The Community Bank CEO's Case for Hiring a Marketer Before a Technologist

The average community bank spends between 7% and 10% of its operating budget on technology, according to Cornerstone Advisors’ annual “What’s Going On in Banking” report. Marketing typically gets less than 2% of revenue at banks under $1 billion in assets — a figure that’s been flat for the better part of a decade. When the board asks what the bank is doing about competitive pressure, the answer is almost always the same: we’re investing in technology.

That answer is wrong.

The uncomfortable truth is that most community banks don’t have a technology problem. Their core systems work. Mobile banking functions. Customers can open accounts and move money. What they have is a visibility problem — and they keep trying to solve it with servers instead of storytellers.

The Default Hire Is the Wrong Hire

Here’s the pattern. A CEO sees deposit growth stalling. The board starts asking questions. Competitors are running slick digital campaigns. The instinct — reinforced by every conference panel and trade publication — is to hire an IT director, a digital transformation lead, or a vendor to overhaul the tech stack.

Reasonable instinct. Also a trap.

Cornerstone Advisors found that 70% of banks that launched digital transformation initiatives reported the projects took longer and cost more than expected. McKinsey’s banking practice has put the failure rate of large-scale digital transformations at roughly 70% across industries, with financial services performing no better than average. The median community bank that embarks on a major technology overhaul will spend 18 to 24 months and six to seven figures before seeing measurable results — if it sees them at all. digital transformation pitfalls for community banks

Meanwhile, the bank down the road that hired a sharp marketer six months ago has already refreshed its brand, launched a local content strategy, and started showing up where its future customers actually spend time. No $2 million core conversion. No 18-month implementation timeline. Just someone who knows how to tell the bank’s story to the right people, in the right places, at the right time.

The Gap Isn’t Technology. It’s Visibility.

Let me be specific about what I mean by visibility, because it’s not a soft concept.

Visibility is whether a 32-year-old small business owner in your market knows your bank exists when she needs an SBA loan. It’s whether your bank shows up on the first page of Google when someone searches “business checking account near me.”

For most community banks, the answer is no. Not because the technology is outdated. Because nobody outside the existing customer base knows what you do or why you’re different.

According to The Financial Brand, only 18% of community banks have a documented marketing strategy. Fewer than half have anyone on staff whose primary job is marketing. At many institutions under $500 million in assets, marketing is a side responsibility for someone in operations or the CEO’s assistant. The website gets updated once a year. Social media is an afterthought. Local search optimization doesn’t exist.

This isn’t a technology gap. This is an awareness gap. And you don’t close an awareness gap with a new core processor.

What a Good Marketer Actually Does

There’s a misconception in community banking that marketing means brochures and billboards. That framing is twenty years out of date. A modern bank marketer — the kind worth hiring — is a strategist who drives measurable business outcomes. what to look for in a bank marketing hire

Here’s what a strong marketing hire does in their first 90 days:

• Audits your digital presence. Website, Google Business Profile, social channels, online reviews, local search rankings. Most community banks have no idea how they look to someone discovering them online for the first time. It’s usually not good.
• Identifies your positioning gap. Every community bank says “we’re relationship-focused” and “we care about our community.” A good marketer figures out what actually makes you different and builds a message around it.
• Builds a content engine. Not a blog that publishes once a quarter. A consistent stream of content — short video, local stories, educational material — that shows up where your target customers already are.
• Optimizes your conversion paths. How many clicks does it take to open an account on your website? What happens after someone fills out a loan inquiry form? Most community banks lose potential customers at these friction points, and it has nothing to do with their core system.
• Tracks everything. Cost per lead. Cost per account opened. Channel attribution. A marketer who can’t show you the numbers isn’t the marketer you want.

None of this requires a core conversion. None of it takes 18 months. A competent marketer with a modest budget can produce visible results within a single quarter.

The Math Favors Marketing

Let’s talk numbers, because this is ultimately a resource allocation decision.

A full-time bank marketing manager or director costs between $75,000 and $120,000 in total compensation at most community banks, depending on market. Add a working budget of $50,000 to $100,000 for digital advertising, content production, and tools. All in, you’re looking at $125,000 to $220,000 in year one.

A digital transformation initiative — even a modest one — routinely runs $500,000 to $2 million at community banks in the $300 million to $2 billion asset range, according to data from Celent and Cornerstone Advisors. Core conversions specifically can exceed $3 million when you account for data migration, training, and the inevitable scope creep.

Now consider the return profile. A well-executed local marketing strategy can drive deposit growth of 5% to 15% annually in a targeted market, per case studies published by the ABA and ICBA. The Financial Brand has documented community banks that doubled their digital account openings within a year of hiring dedicated marketing staff and investing in local search and social media.

Technology investments, by contrast, tend to produce efficiency gains — lower cost per transaction, faster processing — rather than top-line growth. Those gains matter, but they don’t solve the problem that keeps most community bank CEOs up at night, which is: where is the next generation of customers coming from? community bank growth strategies

The marketer answers that question directly. The IT hire doesn’t.

“But We Need Better Technology Too”

Fair point. I’m not arguing that technology doesn’t matter. A community bank with a broken mobile app or a website that looks like it was built in 2009 has a real problem that marketing alone won’t fix.

But here’s the distinction most CEOs miss: the technology you need is table stakes, not a differentiator. Your core vendor’s standard mobile banking package, a clean website, and functional online account opening — that’s the minimum viable product. You probably already have most of it, or you’re one vendor conversation away from getting it.

What you don’t have — what almost no community bank has — is someone whose full-time job is making sure the right people know about you. Someone who wakes up every morning thinking about how to put your bank in front of the business owner who just incorporated an LLC, the family that just moved to town, the college senior about to open their first real checking account.

Technology is the plumbing. Marketing is the storefront. You need both, but if nobody knows your store exists, it doesn’t matter how good the pipes are.

The Hire Sequence Matters

This isn’t just about which role is more important in the abstract. It’s about sequencing, and sequencing matters enormously for resource-constrained organizations — which is what every community bank is.

When you hire a technologist first, here’s what happens: they audit your systems, identify gaps, recommend upgrades, and build a business case for a capital investment. Twelve months later, you’ve spent significant money on infrastructure that your existing customers may appreciate but that does nothing to bring in new ones.

When you hire a marketer first, here’s what happens: they audit your market position, identify your best opportunities for growth, and start generating awareness and leads. Three months in, you have data on what’s working. Six months in, you have new customers. Twelve months in, you have a clear picture of which technology investments would actually support your growth — because you now know who you’re growing toward and what they need. community bank strategic hiring guide

The marketer generates the intelligence that makes the technology investment smarter. That’s the sequencing argument in a single sentence.

What “Good” Looks Like

The wrong hire is worse than no hire, so let me be concrete.

You don’t need someone who spent fifteen years at a megabank. That’s a different skill set for a different scale. You need someone who understands community-scale organizations — someone comfortable being a team of one, building from scratch, and showing their work.

The profile that works:

• Digital-first instincts. They think about Google, social media, and email before they think about print ads and sponsorship banners. They understand SEO at a practical level.
• Data literacy. They can set up tracking, read analytics, and tie marketing activity to business outcomes. “Brand awareness” as a standalone goal isn’t good enough. You need someone who can tell you what a new checking account costs to acquire.
• Content production ability. They can write, or they can manage someone who can. They’re comfortable with video. They don’t need a $50,000 agency retainer to produce a social media post.
• Strategic thinking. They understand positioning, competitive dynamics, and market segmentation. They can tell you which customer segments to pursue and which to let go.
• Community orientation. They get that community banking is a relationship business. They know how to translate that ethos into a digital context without making it feel corporate or fake.

This person exists. They’re often in their late 20s to late 30s, they’ve worked at a credit union or a regional firm or a marketing agency that served financial clients, and they’re looking for an opportunity to own something. Community banks that find them early and give them real authority will outperform their peers. building a marketing function at a community bank

Stop Buying Hammers When You Need a Megaphone

The community banking industry has spent the last decade convinced that technology is the answer to every competitive threat. Technology vendors, consultants, and conference organizers have been happy to reinforce that narrative — because it sells expensive things.

But most community banks don’t lose customers to fintechs because the fintech has better technology. They lose customers because the fintech showed up first. Chime didn’t win on superior wire transfer capabilities. They won on visibility — on being the brand that was there when a 26-year-old searched “no-fee checking account” at midnight.

That’s a marketing problem, not a technology problem.

If you’re a community bank CEO staring at flat deposit growth, here’s my position: hire the marketer. Give them a budget, give them authority, and give them six months. You’ll learn more about your competitive position from that single hire than from any digital transformation roadmap.

The banks that thrive in the next decade won’t be the ones with the best core systems. They’ll be the ones that figured out how to be visible, relevant, and chosen.

A marketer gets you there. Faster, cheaper, and with less organizational trauma than the alternative.