7 step mid-year marketing review for your credit union

It’s June already!  While that means summer vacations, weddings, and barbecues, it’s also halfway through the year and time to do a performance review…of your marketing plan.

Here are seven steps to performing a review of your marketing plan to ensure success for the second half of 2016:

1. Measure the numbers. One of the easiest ways to know if your marketing is successful is to calculate ROI on the results of your campaigns. Don’t stop there – also make sure to compare quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year to make sure you are not only reaching your goals, but also outpacing growth from the previous year.
2. Talk to your coworkers. This step accomplishes a couple of things:
   • It identifies opportunities you have to make their jobs easier, thereby enhancing the member experience.
   • It could uncover roadblocks you didn’t know were there that have caused marketing efforts to be less successful.
   • Are you communicating effectively with your team about all marketing initiatives? You may think you are, but if employees feel un-included or uneducated about what’s going on, they will be more likely to stand in the way of the success of your marketing efforts.
   • Do they have the tools they need to have conversations with members? We are in the business of relationships, and we do this through a consultative role with our members. Ask your employees if they have what they need from you to be the expert on the credit union’s products and services. Ask what you can do to help make that happen.
3. Look at your traffic sources and make adjustments. For example, if you are noticing a lot of people are taking action from digital ads and not as much from direct mail, it would be wise to reallocate resources for any current and upcoming promotions to maximize success and budget dollars.
4. Measure progress on annual goals. This one is simple and effective. At the end of June, you should be at least 50% or more of your annual goals. If you aren’t, have a discussion with your team about what factors are causing you to not achieve the growth you forecasted:
   • Did anything happen – planned or unplanned – that affected how members do business with or perceive your credit union? If so, did the marketing plan address those changes? Does it need to address those changes in the second half of the year?
   • Were a majority of the dollars spent going towards one or more of the marketing objectives for the year?
   • What went well, and how can we repeat this success in the future?
   • What didn’t go well, and what did we learn from it for next time?
5. Get the over/under on your budget. Just as you measured progress on the goals, make sure you are on track with your annual budget. If one category is higher than budgeted, make adjustments in other areas in order to keep it balanced and stay within your annual budget.
6. Employ best practices. If you have a branch or employee(s) who is outperforming all the rest, talk to them and find out what they are doing to achieve those results.  Share these best practices across the entire credit union to enhance success.
7. And lastly, check your momentum. The credit union could be experiencing success in numbers, but are you taking the time to celebrate those successes with your employees? This is a step a lot of credit unions miss because of time or budget constraints, but engaging all employees in the plan and sharing in the success is the number one way to keep momentum going strong and maximize success.