CU Marketers’ Top Challenges
by. Theresa Witham
The CUES School of Strategic Marketing I kicked off in Seattle Monday morning with attendees talking about their biggest challenges as credit union marketers. Many of the goals were similar. Others were polar opposites. For example, several attendees said growing loans is their top challenge. But a couple said they are doing great at lending and need to grow deposits. Deposits!
Here is the entire list of challenges they shared:
- capitalizing on a good reputation to get people to switch their accounts to the CU from a competing institution;
- social media;
- branding and building CU awareness;
- member retention;
- growing loans;
- growing loans without only talking about rates;
- competition with really big CUs in town. How do you stand out?
- Gen Y market;
- alignment between existing CU and a recent subsidiary, regulatory issues;
- lending in the future: What will it look like? Are millenials loan adverse? Will baby boomers borrow more later in life than previous generations? (In the photo at right, Mark Weber, CEO of CUES Supplier member Weber Marketing Group in Seattle and lead faculty of the school, said millenials will be seared with the Great Recession their entire life in the same way those who lived through the Great Depression were.)