To grow your customer base, pretend your CU is a campfire

Imagine the chill of the air at your back, softened by the crackling heat of a campfire before you. Sitting in a circle of community members, your eyes turn toward the best storyteller in your group. You settle in, content to be among your friends and eager to hear a new tale.

Humans learn facts by reading spreadsheets or bullet points, but they come to understand their world through stories. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense; we’ve had PowerPoint for several decades, but we’ve been sitting around fire pits for thousands and thousands of years. It’s in our blood to love listening to people tell stories because stories speak to us on the deepest level.

In addition to our natural interest in stories, online communication–especially social media–prioritizes real stories from real customers. This is FANTASTIC NEWS for credit unions because you and your colleagues hear stories from your customers EVERY DAY that big banks never will. Here are just a few stories I’ve heard from my credit union clients:

  • A branch teller remembers just about EVERY customer’s name. It’s like magic.
  • A commercial loan officer went out of their way to support a small business customer.
  • A credit union has been supporting an amazing local non-profit for years and that non-profit thanked them publicly.

Imagine seeing these stories on your social media feeds; stories involving a real customer or local non-profit will connect your customers to you in ways a low interest rate or other special offer never will. So let’s gather stories! Here are three concrete steps to build share-worthy, like-worthy, engaging content that will garner you new members and higher wallet share among your current members:

Key Players

While collecting stories shouldn’t be the responsibility of just one person, or even one department, it helps to have your leaders create and support a culture where stories are shared openly. Ask your CEO or CMO to convey–and even lead by example–the efforts to collect stories from customers and local partners at your credit union.

Once leadership is on board, identify the people at your credit union who most connect with your current customers and giving programs. These people will become your greatest asset! Empower them to collect and share their experiences with you.

First Item on Every Meeting Agenda

One way to increase the number of stories you have is to use the first ten minutes of staff meetings to tell stories. Rather than leading with an informational update, give everyone a chance to talk about their favorite moment from the past week, someone who made an impression on them, or something else. Not only will this increase your exposure to great stories, it will also connect all staff members to your credit union’s mission to delight your customers. Designate a marketing staff person to collect those stories so they can be shared on social media.

Automate Collection Systems

Sometimes staff members hear great stories from members, but they aren’t sure what to do with them. Create a hardcopy form and distribute it widely or, even better, create an online form that will allow colleagues to easily submit and share stories. Tools like Google Forms are great for this!

My favorite high school math teacher, before handing out a test, would remind us to “show our work.”What did he mean by “show your work?”Even if you didn’t get the answer right, he wanted to see how you got to the solution. He wanted to see how you tackled solving a problem.

I believe a credit union’s most passionate current and potential customers are interested in seeing you show your work through story telling. You can now add story gathering to your digital strategy to begin earning more members than ever before.

Maggie Bergin

Maggie Bergin

Maggie Bergin is a digital marketer and copy writer with brand experience developing social media campaigns and content. Her specialties include content marketing strategies, message creation, social media marketing and ... Web: https://www.maggiebergin.com Details