The YMC team truly are credit union marketing experts, and we have been for almost 20 years. But one of the biggest misconceptions about a marketing expert is that they have all of the answers. If a potential marketing partner begins to woo you with ideas and answers before they’ve asked a lot of questions… run. Run fast and don’t look back.
Expertise does indeed involve supplying a few answers, but expertise is mainly about asking the right questions. The answers should be few, and only come after the truth surfaces through the honest answers to those questions.
An example I always use – because it is burned into my mind – as the most important reason credit union marketing experts should ask many questions before answers was a goal setting meeting I had with a new client. “Ten percent loan growth is our goal” they excitedly exclaimed!
“Cool, let’s make it happen, but first I want to know why you’re not achieving that now.” That was my question. The answer was as I expected.
“We need better marketing!” Of course, that’s why they hired YMC. But I knew better. I pressed in with more questions to gain perspective. What we found were an average of 180 approved loans per month over the last six months. What we also found were on average only 80 of those loans were funded.
“What happened to those other 100 loans? That would equal out to more than 10% loan growth!” A timid employee raised his hand.
“It’s taking us 4-5 days to get an answer back on those loans, and typically those members have already applied for a loan and gotten in somewhere else before we get back to them.” A-HA! There it is! They, in fact, didn’t have a marketing problem. But asking the right questions as a credit union marketing expert, we uncovered the true problem. And, even more important, if we had launched a freakin’ cool loan promotion to drive more volume, it would have increased their problems, not solved them. More loan applications they would not have replied to in time, further decreasing the trust of their brand within the community, and a lot of good money spent on the wrong solution.
Expertise is about curiosity. Curiosity requires that you ask many questions. More importantly, expertise requires knowing what questions to ask to get the answers needed to bring the right solutions, and by extension results, to the table.
There are so, so many marketing tools in the marketer’s toolbox available to any competent firm. Asking the right questions, listening to honest answers, and then knowing selectively which tools to pull from the box to provide the right solutions is the job of a true credit union marketing expert.
For almost 20 years, the credit union marketing experts on my team at YMC have been doing just this. We’ve crafted a time-tested process that allows us to gain perspective, understand the problems, and then creatively solve those problems that lead the credit union to growth.
As we head into the new year, are you sure your marketing partner truly knows what tools to use? Have they asked the right questions to gain the perspective they need to know what problem to solve? We can help.
