Each day you see so much opportunity for your credit union to grow. You have some great ideas jotted down or floating around in your head, but you need a cohesive, logical strategic marketing plan and execution.

YMC has developed a simple, four-step process to tie together all the necessary parts of marketing to create credit union marketing plans that get results. Here’s the secret:

1. Awareness: Make your ideal member’s problem your problem. This is an introduction to your credit union brand and the solutions you provide. This is when the right messaging will earn the time of curious visitors who relate to the problem you shared and are seeking a solution to that problem. This is the defining moment. You spent XXX dollars of your credit union marketing budget to get this person to act. Do they click away from your webpage never to think about you again, or are you stuck in the back of their mind while they process what they just saw, heard or read?
2. Consideration: If you succeeded in becoming that niggling feeling in the back of your ideal member’s mind, this is where you’ve earned the opportunity to educate your ideal member because they recognize your brand, you’ve earned some trust and they’re willing to listen to what you have to say. You can dive a little deeper into the solution your credit union first presented to their problem and differentiate your solution from your competitors’ offerings. Content marketing is the solution many of our strategic outsourced marketing credit union clients choose. It demonstrates that the credit union is the trusted adviser by giving away information, guides and resources.
3. Conversion: This is where you’ve earned a new member or an additional product or service from an existing member. Congratulations! You’ve earned enough trust for this person to make their purchase decision, and they believe your credit union provides the best solution to their problem. Don’t stop here! You’ve spent valuable resources to convince someone to join your credit union or use another product or service. Don’t simply move on to the next person.
4. Loyalty: Many credit union marketing plans leave this fourth step out of the process, including the credit union that did my mortgage. I never hear from them, except once a month to let me know my statement is ready. You already have a member who trusts you and believes you were the right solution to one problem. While you have this captive audience, help them with other pieces of their financial puzzle! The credit union that has my mortgage could very well earn my checking account, a credit card and myriad other products and services. They wooed me for my mortgage, and then dropped off the face of the earth like a bad online date. Keep communicating, use the data you have, and identify and empathize with the other problems this member has and illustrate for them how much more you could do for them.

The title of this blog, “Four simple steps to credit union marketing that works,” is not misleading. The truth is the steps are easy, and common sense when you boil them down. So why are they so hard to execute?

Because you don’t have an outside perspective. The reason YMC’s client credit unions win is that we ask the right questions to make them think about this process from the member’s point of view, call them out on the internal BS stuck in their heads, and search beyond the easy responses we’ve been trained to give as credit union leaders.

Need help asking better questions to yield better results? That’s what we do.

We have one opening this fall for one credit union seeking growth through member relevance to join our YMC family. Let’s talk.