Marketing to White Rabbits

Earlier this month at Princeton University, I had the honor of being invited to Filene Research Institute’s annual big.bright.minds meeting.  It was an incredibly cerebral event and I found myself wondering what the week would entail as we took a deep dive into behavioral economics and the concept of scarcity - financial and bandwidth (time).  What this means for us marketers is that EVERYONE is stretched beyond his or her capacity in one form or another.

The economy has affected everyone to varying degrees.  People have gotten more creative about their financial lives from how they take vacations to doing without certain things because of budgetary constraints.  Financial woes take a drastic toll on the amount of attention that can be focused on other things because it is instead focused on making ends meet. 

Lack of time – or bandwidth, as it was referred to – is also something everyone (your customers and members included) struggles with.  And statistics show that there is only so much to go around – you can’t just increase your personal bandwidth by multitasking or getting less sleep or concentrating more.  We only have a limited supply of bandwidth.  Enter...the White Rabbit.

It isn’t so much the choices we present to our audiences in the form of messaging, products, or services, it is the WAY in which we deliver those choices that truly matters. 

While we are trying to figure out how to get out of the office on time so we can go take our kids to practice and then somehow get food on the table for our families, we just have no room to listen to or see important things we would ordinarily consider. 

Take your financial institution’s messages for example.  You may have the best new loan product, but getting that message across to your customer or member will be next to impossible unless you specifically design the message around the direct value to your target market.  What problem are you going to solve for them?  How will having this product or service make their life easier?  How will it save them time?  How will it help them be a better mom or help them better reach their goals for their lives and families?

And forget spelling everything out to them in a way that you think will appeal to anyone.  You have a specific person in mind for your message.  Tell THEM what you have to say in words that will appeal to THEM specifically.  Don’t use 25 words when 10 will do. 

When you try to come up with the perfect message that appeals to everyone, you are saying way too much and you aren’t specifically appealing to anyone.

For your next campaign, put on your own behavioral economics hat and think about how strapped for time you are in your own life.  Think about how your financial institution’s new product would make your own life easier, shape the messaging around that value in a succinct way, and you’ll have a much greater ROI for your marketing efforts.  

Amanda

We bring these philosophies to credit unions and community banks all over the country to help them with their strategic planning, marketing, and branding initiatives.  Contact me to learn more about how MarketMatch can help your financial institution define its "why" and achieve sustainable growth in the future.  Don't forget to ask about our ROI Guarantee - the only guarantee of its kind in the entire financial industry!

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"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility"

The Avengers

Think of your favorite superhero.  Why do you like him/her?  Is it the fancy uniform, super cool abilities, or their willingness to always help people no matter what – even in danger and mortal peril?

The thing that makes these superheroes stand out to so many is that they have this immense amount of power, yet they apply it for good deeds and not evil.  Moreover, they use their great responsibility of powers and talent to thwart evil at every turn.

You, my marketing friends, also can apply superhero mentality to your marketing efforts by applying your powers to good instead of evil.  Plainly stated, focus on the positives about your financial institution and how awesome you are at taking care of your customers’ or members’ financial needs.  Use those positive stories from when you helped someone start a business, buy a home, or help send their kids to college.

Focusing on the evil, like throwing the nearby competitor under the bus for example, isn’t how true superheroes roll.  They don’t have to say “I’m better than <insert superhero name> because of X, Y, and Z” because it would make them no better than the villains.

Stop competing with those other nearby community-oriented financial institutions!   We are all playing for the same team – just like our favorites who came together to fight a bigger evil in The Avengers.  Warring with one another over market share isn’t the stuff of superheroes because there is so much more opportunity in the big scheme of things.

In your marketing efforts and in the process of delivering that awesome experience to your members and customers, define what you are best at and what makes you different.  Then, in true superhero fashion, keep using your powers as an organization to keep helping people reach their financial dreams. 

Superheroes always take the high road, and that’s what makes them great.  You and your organization have great power and great talent to use for good.  So remember to be like that favorite superhero and focus on what you have to offer your customers and members.  

Amanda  

We bring these philosophies to credit unions and community banks all over the country to help them with their strategic planning, marketing, and branding initiatives.  Contact me to learn more about how MarketMatch can help your financial institution define its "why" and achieve sustainable growth in the future.  Don't forget to ask about our ROI Guarantee - the only guarantee of its kind in the entire financial industry!

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Creating the Perfect Marketing Campaign

Originally posted on CUInsight.com

Marketing sometimes feels like divining wine.  You have to get the right offer with the right messaging in front of the right people at the right time.  But you don’t need a crystal ball in order to create the perfect marketing campaign. 

• Set a goal!  If your lending manager says, “we need more loans,” ask him or her for some specifics so you have an end goal in mind.  For example, $10 million in new loans.  This will help you determine how many loans you will need to capture in this example.
• Find your inner journalist.  Creating the perfect marketing campaign is only possible if you have all the right information.  A good journalist asks the “Five W’s”: who, what, when, where, and why.  This is where you’ll determine the target market and strategy for your campaign.
• Who?  Male or female (or both)?  Age?  Household income?  Homeowner or renter?  Members or non-members?  Do they live near one of your branches?  These are great, specific examples of information that will help you determine your perfect target market.  If your credit union has an MCIF system, work with the appropriate person to get good, specific data about the group(s) who statistically would be good candidates for this offer.  If you don’t have access to MCIF data, consider contacting one of the three credit bureaus to get credit histories on your members in order to take a deeper look for opportunities.  Is your goal to acquire new business from non-members?  Take the same approach as outlined above and look for a reputable firm that generates lead lists based on the information you want to know and target.  Remember – the more specific the group, the more targeted the message will be, which will yield better results. 
• What?  This is very straightforward: what is the offer, and what is your messaging about the offer?  For example, $10 million in auto loans.  What other specials might your credit union offer to accompany the loan?  Rate isn’t the only thing to consider here.  People make decisions based on emotion.  What emotions can you appeal to in your messaging?
• When?  Make sure your offer has a time limit on it to create urgency, or that postcard, newspaper ad, or whatever form of message you deliver will make its way to the bottom of their priority list.  Example $10 million in new loans by August 31.
• Where?  Using the specific information outlined in “a” above, how are you going to reach those people?  Perform a communications audit on your current messaging mediums compared to everything that is available.  Which ones are a good fit for this particular campaign that also fit into the budget?  This is your strategy.  Even look outside of the credit union industry to see what kinds of guerilla tactics have worked well for other companies.  You never know what will catch peoples’ attention. 
• Why?  This is huge.  Why would someone want a membership/loan/account [insert offer here] from your credit union?  This is called your differentiator.  Give them a reason to come to you for this product or service.  If you don’t have a “Why,” get your team together and do some brainstorming.  Here is a great book to get you started.  Your “Why” is not only important for marketing, but it is the foundation of your credit union and why you do business differently than anywhere else. 
• Ask for the business!  Do you know how often credit unions miss opportunities because they either don’t regularly ask for their members’ business, or they assume their members already know they do mortgages, financial planning, car loans, etc. etc.?  All. The. Time.  For the purposes of a marketing campaign, this is known as your Call to Action.  Our example says $10 million in new auto loans by August 31.  What are you going to say that is going to get your perfect target audience up off their seats to get a loan with your credit union by August 31?  Remember your differentiator and the specific details of your campaign.  Those go into consideration in this phase of marketing campaign development.
• Is your campaign “on brand?”  Does your messaging match your brand voice?  Is the creative consistent with the design elements and colors of your brand?  Putting your marketing initiatives through a brand filter is crucial to growing brand awareness and loyalty. 
• Capture the leads.  Make sure that you have systems in place to find out who is interested in your offer, and then follow up with those people.  Your individual strategies and delivery channels will determine the mechanisms for capturing leads.  In addition, outline a follow-up strategy for your sales team or front-line staff. 
• Measure.  Measure.  Measure.  Did I say measure?  You want to be able to go to your lending manager, CEO, and/or board with concrete data on the marketing investment versus how many new loans were generated.  This is important not only for knowing who responded to your offers and through what mediums so future marketing campaigns are successful, but also for justifying future marketing investments. 
• Be agile.  Throughout the campaign period, be sure to leave yourself the flexibility to make adjustments if certain elements are doing better than others.  The earlier you find out what works, the more success you will have. 

Ready?  Put down that crystal ball, get out your dry erase markers, and start creating your next marketing campaign.  Follow the steps above, and you’ll be on your way to exceeding your strategic marketing goals in no time.

Amanda

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks all across the country.
Want to find out how you can guarantee ROI for your marketing campaigns?  Contact me for more details.  

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Creating a YOUnique Marketing Plan

“It’s not a question about what you could do; it’s a question about what you should do to create the biggest impact.”  

-Bruce Clapp, MarketMatch’s President

You have a pile of money, directives to grow membership and loans, and need to implement a marketing plan over the next 12 months.  Writing a strategic marketing plan takes time and it is never too early to start planning for next year.  In fact, many financial marketers are already starting their plan for 2014. 

But there are so many things to consider when writing a good marketing plan that it can often be daunting even to marketing experts.  Here are some tried and true processes for writing a solid strategic marketing plan.

• Before you begin writing the plan, keep a folder and, throughout the year as you see ideas and articles that inspire you, put these into the folder for safekeeping as you gather your thoughts.
• Perform an audit of previous marketing plans.  What worked well?  What didn’t, and why?  Make note of what didn’t work and remember not to include it in next year’s plan…your budget is precious!
• What are your credit union or bank’s overall organizational goals?  Make sure that your marketing plan is aligned with and supports the overall goals for your financial institution.  Create SMART goals for each one of the targets on which you are focusing your marketing. 
• Determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and develop a regular tracking mechanism for each one.  If membership growth is a top organizational goal, set a benchmark and then regularly measure this metric to make sure you are meeting or exceeding the goal.  Measurement on a continuous basis allows you to make adjustments to your strategy if the numbers aren’t meeting expectations. 
• What is your financial institution’s culture?
• Vision statement
• Core values/brand values
• Brand attributes
• Business philosophy and brand promise
• Unique selling proposition (what makes your financial institution truly different) 
• These act as the compass for your organization’s strategic goals, and having these in place will help you to deliver that YOUnique experience to your members and customers through your marketing and branding efforts.   Your brand elements will also help set your messaging themes.
• Determine your budget.  Before you get into outlining tactics and individual strategies to meet the goals outlined above, you need to have a solid marketing budget in place to invest for the kind of returns you want.  For example, we recommend that our credit union and community banks earmark at least 0.1% of assets for marketing use.  This number also depends on a lot of other factors including the size of your footprint, your awareness/perception in the market, how narrow you can define a target, media costs in your community, etc.  Does this budget include community sponsorships?  What about any operational costs from executing elements of the plan? Make sure you are knowledgeable about and clear on what your budget does and does not include. 
• Going from your KPI and organizational goals above, what products and services are you going to market, and how are you going to do that?  This is where individual campaign development will take shape.  
• Who is/are your target market(s)?  If you write “everyone” here, we need to talk.  There is a difference between a target customer/member and the RIGHT customer/member for your institution.  If you have a solid brand strategy in place, then defining your target market should come more naturally as you know who is best-suited for your financial institution and who you are best-suited to serve. 
• How are you going to tell the story and reach the right people at the right time?  Your budget will dictate what you can do, but the delivery strategies you implement here, if chosen correctly, will be what will move the KPIs.  Think strategically about the best methods for communicating to your target market, and remember that looking outside of the financial industry could give you some great ideas!
• Get buy-in from staff at all levels of your financial institution before the plan is complete.  Many times, people in my credit union would come to me with great ideas they’d been sitting on for months because they were afraid it would get shot down or be unsuccessful.  But they often turned out to get great results and there was more ownership of the marketing program because their voices were being heard.  Once you have buy-in, give everyone a 30,000-foot version of the marketing plan that highlights the overall strategies and reasoning behind the plan.  Then, communicate it and communicate it again through your employee intranet site, internal newsletter, staff meetings, and in other creative ways to make sure that everyone knows they are a marketer of your financial institution. 

Your completed plan will tie together all of these elements in a perfect way unique to your own financial institution.  However, remember that writing one is only half the battle.  It is only through consistent execution and measurement that you will achieve results. 

Good marketing is all about having a well-thought-out strategy and a plan of attack.  The more research you do, metrics you have, and buy-in from all levels of your organization, the better your plan and the better your results at the end of the year.  

Amanda

We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact me for details.

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