What's Your Promise?

“We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.”  -Abraham Lincoln 

A brand promise is the expectation you’ve given your members and communities.  It is your legacy and your differentiator over your competitors.  It is the basis of peoples’ decisions to buy with you. 

Your brand promise should stand the test of time no matter what products you offer, what communities you serve, and the goals you have for your financial institution.  Hence it needs to be simple, yet aspirational, and most importantly, something you can deliver on no matter what.

After all, it’s not the making of the promise that is important, is the keeping of that promise. 

How do you go about coming up with the one big thing that you want to promise and can deliver on no matter what?  Here’s how:

1. Listen to the buzz.  Figure out what your members and customers really think about you.  This is NOT your perception about what people are thinking and saying about you.  We often make a big mistake in assuming more people know about our credit union or bank than actually do.  Moreover, we assume we know how they view us.  But there is no better way than to ask.  Ask your staff members, board members, current members and people in the community what they think about your financial institution.  Also do searches on sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and other social media sites to gauge the honest feedback and reviews people are posting about your credit union or bank.
2. What do you stand for?  Working together as a team to determine your short and long term goals and making sure that those goals align with the foundation of your business is key in being able to live up to your promise to customers and members.  Is it to make banking fun, easy, or efficient?  Or perhaps having the lowest fees?  Price alone is hard to stand on, and determining the "why" of your organization takes some time, but the promise you end up making should be pointing directly toward this target.
3. Do a SWOT analysis.  What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as an organization?  Having a candid discussion with your team about all of these areas will be beneficial as you enumerate and discover differentiators for your financial institution. 
4. What is your brand’s personality?  What attributes does your credit union or bank exemplify through the course of doing business with customers and members?  These attributes will help you determine the kind of promise you will make and how you will deliver on that promise over time.  “A brand personality is an expression of a brand, described and experienced as human personality traits e.g. friendly, intelligent, innovative, etc.  It is an expression of the relationship between the consumer and the brand.”  (Source: www.esomar.org).

It’s all about values.  

Core values and brand values are two ways of saying the same thing, but having these foundational values in place that guide every decision you make as an organization is very important because it gives your employees and members and the community something real to believe in other than products or services.

Some great examples of core values can be found at the following companies: Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton,Whole Foods Market, and Zappos.com.  What makes these examples great, however, aren’t the words written on those pages or in their respective break rooms.  It is the lengths to which these companies go in their everyday businesses in order to fulfill these values that makes them so special. 

Having a brand promise can seem like such a little thing when you have to worry about how your financial institution is going to keep growing in this heavily competitive and regulated industry.  But it is one of the most important things your business can do for sustainability in the future.  It comes with many benefits:

• Employee loyalty.  Enumerating the things listed above gives your employees a “why” for coming to work for your company.  When they buy into the vision and mission, they are investing themselves in you just as you have invested in them. 
• Greater brand awareness.  Having these many facets of your brand defined gives you more bandwidth to do some really special stuff with your marketing and branding efforts.  Put together a brand communication plan for both inside your financial institution and outside.  Communicating the different elements of your brand at every opportunity with employees and customers will yield greater brand awareness for everyone. 
• Knowing exactly who is best suited for your institution.  If you are always targeting different groups for different campaigns, or find yourself asking “who is our best target market,” focusing on the elements of your brand – including your brand promise – will help you determine the customers and members for whom you are able to serve perfectly. 
• Organizational alignment.  This is the “utopia” we all strive for in business; ensuring that everyone in your organization - from the tellers to the back office staff to the board members – is on the same page with the same end game in mind.  Having a well-structured brand is the foundation for alignment across your organization. 

While it is important to be focusing on the metrics that measure the growth and progress of your credit union or bank, not focusing on your brand as well can become an enormous liability on your balance sheet.  At the end of the day, what is your promise?

Amanda

Let MarketMatch help you harness the power of your brand to impact your bottom line.  Our proprietary branding process will target opportunities to obtain new customer relationships, grow existing customer relationships, and build brand awareness. Contact me for details.

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What Do You Brand For?

In recent years, “brand” has become somewhat of a buzzword in business.  While a lot of people think it is an intangible and amorphous word with little meaning, your company’s brand is the single most important contributor to your bottom line as an organization.  Successful brands are invaluable.  Conversely, undefined brands are a black hole on your organization’s balance sheet.

Brands have real, actual value behind them, which is known as “brand value” or “brand equity.”  Investopedia defines brand value as “the value premium that a company realizes from a product with a recognizable name as compared to its generic equivalent.  Companies can create brand equity for their products by making them memorable, easily recognizable and superior in quality and reliability.  Mass marketing campaigns can also help to create brand equity.”   

Let’s use Coca Cola as an example.  It is the most recognizable brand in the world with its brand valued at $77.8 billion, according to the 2012 Best GlobalBrands Report by Interbrand.  This $77.8 billion is the cost of the actual brand…not inventory or real estate or its executives.  It is the value of Coca Cola’s brand recognition throughout the world.  Coke’s consumers pay more for the Coca Cola brand product over competitors and generic labels, and that difference of what consumers will spend is Coca Cola’s brand equity. 

Coca Cola promises fun, freedom, and refreshment to consumers.  Not the lowest price for cola, or the most convenient to find.  Their aim is to sell an experience. 

The reason behind branding is because you are standing for something. 

It’s difficult to near impossible to put a figure on the brand of our credit union or community bank and our financial products and services.  But the important lesson we can learn from Coca Cola is that you have to stand for something, build your brand around it over time, commit to continuous marketing and communication of your brand's elements, and then you won’t have to rely on price as your differentiator.

How can your financial institution increase its brand value with current members/customers and the community?  Develop a brand strategy, which includes a brand promise, positioning statement, and a defined identity and be that brand every day.  Over time, you will earn recognition and loyalty, which should be the true foundation of your financial institution’s marketing efforts.

My next post will focus specifically on how to define your brand promise, so be sure to check back next week. 

Amanda

Let MarketMatch help you harness the power of your brand to impact your bottom line.  Our proprietary branding process will target opportunities to obtain new customer relationships, grow existing customer relationships, and build brand awareness. Contact me for details.

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Goldilocks and the Three Brands

Make sure your brand is just right.

If you look up the word “brand” in the dictionary, here is what comes up:

brand  (brænd)
— n
1.	a particular product or a characteristic that serves to identify a particular product
2.	a trade name or trademark

But a brand is a whole lot more than a mark or a characteristic.  There are many imperceptibles that go into a brand, and it is a lot more complicated than just an icon or logo as a successful brand has many elements.

Look up “brand” in business or marketing books, however, and it is overcomplicated, impersonal, and ambiguous:

"Unique design, sign, symbol, words, or a combinationof these, employedin creating an imagethat identifies a productand differentiates it from its competitors. Over time, this image becomes associatedwith a level of credibility, quality, and satisfactionin the consumer'smind. Thus brands help harried consumers in crowded and complexmarketplace, by standing for certain benefitsand value. Legal namefor a brand is trademarkand, when it identifies or representsa firm, it is called a brand name."

(Source: www.businessdictionary.com)

Getting Your Brand Just Right

A brand is personal.  People choose to buy and/or interact with brands they can relate to and that evoke a set of emotions.  The easiest way to define a brand is to think of your organization as a person.  Everyone has a certain consistent appearance, a tone, a set of personality attributes and quirks, likes and dislikes, ideal friends and partners, etc.  This definition is easy to understand and is just right for any business.

While a brand takes a long time to build and define, there is a science behind it.  The great and successful brands of today are personifying their brands, and many have actually hired someone to embody those attributes in order to amplify their brand awareness with consumers.

Some brands that, in my opinion, do a fantastic job of personifying their attributes are Progressive Insurance, M&Ms, and Geico to name a few.  And, while they are actual people, Oprah, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump and even Jennifer Lopez are successful brands.

What words describe your brand?

If you’ve had trouble knowing where to start in defining your credit union or community bank’s brand, take a step back and start describing it as you would another person.  Then you’ll be on the road to getting your brand juuuuuust right. 

Amanda

***Stay tuned for next week’s blog for tips about how to define the different elements of your brand!  

Let MarketMatch help you harness the power of your brand to impact your bottom line.  Our proprietary branding process will target opportunities to obtain new customer relationships, grow existing customer relationships, and build brand awareness.  Contact me for details.

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The New “Basics” Every Marketer Should Know

This week, we are focusing on the fundamentals of marketing on the MarketMatch blog and Facebook.  And by basics, we aren’t talking about TV commercials and billboards, radio, newspapers, direct mail, and all of the more traditional forms of marketing.  There are some new basics that every marketer should know because marketing has changed dramatically since the days of Mad Men, and changes more rapidly as time goes on.

Let’s break down the basics of today’s marketing:

Tell a story with personality

Business Banking Services – Example 1

“We have business loans for all sizes of businesses and industries.  Our rates are competitive and we feature friendly, knowledgeable loan officers and an easy application process.”

Business Banking Services – Example 2

“Jerry Smith has owned his glass shop for 34 years and always had what he thought was a great relationship with his financial institution.  That was, until he received an unexpected call from his ‘personal banker.’  ‘We understand that you have never missed a payment on your credit line and you’ve always been a good customer,’ said the personal banker.  ‘But we are cutting back our lending, and we’re closing your line of credit loan effective next month.’

Angry and betrayed, Jerry turned to his local credit union/community bank, where the loan officer came to his shop, learned about his business and designed a custom solution tailored to Jerry’s individual needs.” 

Which of these examples is more compelling to you?  People make decisions based on emotion.  Stories make it easy for people to put themselves in a given situation allowing you an opportunity to “sell” your services in a way with which the readers can identify.  And, more importantly, makes your sale more memorable for the consumer.

Solve a problem with your positioning. 

We don’t need a marketing campaign to tell us how amazing chocolate is.  Or how it tastes.  99% of people love chocolate.  So how would a chocolate company position itself?  Enter my favorite candy, M&Ms: their tagline is “melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”  It instantly creates a visual, and they don’t describe the features of their candy with their positioning.  Plus they have the whole adorable character thing going for them, too.  

A great exercise for you to try next time you are developing a marketing campaign is to take off your marketing hat and be the consumer.  What problems or opportunities do you have or see with your personal finances, accessing your accounts, getting loans, visiting the branch, etc.  Once you have brainstormed those processes, back into how your account, loan, service, etc. will solve that problem.  If there aren’t any problems to be identified (which is great), how can those touch points and transactions be enhanced so that the transactions become memorable over other financial institutions selling the same services and products?

Personalize and position your product so that someone can identify with it and make it their “own.” 

"Bride" on my wedding day

As a coffee-loving person, the experience of going into Starbucks and ordering a “grande, one pump, nonfat, no whip café mocha” is a personal experience.  Am I in line like everyone else to buy coffee?  Yes.  But that is my drink.  

We obviously don’t sell coffee drinks.  We sell trust through our financial products and services.  This doesn’t mean recreating the wheel.  It means modifying (or creating) the consumer experience.  How can you appeal to the innate human desire of acceptance and belonging through the various transactions at your financial institution? 

Stop being a logo! Show your brand personality.  (Yes, you have one).

“Flo” has over 5 million Facebook fans.  It’s an insurance company!  But Progressive has done an amazing job at taking their commodity-based transaction and turning it into a people-based transaction.

 

It’s also insurance, but the Allstate “Mayhem” commercials do a fantastic job of dramatizing insurance needs in a funny, identifiable way. 

Why is this important?  The more consumers relate to and remember your institution, the higher your brand loyalty will be.

Engage and encourage them in conversation

In the age of social media where it takes all of eight seconds to tweet about a service experience, people are going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly whether you want them to or not.  So, instead of playing defense (or worse, not playing at all), how about being proactive and engaging them in conversation on your terms? 

Some negative response is inevitable and can even turn out to be a great opportunity for your financial institution.  In fact, your members or customers expect you to do things wrong from time to time, but it is how your organization handles those issues as Ron Zemke talks about in his article “Service Recovery: Turning Oops! Into Opportunity.”  He says, “the true test of an organization’s commitment to service quality is the way the organization responds when things go wrong for the customer.”  Conversation enables these opportunities to be uncovered and on your terms.

Choose the medium that is right for your financial institution, drive traffic there with your marketing and communications efforts, and actively engage your audience in conversation, whether it is in person or online.  Your members and customers want to know that there are real people with real personalities behind that logo of yours.  That’s why the examples above are so identifiable and memorable.

Make it about them, not you. 

In the same way that you go about positioning a product or service, remember your credit union or community bank is there to serve the people coming in the door, connecting with you online, or calling on the phone.  Marketing isn’t just about how you promote your business; it is how your business operates and involves everything from the building atmosphere, the employee dress code, how people are greeted, the transaction process…everything.  We are in a people business, and it is about them. 

It is imperative in today’s competitive environment that we as marketers go beyond traditional marketing mediums and tactics and do it before we need to.  Once your target audience has gone elsewhere, it will be that much harder to capture their attention and tell them your story.  And it’s a great story you have to tell.  

Amanda


MarketMatch brings these philosophies and die-hard energy to credit unions and community banks.  Want to learn more about how MarketMatch can help you with your strategic marketing efforts?  Contact me!

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How Do You Serve Your Chicken?

There is a Chinese food restaurant in my neighborhood that is my husband’s and my “go to” place when we have a night where do don’t feel like cooking.  Out of the eight or so Chinese places that are within 10 minutes of our house, we like going to this particular one the most. 

The reason we like going there so much is because the place is clean, the people are friendly, and they are flexible with how they let you order traditional items on their menu.  For example, we love General Tso’s Chicken, but hate the heavy breading and greasy fried meat found at most places.  Here is our typical order:

General Tso’s Chicken

Unbreaded, steamed/boiled white meat

Extra broccoli

With as many times we have ordered this dish in our health-conscious way, we have probably received the finished product in that many ways as well:

• No broccoli
• Extra vegetables, but no broccoli
• Chicken was fried with breading
• Chicken was fried without breading
• Very little meat and lots of vegetables
• Big pieces of steamed chicken with the perfect amount of sauce and broccoli
• Chicken with runny sauce
• Do you see my point now?

I never know what I’m going to get when I order that particular dish, and, as long as my chicken isn’t fried, at the end of the day I don’t really care that much.  But if I decide to change, I would do so quietly.  I just wouldn’t go back again.

It's All About the Service Delivery

There IS a relation between me ordering my General Tso’s “my way” Chicken and banking with my financial institution.  What happened if I mailed a check to be deposited into my checking and it went into savings instead, thus causing an overdraft?  How many times do you think that would happen before I decided to change institutions? 

Your service delivery is everything.  And, while each person’s comfort level and anger threshold is different, you need to make sure your entire team is ready to treat every interaction and transaction like it is your last with that member.  Listen to them, make sure you do exactly what they ask for, exceed their expectations, and give them a reason to come back.  Otherwise, you may be quietly losing members or customers without them giving you a chance to find out why.

Amanda

Want to gauge the service delivery in your financial institution?  MarketMatch can help!  Our process creates and transforms the actual “voice of the customer” into clear knowledge-based strategy and ties service delivery strategy to the customer experience and brand promise.

Contact me to learn how we can help turn your challenges into opportunities with guaranteed ROI on your efforts. 

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What’s the Internet Saying About You?

It’s no surprise that one of the first places consumers go to get information about your financial institution is an Internet search engine, but do you know what they are finding?

If you haven’t searched your financial institution in awhile, it's time. Searching your financial institution on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other popular search engines should be a regular step in managing your reputation. Also, it's important to search more than just the name of your financial institution. Keep in mind that when consumers are searching your financial institution, they’ll poke around for information on your services, locations, staff, and even complaints.

When searching your financial institution, it's the first page of results that's most important. Click each link on the first page to understand how your financial institution is being presented on the web. Results will vary:

• If you find only your website and great praise… congratulations and keep up the good work! 


• If you find only your company website… expand your presence by submitting press releases or getting your social media noticed.
• If you find negative comments… do something about it. 
If possible, take it down or move the negative content down the list by adding positive content. 

• If you don’t find your bank… look into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which can get your financial institution to the top of the list.

You can also take it one step further and set up your search as an alert. A search engine alert will send you automatic updates and keep you informed of current search results about your financial institution.

Best,

Jamie