5 Tips For How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Credit Union Generate Loan Growth

It’s a simple fact of life that virtually every successful credit union focuses on loan growth as a major strategic priority. Of course, the challenge lies in finding cost-effective and efficient ways to gain that growth in quality loans. Today, creative forms of digital marketing provide credit unions the same opportunities to meet their marketing objectives as retailers, banks, and other institutions.

Finding the Right Tactics for a Digital Strategy

Of course, while digital marketing provides exciting new avenues to support efforts to grow loans, it is neither simple nor easy to implement. Developing the right tactics to employ an effective digital marketing strategy requires knowledge of everything from privacy laws to SEO to selecting the right platforms for your member base.

Assuming you are able to commit to such detailed planning and seek to take advantage of digital tactics, here are 5 tips for success in that effort:

1. Think conversation, not one-way communications. The great advantage of digital communications is the ability to engage your customer, not simply blast them with a traditional ad or offer.
2. Be personal. Your marketing efforts should be tailored and personalized based on your membership base. This is another aspect of engagement – use the power of digital to speak directly to each member. For example, your Facebook page will allow you to post a new offer and monitor the likes and shares. In turn, that opens the door to further communications with those followers.
3. Make it easy for your members to respond on multiple devices. Whether you’re sending an email or using a tweet, ensure you provide the links and contact points that make it easy to respond and accept the offer.
4. Constantly collect digital addresses. It used to be enough if you collected an email from your members. Now, however, you want to collect information on the platforms that you support, including such increasingly popular social media sites as Instagram and Google+
5. Use digital media to educate. You can create your own YouTube or Vimeo channel and educate your members on how a loan can build their credit rating or how a home improvement loan can add value and enjoyment for their home.

The opportunity and challenge of digital marketing is the cross-purposing of the same message across multiple formats and platforms with very small additional costs. If you take the time to properly plan your strategy, employing the right tactics will help achieve that goal of growing your base of loans.

Avoiding the Digital Overload

Once upon a time – just a decade or so ago – it was enough for any credit union to have a simple website. Today, however, you know those websites are expected to offer an increasingly wide range of capabilities and functions. Additionally, there are over 150 social media platforms and more coming on stream every month. Providing the right mobile banking services and choosing the right digital tools requires your management team to make a major commitment of time and resources. Many smaller credit unions find it difficult to allocate those resources and have a sense of being overwhelmed by the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Fortunately, many of those credit unions are finding relief in the potential of an advantageous merger with a like-minded institution. Contrary to mergers in the for-profit business world, credit unions find they can combine with others without any negative effect on their employees and members. Rather, such mergers are often the wise solution to ensuring each of the individual participants maintains the critical mass necessary to properly serve and grow with their membership.