10 marketing myths that could be costing your credit union

1. Everyone is going to love this marketing campaign.

“Everyone” is not a target market. Does everyone love Harley Davidson or Abercrombie? The key to successful marketing is appealing highly to a specific group of people through your messaging and marketing tactics. Whether you are trying to make sure everyone in your credit union is 100% in love with your marketing campaign, or you are launching it externally, you should always have a specific group of people in mind for the product or service you are trying to sell. If you try to get everyone to love your marketing, no one is going to like it because you are trying to please and appeal to too large of an audience, which is impossible (and waste of your precious marketing budget). Instead, try smaller campaigns geared toward smaller segments of your members (or potential members) with messaging and graphics that appeal to one of those given segments.

2. Marketing doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.

If done correctly, marketing is the best use of investment dollars for your credit union. While it is important to ensure all areas of the credit union are properly supported with sufficient resources to succeed, investing in carefully planned marketing initiatives can yield 100%, 200%, 500% and even higher Return on Investment.

3. We should be doing because the bank or credit union down the street is doing it.

As a consultant, my question to this is always “why?” This new project/product/marketing initiative may very well have a desired outcome for your credit union, but it is always important to ask a few questions first:

  • What business objective does this meet for our credit union?
  • What time and resources will it require? Do we have enough of both/either to devote to it?
  • Does it tie into the overall business plan of the credit union?
  • What results can we expect to achieve with it?

Your answers to these questions will tell you whether or not something is worthy of pursuit and resources.

4. Launching a campaign is a list of checkmarks.

Yes, at first, but a marketing campaign requires your regular time and attention every day from well before the launch to well after the launch to ensure it’s maximum success. From developing the marketing strategy and planning beforehand to executing the plan to measuring performance, and performing quality control and measurements at the end, maintaining vigilance and making adjustments throughout is the key to campaign success.

5. Your brand is your logo.

To many companies, the logo and tagline and the core values posted in the boardroom are its definition of its brand. To your members, your brand is the way your lobby environment makes them feel, how the tellers treat them, how quickly it takes someone to call them back, how easy it is to get into online banking, etc. Your brand is how people perceive your business, and it is so much more than a logo.

6. People only care about price.

This is true for a certain amount of people for sure, but think about the stores and brands and places you yourself frequent as a customer in your daily life. Do you always pay the lowest price for a given product or service no matter what it is or where you get it? When choosing banks, hotels, airlines, and most other consumer needs, people pay for trust, value, and an experience they can’t get elsewhere. Price is a small portion of that equation.

7. Marketing is the marketing department’s job.

This is an important mistake many people make when they think about the roles marketing plays in an organization. While this person or department is responsible for writing a strategic marketing plan that aligns with the organizational goals and developing a tactical plan to help support it, marketing is not it’s own entity separate from the rest of the credit union. From the CEO to the tellers, from back office to the mortgage department, everyone in your credit union is a marketer. Everyone needs to be well educated on the plan, the credit union’s target objectives, and committed to delivering an experience that is truly unique to your organization.

8. It’s all about product.

How many times have you gotten a piece of direct mail or an email and it seemed like the written equivalent of a Shazam! commercial? People make decisions for emotional reasons, and communicating to your members and potential members about your products or services with a list of features isn’t going to cut through the clutter of the thousands of marketing messages they see daily. It’s all about the story. How does banking with your credit union making peoples’ lives better? How are you helping members succeed financially so their lives are happier/more fulfilling/easier? Those are the stories and the emotional connections that will set your marketing apart from the rest.

9. People know about our credit union.

This is one of the hardest truths in marketing. You cannot count on brand equity within your community when you are launching a new campaign or strategic initiative because most people have no idea who you are. Especially when it comes to potential member outreach, always assume that people have never heard of your credit union. Choose a specific target market, engage them consistently with stories of how you make members’ lives like theirs better, and you’ll start to earn their brand awareness.

10. Different creative direction on each campaign is a good thing.

I have two words for you: brand standards. We marketers tend to get really sick of looking at the same ads, web banners, direct mail pieces, posters, and other collateral materials, but this consistency is the key to success of your marketing efforts. If you send out materials that look completely different all the time, people aren’t going to have the repetition they need to make a connection with your credit union’s brand. Realize that when you start to get tired of your brand elements, your members and community are starting to have brand awareness of your credit union.

Amanda Thomas

Amanda Thomas

Amanda is founder and president of TwoScore, a firm that channels her passion for the credit union mission and people to help credit unions under $100 million in assets reach ... Web: www.twoscore.com Details