To many credit union CFOs (and CEOs that used to be CFOs), Marketing is just overhead. They don’t understand it, they don’t value it, and it doesn’t connect in their minds with the personnel and facilities it takes to keep branches open. To them, cutting the marketing budget is a quick fix when you need to manage expenses.
Read more on Why would anyone join a credit union they have never heard of?…
Search is great when you ask a specific question, such as “where is the nearest Starbucks?” But what if you don’t really know what you want? Could you use anti-search? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just the right thing found you at the right time and location, even if you didn’t know you wanted it until you saw it? Sounds a little crazy, right?
Like most marketers, I watch Super Bowl commercials with a critical eye, ready to pounce on fumbled brand positioning, tired cliches, and disconnected messages. For me, commercial critiques are usually more fun than the game.
When it comes to wrapping presents, some people are fanatics. Me, I’m more of gift bag type. But if this season has you in the wrapping mood, maybe you should consider wrapping more than presents.
Social media is understandably the latest darling of the marketing universe because it gives you the chance to open up an unfiltered conversation with people — an opportunity that other media just can’t provide.
Sugar cubes started it all. The product was the same, but the packaging changed to something easier to handle. And it was something that you did not have to be rich to be able to afford. Sugar cubes were the first example of average consumers buying a product based on a desire to show off, to have an early social status symbol, to have something only the elite had previously. That made it an act of social rebellion.
Traditional media is based on buying exposure – how many people will see this newspaper ad, this TV spot, this outdoor board, this trade show booth. As a result, buyers of traditional media calculate what it will cost to “rent” those eyeballs just long enough to get a message across, then pray for a 1% response in order to pay for the media, and (hopefully) make a profit.
Contrary to popular opinion, social media may not be the best way to reach young people. Consider these stats that have been published recently:
Twitter evolving into entertainment focus.
According to Nielsen, Twitter has grown 1,928% in a year, with 21 million unique visitors each month. Even though Twitter started with a tech-oriented focus, as it has become more mainstream it has followed the interests of its broadening audience, and according to Mashable.com, become more focused on entertainment. Don’t believe it? Take a look at Twitterholic, where celebrities make up the vast majority of top Twitter users & followers.
In case you haven’t heard, Kentucky Fried Chicken is filling potholes in exchange for stamping its logo overtop the freshly poured pavement.
The chicken monger has given new meaning to guerrilla marketing. For a mere $3,000, KFC can help a troubled locality with a true public service by filling 350 potholes, while simultaneously promoting its business through a unique impression by chalk stencil.  Brilliant!
Marketers have to pay attention to shifts in people’s preferences and behavior in order to put their efforts and limited budgets to best use. (After all, is anyone still wasting money on Yellow Page ads?) Here are a few notable trends:
From last week’s survey, we know that the majority of you watch the Super Bowl because of the ads. (That’s great news for those of us in the advertising business.) But did you even consider buying a spot for your credit union?
We all know that iPods have become such a category king that its name has become generic for all digital music players. But did you know that Apple’s Macs are being brought into large corporations by Mac-enthusiast employees?
For decades the only way to reach the people most likely to want what you were offering was through traditional media — TV, radio, newspapers and direct mail — and your buy had to focus on reach and frequency. Your strategy was based on interruption marketing; blasting your message to as many people as possible as often as you can. You had to spend more than your competition, because those with the most money bought the most reach and frequency.
Every CU Marketer uses multiple channels to reach your target audience throughout the day, right? Well, if you do your own media buying, or even use an agency to handle that for you, it’s time to review whether the media you are buying actually fits the market you are going after, and if recent events have changed anything.
When times are good, people buy things because “they feel like it” or “they deserve it.” When times are not so good, people buy because “they need it” or sometimes because “it will never be this cheap again.” Same result, perhaps, but the reasons change along with people’s concerns. Therefore, when times change, your marketing strategy should change as well.
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