After slipping for two years, bank marketing expenditures seen up 4.7 percent in 2008.

• Position: Marketing News - Survey

Last year financial institutions predicted that their 2008 marketing budgets would increase an average of 4.7 percent, according to the newly published ABA Bank Marketing Survey Report. This projected increase comes in the wake of a two-year period when the national economy softened and bank marketing expenditures sagged slightly.

The 2008 marketing-budget outlook varied by bank asset size. Banks with less than $100 million in assets had the largest proportion of institutions reporting prospective increases in marketing expenditures, 72.2 percent. The report theorizes that these smaller community banks may have planned for a rebound from the budget declines that occurred in 2005-07. The largest proportion of banks that decided to decrease 2008 marketing budgets was among those with $1 billion to $4.9 billion in assets, 52.9 percent. On average, banks with assets of more than $1 billion planned to budget less money for marketing in 2008 than they did the previous year.

The bank marketing survey, which is conducted by ABA every two years, includes information from 152 banks representing a cross-section of the national banking industry. Only banks with assets of more than $30 billion were excluded. The report contains charts showing average bank marketing expenditures by category and bank asset size.

Overall, 59.2 percent of surveyed banks planned to increase their marketing expenditures in 2008. This compares to the 2005-07 period when institutions with less than $100 million in assets and those with $1 billion to $4.9 billion in assets decreased their marketing expenditures below that reported in the last survey.

Consistent with previous years, advertising (including direct marketing) was by far the most widely used promotional tool. Advertising expenditures accounted for more than half of total marketing expenditures, 57.9 percent. The next major promotional tool was public relations; one-fifth of the marketing expenditures, 20.6 percent, were allocated to...