Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool:

Your Difference

Banks and Credit Unions can go tit-for-tat when it comes to products and services. Focusing marketing efforts on more competitive loan rates, higher deposit yields, and lower or eliminated fees remains a common practice for Credit Unions. While these benefits are effective, you are also beginning your relationships with new members based solely on price a path you most likely do not want to walk down.

Relationships Based On Price
When you focus solely on price, you condition your members to become overly attentive to rates and yields a war you will seldom win all the time. Someone will always be willing to lower their price in an attempt to lure away your members. More importantly, you do not want your members jumping ship when your competitors offer new or lower-priced services.

Furthermore, the lowest-price strategy generates an overly cautious approach by younger generations. Instead of seeing lowest price, they see a faulty product; when they see ‘free’, they automatically begin looking for the catch. Using this approach begins your relationship by testing trust; a trait you likely do not yet entirely possess.

Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool The truth is, you do traditionally offer lower loan rates and higher deposit yields and you aren’t tricking anyone or offering a faulty product. You do this because you are a Credit Union, a non-profit financial cooperative…but do your current and potential members understand this? We would like to assume so, but the answer is more commonly no.

Instead of focusing marketing efforts solely on price, focus on price and why. Constantly remind your members why and how a Credit Union operates and you will create strong and loyal relationships with your members. A recent search on Google for Banks vs. Credit Unions revealed only two Credit Unions telling the difference in the first 30 search results. Browsing through nearly 50 Credit Union websites resulted in almost all having only a small paragraph explaining the difference in an ‘about us’ or ‘our history’ section.

Reinforce Your Difference A bank can match your products and services almost identically, but they can never beat your difference which is your greatest marketing tool. Increase your members’ loyalty by not only presenting your financial benefits, but why such advantages are possible.

Related Article: Effectively Promoting Your Difference

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