Every year marketing departments are under constant pressure to improve their performance and prove the ROI of their efforts. Credit union marketers are no exception. In the past, credit unions successfully reached customers through offline marketing methods. There was little progress towards digitization, leading to a lack of solid digital marketing strategies. 

Today, traditional marketing methods are not enough, and digital options are becoming a member expectation. Marketers need to find ways to understand member behavior and tailor marketing strategies accordingly. 

Here are 10 big questions marketers should be asking to help them develop a strategy that yields the desired results.

1. What Are the Marketing Department Objectives?

Marketing should help move a business from where it is now to where it needs to be. Successfully defining your marketing objectives helps you know what you want to achieve. 

Make your objectives more specific. Know what you are trying to sell and whom you are trying to sell it to. For example, your objective can be to increase business revenue from $10M to $15M.

2. What Is Your Brand Strategy?

Answering this question helps you identify how you, the credit union, will build a rapport with the target market. A brand strategy should be part of your business plan that makes your credit union more favorable and memorable in the eyes and minds of the consumers. 

An effective brand strategy will keep you top of the consumers' minds so that they can choose you over your competitors. It should connect with consumer needs and emotions.

3. Who Are You Targeting?

Identify how you need to define your target market. Start by identifying your members and why they chose your credit union. Look at what they have in common, including their interests. After identifying the characteristics of your current members, use that information to tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

4. How Are You Leveraging Big Data?

Credit unions need to understand how to prioritize data for effective marketing. Data can show you what your credit union is doing well and what it can do to improve. Knowing how to leverage data enables you to understand member behavior to target existing and new members. You can also identify new marketing opportunities. Data collection and analysis provide valuable insights that help you make important decisions.

5. What Are Your Customer Retention Strategies?

A credit union needs to know how to acquire new customers and retain them. Find out the customer retention strategies that work for your credit union. For example, find out ways to build trust to have a long-term relationship with your members. You can create loyalty programs, leverage data to re-engage members through marketing automation, and personalize communication and the product offers.

6. Do You Offer Compelling Content to Attract Customers?

Content marketing is a strategy that can help you yield positive results if you do it correctly. The most popular content marketing is video sharing and social media posts. Sharing compelling content will attract more members and keep current members. 

According to statistics, 70% of consumers prefer learning about products through content. Statistics also show that content marketing is projected to rise to over $300 billion. It is essential to ensure you offer compelling videos and social media posts to reap the benefits of content marketing.

7. Are You Tracking Results?

Correctly tracking the results of your marketing efforts gives you insight into your credit union's status quo. It provides the right business perspective and helps you set realistic expectations. Investing in reliable data collection and measuring tools like SEMrush, MosPro, and Kissmetric helps you see the whole picture of your marketing efforts.

8. What Is Your Success Metric?

Understand what determines your marketing success or failure. After knowing the determinant of success or failure, ensure you have the right tools to help you report your marketing outcome. 

For example, you can determine success by the number of new members joining the credit union due to your email marketing campaign. It's essential to have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that can help you measure such success. Google Analytics is another way to gather data and measure the success of increasing website traffic. Other methods like conducting a survey can also work.

9. Which Areas Can You Double the Effort?

Collecting and analyzing data helps you identify areas that are performing well. Double your marketing efforts in such areas to increase your ROI. This might mean creating more social media posts or improving loyalty programs.

10. Which Areas Should You Scale Back?

Data analytics helps credit union marketers discover unproductive areas of their marketing campaigns. Investing resources in such areas impacts negatively on your profit. Scale back on these areas because they do not bring ROI. 

Leveraging Marketing Data Is the Best Way to Track Efforts 

Investing in marketing data analytics is the best way credit unions can get powerful insights for decision making. Credit unions can invest in technology to enable marketers to carry out effective campaigns that empower members and improve ROI. Such data-driven strategies help marketers produce desired results.