It’s time to change what your credit union is selling – Part 2

Last month I penned an article for CUInsight, and the response was much bigger than I’m used to. I shared these words of advice to credit union marketers and credit union leaders:

The problems consumers want to solve go deeper. Life is busy, and people just want to experience more joy and less noise. A recent finding from the Good Life study revealed, “People are yearning to be more connected to themselves: to step out of the rat race toward a slower pace of life, with less precarity, and greater opportunities for self-sufficiency.” I want credit unions to start rethinking your marketing message and focus on selling a dream.

The responses I received from so many credit union leaders were amazing. I want to share one with you in this month’s article to bring home the points I made last month to emphasize the importance of going beyond good rate, good service and product pushing, and really selling the outcome, the dream that can be accomplished with your products and services:

I put in a pool at our home, and in the beginning, my wife and I were wondering if it was worth doing a HELOC to do it. Full disclosure our oldest daughter was born deaf, and it’s very difficult to take a deaf child to a public pool. Our girls love the water so much that it was a no-brainer to spend the money. Although we haven’t opened the pool yet, I can tell you that our girls are sooooooo excited about it that doing the HELOC was definitely worth it to put smiles on their faces and they haven’t even gotten their toes wet. LOL!

I say all that to say I love the idea of focusing on “the after” of doing a loan in our ad creation and images and descriptions for our product details on our website and marketing collateral.

We forget all too often about the human element of what our credit unions do. Whether we are in marketing or lending, compliance or teller, there is a story beyond the signature on the loan document. If you’re wondering why your credit union can’t capture more share of wallet from existing members, perhaps you’re too focused on the transaction and forgetting about the human element of the relationship. If you’re wondering why you are struggling with membership growth, perhaps your menu of products and services that looks just like everyone else’s isn’t enticing enough to go through the stress of switching to your credit union.

Your member stories are human, touching and more engaging than the products and services that they use at your credit union. Testimonials are great, but how engaging would it be to recreate that story (or have it told on video with some accompanying footage) for use on social media, OTT, or other video platforms?

Roll up your sleeves and find those member stories, engage a good creative team to help recreate those member stories, and a great digital marketing team to get those member stories seen.