Marketing is no new concept but how we use it to our advantage is ever-changing. It can change from year to year, or even day to day depending on what innovation is happening in the industry. With more and more people being present online, we sometimes need to take a step back and rethink our vision. Soar has come up with a quick guide to help you do just this. Whether you need to transform your current strategy or create a new one altogether, here’s some things for you to consider in 2020:
If you don’t already have an online presence, then you really need to think about taking the next steps and getting online. If you do, then take a look at where you were a year ago and where you are today. Is there anything you’d like to improve? What are your new goals? As we head into a new decade, there’s lots of change coming but one thing that will remain the same is that we need to be where our customers are.
For your credit union, you will need to have a think about where your current members are online and where your potential members are online too. Remember, we need to focus on attracting a future generation of members, so you need to figure out where they are and join in on the conversation with them. Create content for them on social media – content is king after all. People like to be engaged with online and they like organisations to share useful information with them. Use this to your advantage and build up your audience online. Social media can be daunting at times but it doesn’t need to be your only marketing channel. Think about all of your members and what they respond to. Some may respond to direct and offline marketing more so think about splitting up your marketing strategy and targeting different segments of your audience in different ways. You’ll probably find this pays off!
“By 2020, it’s expected that customers will place a greater significance on excellent service.”
(drift.com)
If you can think about your customer experience and can identify some places where you might perhaps fall down in terms of service, it’s time to pick them back up. Your member experience is going to be one of the best marketing tools – if you give one a good experience, they will spread the news.It’s so important for credit unions to focus on building a frictionless member journey. There are things that can help you such as investing in new technologies and practices that can help manage and monitor your member experience.
As a credit union, I’m sure you already focus heavily on the personalisation of your service and this is something you should continue todo. Credit unions can be smart about their personalisation and work to target certain products to different member segments. To implement this type of marketing, you need to first of all fully understand your members and their traits and behaviours. Once you’ve achieved this, you will be able to target specific products and services to certain groups of members. They’ll appreciate you taking the time to learn more about them and send them targeted content. There’s nothing worse than receiving marketing that you know is generic and hasn’t been tailored to you. It can feel very impersonal so we need to focus on putting your members right at the centre of everything you do.
We’ve spoken about customer experience and how important it is, but you need the tools to be able to achieve it. Digital transformation is going to get you where you need to be in the market and in a place where potential members are going to sit up and take notice.
“Digital transformation is the process of using new technologies to create or optimise internal business processes and customer experience to improve market position and meet business needs.”
(salesforce.com)
Adopting new technologies into your credit union is going to give you additional ways to engage with your customers as well as giving them access your products and services online. Worldwide, there is a huge uptake on technologies and services that enable digital transformation as more and more organisations realise we need it to move forward.
Soar offers workshops on digital transformation and would be more than happy to let you know of any of these events coming up. Drop us a message here to be notified.
We’re not going to see email marketing go anywhere anytime soon but we need to also leverage other channels that are available to us. In 2020, tools that enable chatbots and push notifications are predicted to take off. Push notifications especially, are impactful and send messages to your audience that literally appear right under their nose.
Soar knows all too well the importance of push notifications and that’s why we’ve included the ability to send these through our mobile app. We know that you need to be able to reach your audience through different marketing channels and push notifications are going to capture the attention that you need right away.
Branding is as important as ever going into 2020. We always need to consider why people use products and services; it can be because it’s personal and they feel connected to brand or they simply feel they can trust you. This is something that isn’t going to change so you will need to continue to build a brand that people feel connected to if you want to attract in new members.
Having a strong brand will also encourage more word of mouth in your community. As well as this you are going to be recognisable and a good brand even improves employee pride and satisfaction – something that will help when looking for new advisors or volunteers. Your brand will also support any other advertising or marketing activities you undertake. It’s what anyone on the outside looking in perceives you to be so make sure to make it memorable and portrays your message the way you want.
As well as focusing on your current marketing plan, you need to think about where you want to be. What do you want to achieve? What are your goals for the coming year? To make sure this is realistic, you need to plan for the future and put a strategy in place. This means you won’t need to play catchup throughout the year.
Automating some of your processes will help with your marketing activities. We discussed some earlier in this guide. It’s now easier than ever to automate email and notifications so use this to your advantage. It’s also an idea to get someone in-house that has the skills you need if you don’t already. Many up and coming marketers now have multiple skillsets as they’ve had to adapt to an ever-changing market; these are the types of people you need in your organisation to help with growth.
When looking at 2020, don’t look at is as a scary thought for marketing but as an opportunity for your credit union to grow. With a refreshed look at your marketing strategy, this time next year you could be looking at increased member numbers, lending figures and savings.
Don’t hold back on looking at your plan for next year. For a little bit of extra help, Soar offers a Marketing Health Check that reviews all of your current marketing activities and we can give you recommendations for 2020 based on what we assess during your health check. To find out more about this, email us at hello@soar.tech
