Now that Thanksgiving is behind us we can turn our attention to the holidays. That means our annual gift guide for bankers. We do this as we not only have a good time putting this together, but it is one of the pieces of content that we produce that drives heavy traffic. At this time, everyone is looking for gift ideas, and these are our best ideas – most all of which we have personally tested. We also highlight this gift guide not only for your use but for your bank to use with your customers. If you are still looking a gift horse in the mouth, read on as we have some evidence to support our claim.

The Data Behind Gift Guides

Don’t take our word for it, consider the multiple other outlets that will produce a gift guide this year. While some do so to generate profit through sales (we don’t), most publications do it because it is a consistent traffic generator not to mention a crowd-pleaser. Across the internet, gift guides are opened approximately 45% of the time. We are closer to 38%, but that is still significantly above our 19% normal level. Inc. magazine, for example, does a gift guide every year and it ranks in the top six sources of traffic.

Putting This Into Action

It is hard to tickle the cockles of a banker’s heart with a holiday gift mostly because most bankers don’t know where the cockles of their heart are. That doesn’t matter because what does matter is that with about 20 minutes’ worth of work you can take our template attached below and customize it with your logo and ideas. You can even provide our template to your commercial customers so they can use it for their customers. Wow – that meta. It is the gift guide that can keep on giving.

Since bankers are harder to buy for than Kim Kardashian on Mother’s Day, we have painstakingly put together our best ideas that cover a diverse range of prices and lifestyles (although we skew towards tech, clothing, food, and in memory of our muse, Chuck Yeager, adventure). Each gift is designed to take you out of your comfort zone while giving you more comfort.

As we pointed out in the past, this month is a horrible time to do any marketing. That said, this gift guide will not only inspire you to get in the holiday spirit but will help your bank successfully buck the traditional “no bank advertising” syndrome for the last month of the year.

Here is our 2020 Banker’s Gift Guide in pdf form HERE.

If you want more information on how to easily reproduce this for your clients, just contact us, and we can get your marketing group a template or help put your logo and other customized gifts into the format. The Gift Guide is excellent for also generating social media traffic, and if you use it on your website in a slideshow format, you can dramatically increase your page views, time on page, and clicks – all of which help search engine optimization.

Hopefully, you will have the happiest and healthiest of holidays and take joy in being together with the family.

While we will keep writing through the end of the year, before we start to lose people, on behalf of everyone here at CenterState and SouthState, we want to wish you and yours the happiest of holidays and a very Merry Christmas.

Tags: Published: 12/07/20 by Chris Nichols