(From the MarketMatch Blog Archives)
The off-site hotel is set and the golf reservations are made. You know how you’ll entertain your board members, and they are looking forward to a weekend together. Now, it’s time to begin the REAL pre-work to your planning session.
As credit unions and community banks, everything we do is built around our members and customers … EVERYTHING!
Before you break into that agenda … think about who you’re doing it for.
The Super-Duper Credit Union or Community Bank customer is family focused. She is a married woman with a good job, but (combined with her husband’s income) making just enough to support her family’s comfortable lifestyle. She has one or two young children and a husband who likely earns a little more than her. They live in a two-bedroom home in a middle class neighborhood with lots of swing sets and have been there for 5-10 years.
Retirement seems like a pipe dream. Though they invest a little through their employers, it is not the focus. They are more concerned with meeting monthly bills and still squirreling away some savings for their children’s future college bills – the majority of which will ultimately be financed through student loans.
Her time is divided between maintaining a career that she is proud of; raising children she loves dearly; supporting her kids’ activities; volunteering for community groups; exercising three to four times per week; and nurturing a relationship with her husband, family, and friends where she can find time. She has replaced time on the phone with her friends with frequent pictures and updates of the kids on Facebook.
Because her husband is “busy earning more,” or because she’s more responsible, she’s in charge of most of the family finances. While she is technologically savvy, she received her first email account when she started her first real job, about 20 years ago. That said, she writes more checks than she probably should but is beginning to see the efficiency of online banking and starting to trust it more. She’s certainly not an early adopter of technology – but she LOVES her iPhone.
Though she and her husband each switch cars every three to four years, they do not lease. They want the look and amenities of a BMW or Mercedes without the hefty monthly payments.
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The off-site hotel is set and the golf reservations are made. You know how you’ll entertain your board members, and they are looking forward to a weekend together. Now, it’s time to begin the REAL pre-work to your planning session.
As credit unions and community banks, everything we do is built around our members and customers … EVERYTHING!
You, of course need to be prepared to talk business: How will we decrease loan loss while still being open enough to grow the portfolio? How do we increase non-interest income without establishing big-bank fees? Are there new markets that we should look at? Do we want to merge (or be merged)? Are we over or under staffed?
This is all vital to discuss, but before you break into THAT agenda … think about who you’re doing it for.
Can you tell a story like the one above? You need to!
The days of being all things to all people are over. Your margins shrank years ago and have little promise of coming back any time soon. Your marketing budget isn’t limitless. You need loans NOW, and your 65-plus-year-old members simply aren’t borrowing like you need.
So you need to focus! You need to determine who in your market(s) you are attracting now and who you WANT to attract. You need to understand your best customers and what makes them the best. Then learn everything you can about them.
When you can tell a story about your customer: where they live, where they work, what they do for fun, what drives them, what they fear, what they care about … then you can start making strategic decisions on your product suite, pricing, branching, tech investments, your website, and your marketing message.
In addition to being a bank and credit union strategic consultant, MarketMatch also has nationally and internationally requested speakers. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your institution or next conference.
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