Answer To: 0 Six Part Marketing Plan v1 A Six Section Marketing Plan Marketing Management 1. Business Mission...
Garima answered on Mar 01 2022
Marketing Plan for Wells Fargo co.
Name of student: Steve G Gallegos
Name of course: Business Marketing
Name of Professor:
Date: 01/03/2022
Table of contents
1. Business Mission and Objectives
2. Situation Analysis (including SWOT) for this Marketing Plan
3. Opportunities and Recommendations
4. Evaluating Success for the given year
5. Risk Analysis — Pursuing your selected opportunities
6. References
1. Business Mission and Objectives
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is one of the largest banks in the United States with a total asset of approximately $1.93 trillion as of 2021 - 2022. The stakeholders for the bank include investors (owners and shareholders), management (e.g., board of directors), and employees (labour unions and work council), customers, financial markets (industry trade groups, partners and suppliers, professional associations, banks and creditors), competitors, government & non-government organizations and regulators. Approximately 74% of shares are held by institutional investors (mutual fund holders and other financial management institutions (WFC - Wells Fargo & Co Shareholders - CNNMoney.Com, 2022) and the remaining are held by individual stakeholders.
The company was started in 1852 by Henry Wells and William Fargo. Back then, the bank mostly catered to the needs of growing population of gold miners and related groups in California. Slowly, they stated creating a big image for themselves by acquiring big regional banks. The services offered by Wells Fargo Co. are (a) Investment and wealth management (financial planning, retirement planning, private banking), (b) Wholesale banking (commercial banking, insurances, real estate and credit risk), (c) Community banking (Consumer banking, loans, mortgages, savings accounts, ATMs). Before 2016, the marketing strategy was a’ total market approach’ where marketing approach focussed on diversity and multiculturism of consumers (American culture). They targeted the Millennials (who experienced multiculturism in America) and acquired many checking accounts from them (Odell, 2015).
The company was involved in several frauds/ scandals (2013 - 2018), where it opened 3.5 million fake accounts. To hit the unrealistic sales target and get bonuses, the employees started to make fake accounts and also some transactions were done from these accounts. The Federal Reserve found out several other malpractices such as providing services that were unnecessary and unused (auto loans, mortgage consumers), and they also violated the regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to mislead investors and make dishonest gains (How Wells Fargo Became One of America’s Biggest Banks, 2020).
As a result, the Federal Reserve imposed a cap of $ 2.0 trillion on Wells Fargo’s assets, the bank also had to pay a penalty of $1.5 billion to state and federal authorities, and to resolve lawsuits from customers, they had to pay $260 million, $5.2 million to SEC, and another $3.0 billion to settle malpractices lawsuits. This scandal and all the malpractices have severely damaged the reputation of Wells Fargo Co. in the market, they are lost out many consumers due to trust issues, several employees were laid off and branches were closed to recover the penalty losses, dividend cuts, job cuts.
To revive the consumer faith in the bank and leadership, board members had set up goals and strategies and are continuously working on them. These include: (1) providing quality customer service and advice, (2) providing vision, goals and values to engage team members, (3) using technology innovations to provide easy banking to consumers, (4) recruiting an expert team for risk management, (5) involving in social corporate responsibilities like free financial education and charity campaigns, (6) providing increased dividend returns to shareholders.
With new technological innovations gaining popularity and an overall influx of ‘online only banking’ systems, Wells Fargo is a 'traditional' bank and needs to think outside the box to be competitive not only to other traditional banks, credit unions but also to those ‘online only banks’. The marketing approach that is focussed on recruiting ‘remote personal bankers’ can help Wells Fargo to gain the trust back of the consumers and strengthen the relationship of the bank with existing and new customers. ‘Remote personal banker’ is a customer-centric marketing strategy that will ensure that customers get authentic advice, timely quality support, their finances are managed well, and their concerns/ needs are dealt with promptly. Without the need of leaving their homes, the ‘remote personal banker’ can assist customers online in opening accounts, managing finances, resolving issues, referrals to financial experts/ loan officers, overseeing their transactions. The customers can chat with remote personal bankers online via WhatsApp calling or video calling through flexible timing options, thus this service can provide convenience and easy communication to the clients. This marketing strategy will target two of the six goals of the bank – (a) providing quality customer service and advice, (b) using technology innovations to provide easy banking to consumers. In addition to this, it will help in building greater trust in the banking operations, transparent transactions will help in making a strong customer base, and increased customer trust will help the bank in future to exit the $2.0 market cap imposed by the Federal Reserve (Nick Barnes, Practice Director, Financial Services at JRNI, 2022).
2. Situation Analysis (including SWOT) for this Marketing Plan
The most important issues that Wells Fargo Co. is facing are (a) Lack of trust from the customers and as a result loss of clients in the past years, (b) Due to imposition of the market cap of $2.0 trillion, the company’s assets cannot increase even if there are growth...