Digital Marketing Strategies for Credit Unions

(P.C. – Unsplash, @rupixen)

Why Digital Marketing for Credit Unions is the need of the hour?

Credit unions have always had it tough to demarcate themselves successfully when it comes to facing competition and because they offer more or less similar services like banks and other financers, there target population remains the same more or less and so shall be the approach of targeting the consumers. Therefore, the rules of the game have to be changed and re-molded in such a way that combining an effective use of technology along-with the specialized set of services offered, not only help in customer retention but also in gaining traction amongst new customers.

Before going ahead with your digital marketing strategy, you should know your audience, i.e., one who knows about you and one who doesn’t. For the ones who know about you, it’s always easier to keep them in the loop because of brand familiarity leading to closer relationships. Here the main target is how to attract those customers who aren’t aware about you, even remotely. With so many similar organizations modeled on the same way like yours and having common names with financial and federal, the list of confusion for the unassuming customer grows, unabated. Therefore, our team at Zivanta Analytics shall happily assist you in going ahead with your future endeavors as well as helping in sustaining those successfully cultivated past relations.

Strategies to design your digital marketing approach –

It is important to design a holistic marketing strategy to target customers from all ends, and being impactful but also minding the fact, that it’s not too much of into-my-face advertising and there are tools to help you to achieve the same, let’s have a look at a few of those:

1. Use of AI and Big data to personalize the user experience – With excessive user data at the disposal of financial institutions, and credit unions being no exception, this data can be channelized to have a consumer-targeted marketing strategy. For instance using simple regression or data algorithm to suggest products or services to a particular customer, based on their past behavior or suggesting them specific loans or mortgages as per their financial history. During the current times, when so much confusion is prevailing, it is important to offer constructive advice and help to your customers and therefore designing or suggesting your customers a personalized financial plan to help them overcome the financial stress that is facing, would go a long way in building your reputation as well as creating a lifelong relationship.
2. Creating a breezy customer experience as a priority in your marketing strategy – Creating a convenient and a quality rich consumer experience would help your credit union to grow, be it creating a wonderful virtual experience or providing them with a facilitative experience at your physical workplace. The marketing strategy should be so designed that it focuses on creating a positive, helpful, and quality experience for every customer, whenever they interact with your credit union. Thus, having a consumer-first policy shall go a long way in building a good reputation and long term sustenance of your organization.
3. Having a digital app in the first place – The importance of having a digital presence can’t be emphasized more, with nearly 77% of the U.S. population having access to social media, therefore, the logical conclusion from the same is that these people would prefer something which is on-the go; offers convenience and ease of usage, which not only saves time but is also safe at the same time. With the current change in scenario due to COVID -19, people prefer digital interactions rather than face to face ones. This is a golden opportunity to further push your app and refine it as per consumer demands; you can use it for multiple purposes be it marketing or personal banking and financial services, offering safety precautions, and tutoring customers regarding your services from time to time. This shall create a relationship of ease and trust between you and your customer as well as target new generation customers. We at Zivanta Analytics can help you in developing a facilitative and aesthetically designed app for your business needs, thus giving you a point of leverage against others, in the fray.
4. Personalizing Consumer outreach – With every business now aiming to enhance their consumer outreach, credit unions aren’t far away and rightly shouldn’t be so. Connecting with consumers in person definitely has a humane touch rather an online one, but it’s imperative to add real value to the outreach, for instance offering on a time to time basis real time consultations, financial planning and advice, personalized customer based financial plans or whatever is applicable to your local demography. What should be kept in mind is the fact that these outreach events aren’t events for creating a sales pitch, thereby, your representatives should remain warm, welcoming and friendly, thereby, focusing on offering valuable suggestions and advice, because the idea is to help the community at large and forging meaningful relationships.

How to Target new Customers:

1. Use of Social media – As per a study by Forrester social media and digital advertising will form a considerable size of your digital marketing expense, i.e. approximately 40% and there are valid reasons for the same. This is because, advertising on social media gives you an unhindered exposure as well as offering people access to new things and making them aware of the products and services offered by you.
2. Use of Google for display and search advertising – Use of Google Adwords isn’t something new but the importance of who can’t be emphasized less. Running ads on the search engines results pages (SERPs) and on specific websites ensures you are generating greater returns on your advertising dollars. There are some reasons why Google is more helpful for you:

• Targeting the appropriate audience
• Ease of Budgeting
• Traffic maintenance
• Testing of multiple ads to judge the best version

                   Maintaining older Customers:

1. Having an interactive and an aesthetic website: Since most financial institutions get their traffic from consumers landing on their webpage to access their account and for other services, therefore you can use the webpage space available to advertise other services and other products, offered by you. It’s important to understand the value of time, i.e. how to successfully capture the interest of the users in a limited time-frame and that can happen if the banner images so designed and placed are powerful enough to convey the desired messages. It’s important to continuously change the image displayed on the banners and regularly test buttons, CTA’s and tabs; this is important to give variety and a novel experience on a regular basis to your customers.

With the given ideas, you can have a head-start to plan your marketing strategy and tailor it as per your needs and the clientele being catered to. Now some strategies might already be in place for you and some might be new, but the way to stay ahead in the game is calculated marketing investment and creating new but targeted strategies to keep customers in loop.