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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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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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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Are Sales Campaigns Making You Pushy?

Internal Sales Campaigns are often a useful tool to provide focus for staff, track results, and manage progress toward strategic goals. However, when financial institutions create sales campaigns around a specific product or service, it is important that the sales staff don’t become so eager to meet a sales campaign goal that they sacrifice fulfilling customer/member needs.

For instance, if a prospect walks into your branch during a sales campaign, would your front line staff immediately discuss the campaign product with them, or would they talk to the prospect about their needs and make the best recommendation for their life? Talking about the campaign might have an immediate positive impact on your campaign results, but will likely cause a higher risk of attrition if the prospects needs aren’t being met. Clearly, if your sales staff has a discussion to create a customized solution for their prospect, the prospect will have a more positive experience and be more likely to remain a customer/member overtime.

Therefore, it’s important to keep sales delivery a priority during your sales campaign, here’s how...

• Training – Provide sales training focused around customer life stages. When you roll out a campaign, clearly communicate that the sales delivery must be maintained.
• Set Appropriate Goals – Ensure that your goals are not counter-productive to customer needs. Keeping goals specific to new households, cross-sell ratios, or general product lines will provide your staff the flexibility of choosing products that are the right fit for customers/members and also counting towards a campaign.
• Prequalify – Continue to have conversations during a campaign around your product, but make sure to prequalify customers. You can prequalify customers through an MCIF system, core system, or simply through a discussion.

Campaigns come in all shapes and sizes, but when you’re determining your campaign specifics, make sure that campaign goals will not be met at the expense of customer/member needs. Doing what is right for the customer will help to strengthen your relationship and increase retention.

Best,

Jamie