Tried and True: Digital Strategies for Credit Union Advertising

There are boundless credit union advertising strategies that financial institutions can use to inspire queries from new members and engagement from existing ones. Creating a new strategy or tweaking your existing action plan can mean countless new members and increased brand recognition both locally and nationally.

However, crafting a truly effective marketing and advertising strategy can be a struggle without conducting several tests from various avenues to see what works best with your existing clientele and target demographic. To help institutions with their credit union advertising efforts, the team at Red Egg Marketing has outlined a few areas to focus on. From our experience, these strategies have proven effective in building a client base, boosting digital presence, and engaging existing clients with an authentic brand that resonates.

Promote User-Generated Content

One of the most attractive aspects of a credit union is the sense of community among members. This promise of honesty, unity, and trust is something that should be apparent throughout your digital strategy. One of the best ways to promote authenticity via digital content is to involve the members you’re trying to reach.

User-generated content encompasses any form of digital content that can be shared for promotional uses. This can include photos, videos, text, or audio. This kind of content proves incredibly successful for demographics associated with credit unions because of the trust variable. Unfortunately for marketers and advertisers, promotional material can often be seen as untrustworthy. The jig is up, most consumers know that marketing is meant to sell. However, by creating content with existing members, you can breech this wall of trust in an honest and authentic way.

Some ideas for content could be:

Fostering a sense of community and trust is exactly the kind of strategy your members will resonate with. Anyone who entrusts their hard-earned money with a financial institution wants to feel as though they’re being well taken care of.

Interactive and Engaging Digital Promotions

It’s no secret, it’s tough to get excited and pumped up about finance. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to boost engagement for your brand online. In fact, at Red Egg, this was the exact strategy that helped our client achieve a 15% boost in social followers and hundreds of new potential members.

In this specific scenario, the Red Egg team was tasked with attracting new members for Rocky Mountain Law Enforcement Federal Credit Union. RMLEFCU has an extremely narrow field of membership making digital advertising challenging. In order to join one must be a current or retired employee of a Colorado law enforcement organization or related to a current member.

In order to build a digital presence and increase awareness for the credit union in the law enforcement community, we ran a series of social media contests where members, and potential members, had to complete social media actions to earn entries into a drawing. The winner earned a prize for their police department, which tapped into the tendency for individuals to do good for a group of their peers.

This social media engagement boosted visibility within this tight-knit community and built brand awareness for RMLEFCU.

Post Relevant Content, Often!

Another important thing to remember about the role of financial institutions is dependability. The demographic you’re trying to reach wants their finances to be accessible at all times. Think about it. How often do you mindlessly sign on to a digital banking app and expect a seamless user experience and instantaneous information about your accounts? That’s how your digital strategy should feel to anyone conducting online research about your brand.

In a recent study of over 1,500 Americans, Red Egg found that 7 in 10 Americans research a brand via web and social media searches before engaging or making a purchase. This proves, above all else, that your social media presence should reflect the nature of your industry: remain cohesive and constant.

Additionally, by sharing relevant and helpful content, your members will associate your brand as being an authority in your field – an aspect that helps to drive trust with your consumers.

Making the Right Decisions for Your Credit Union Advertising

These tips should ring true for any financial institution – remain reliable, trustworthy, and authentic. While these ideas have proven successful within our own agency, there may be other things your team can try to help boost marketing efforts.

If your team is looking to spice up your advertising strategy, we’d love to discuss how Red Egg can help. Give us a call or drop us an email to see how we can help you get started.