When you advertise, you expect your promotion will benefit all your branches. But sometimes, a branch has a unique disadvantage that needs special tactics to help it succeed.

You look at an underperforming branch and wonder why it isn’t doing well. It has the right personnel. You have winning product offers. How do you help it?

One method is to offer a special campaign that will get the branch noticed. And, you target the appropriate prospects.

The process works and I’ll give you a specific example. A few years ago, one of our banking clients opened a branch in an area outside its market. Otherwise, the location should have worked. It was in a popular strip mall at the intersection of two major roadways. Traffic was heavy, especially during the daily commutes.

Besides the name recognition in the new market, there was a big problem. Directly in front of our client’s mall office was the multi-story, freestanding office building of a rival bank.

After a long conversation with our client, we recommended a special mail piece that emphasized its new drive-up window. The branch was at the end of the mall and customers had easy-in-easy-out access from both busy streets or after shopping at businesses in the mall.

We also recommended a special product promotion that would draw attention and have people hunting for the location.

The bank already had a free checking account that paid interest and included free ATM transactions everywhere. They decided they could offer five percent interest on checking balances at this one office. There was no reward checking in the market then, so a five percent interest rate caught everyone’s attention.

A full panel of the self-mailer was filled with a map of the mall, showed other mall businesses by name, street names, bank hours, drive-up window location, and even a blank white box designating the competing bank.

Because the branch was located on a major commuting route, we calculated additional neighborhoods for the mail drop — neighborhoods likely to feed the traffic pattern. Banking along your daily commute is a convenience feature and a major factor that determines where people bank.

Even though the branch staff knew about the promotion, they were amazed by the procession of people who walked in to open checking accounts. The campaign was a huge success and created a boost to business at the location.

This is only one example that shows you can build traffic and open accounts at an underperforming office. While this solution might not work for your problem office, there likely is a solution.