The strategy: We’ve covered how smaller financial institutions (FIs) sometimes lose sight of differentiators in marketing campaigns when they focus on being “just as good” as bigger competitors. And The Financial Brand recently highlighted a similar trend of community banks straying from focusing on their community-centric strengths in marketing campaigns.

Where they’ve gone wrong: Many community banks prioritize perfecting online loan applications, mimicking large banks. However, these digital-first approaches often result in low completion rates and fail to leverage the community banks’ key competitive advantage: personal relationships.

And while smaller FIs have ramped up digital development in recent years, focusing primarily on the digital experience can disappoint customers—especially younger ones who have many digital banking experiences from which to choose.