and let’s keep talking!