3 minutes
Today’s credit union marketing faces a vast array of competitive financial industry challenges from both banks and non-bank fintech disruptors, including brands like Simple, Kickstarter, and Quicken Loan’s new Rocket Mortgage. (Amazon and Google likely won’t be far behind.) A dynamically changing (and fickle) younger consumer fed up with traditional banking and hungry for more time- and cost-saving new technologies is spawning new competitors.
Achieving marketing success requires a level of strategic expertise, sophisticated skill sets, and brand and consumer behavior knowledge that even seasoned marketing leaders rarely possess, but that senior management still expects and demands.
From market segmentation, to brand strategy development, omnichannel knowledge, millennial loan acquisition tactics, and database profit marketing programs, the pressure for savvy marketing with clear results has never been greater.
Sadly, many marketing departments are not well-positioned or integrated within their own CU, or with member-facing staff whose support marketing needs to execute successfully. Once siloed, marketing faces an uphill reputation battle your CU can’t afford.
Executive Question: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rank your marketing department today in meeting the demands of helping drive new member growth; increasing lending and wallet share; positively engaging your internal culture and evolving your brand experiences and marketing strategies?
It’s easy for CU executives to blame weak marketing or unclear results on their current legacy manager (“old ideas”), or recent college graduate (“sharp but too green”).
But that myopic view can undervalue a more compelling question: Are you truly committed to strategic marketing as a holistic and integrated part of your entire organization’s shared responsibility to drive growth, member and staff satisfaction, earnings and your brand reputation?
Or are you satisfied simply funding a lower-cost stream of tactical, sometimes hit-and-miss, campaigns and projects?
Strategy + Marketing = Leadership
Leaders who really want strategic marketing (and brand leadership) need a clearly defined role for marketing, the funding to support it and strategic objectives (that marketing will help support) for their CU.
Is your marketing at a strategic and enterprise-wide level, with a seat at the management table? Or is it at a lesser, tactical, functional level? The latter non-strategic focus is not always the fault of marketers with limited experience, who lack strategy expertise, or leadership skills. But it’s a common complaint of senior leaders wondering if their marketing budget is paying off.
OnPoint Community Credit Union explored those questions as part of a name change several years ago. “Marketing wasn’t just marketing anymore. It’s culture,” CUES member Kelly Schrader, SVP/chief operations and risk officer, told attendees of CUES School of Strategic Marketing in 2012. “Marketing took a hiatus and we became an institution that was built on culture and communication.”
The CU sent all employees to brand camp to develop an easy-to-remember internal slogan to support its strategic goals; developed an employee contest to create elevator speeches; and continues to put out high-level, high-impact marketing.
Mark Weber is CEO of CUES Supplier member Weber Marketing Group, Seattle, and the lead faculty at CUES School of Strategic Marketing™ I and II. Weber is a marketing analyst, brand strategy consultant, and financial services industry expert. He has over 30 years of strategic marketing and brand consulting experience in high-tech and financial services. He advises some of the largest CUs and community banks in the U.S. and Canada.
