Every financial institution offers similar products and services as well as similar educational programs. Credit unions must find creative ways to establish a "compelling" distinction and competitive advantage to create value, excitement, and engagement from SEGs/community businesses and their employees. The operative words are "compelling, excitement, and engagement."
First and foremost, the most compelling way to market your credit union is to share what it doesn't do. For example, when someone asks: "What is the difference between a credit union and a bank?" don't respond with the usual: "We are a not-for-profit cooperative... we are member-owned..."
A More Compelling Message
Focus on what you "don't do" and respond with:
- "We don't increase your interest rate on your credit card to 28.99% if you are one minute late or one day late on your payment."
- "We don't increase your interest rate on your credit card to 28.99% if you go over your credit limit by one dollar."
- "We don't charge you 3% to 5% on cash advance balances on our credit card."
- "We don't charge you 3% to 5% on transfer balances to our credit card."
- "We don't charge $3 to $5 if you use another ATM within our Network."
- "We don't charge an annual membership for our credit card."
- "We don't charge you up to $15 if you call to make a payment on your loan."
- "We don't charge you $2 to $5 for a face-to-face transaction in a branch or a person-to-person transaction over the telephone."
Another convincing objective in marketing your credit union is NOT to sell the credit union and its products and services first, as all financial institutions have similar products and services, to prospective partners, but rather approach existing SEGs and potential companies with the objective of creating a strong partnership. Products and services will be the end result of a strong partnership. Clearly, concisely, and compellingly clarify why a company would want to partner with you in lieu of the many other financial institutions.
The "not for profit cooperative" statement certainly adds value (CUs never want to forget their core value), but this just doesn't make someone want to jump out of their seat with excitement to do business with you. You have about 30 seconds to capture someone's interest; make it captivating.
Begin conversations with a compelling statement, such as: "We partner with companies such as yours to help employees save hundreds of thousands of dollars during their lifetime. To achieve this goal, we look for ways to help your employees improve their credit score, lower their monthly debt, and eliminate high-interest rate credit card debt."
It takes just a little creativity to build on this statement and create a convincing competitive advantage. There are many ways to create and market this competitive advantage as a Partner. The objective is to show and not just tell SEGS and community partners how you "walk the talk." Credit unions can create exclusive programs that no other financial institutions offer and package them in an exclusive "Preferred Partner Program" that helps their members save hundreds of thousands of dollars during their lifetime.
One example of a unique program credit unions can offer is a credit score management program as a community seminar and/or "Lunch and Learn" seminar for SEGs and community businesses. This program allows you to partner with companies and help their employees learn what they can do to raise their credit score and save hundreds of thousands of dollars during their lifetime. In addition to offering the seminar, your credit union can offer complimentary one-on-one credit score analyses for every employee who works for the Preferred Partner giving you face-to-face, one-on-one time with every employee.
By offering every employee a free credit score analysis, you now has the opportunity to review every employees' credit report to identify opportunities to save them thousands of dollars in interest on loans financed at other financial institutions — all while showing them how to improve their credit score. A compelling caveat to this program is offering to refinance their consumer loans one time during the lifetime of the loan if the credit score goes up. This caveat motivates the employees to do what it takes to increase their credit score and builds loyalty for life.
Three Main Goals
The philosophy behind this program is to accomplish three things:
- Never deny a loan but defer the loan thus increasing loan opportunities.
- Turn high-risk members into low-risk members.
- Build loyalty for life with all members including low-risk members whom you can help reduce their monthly payout while increasing their credit score.
To serve your community business/SEG partners and members well, today's credit unions (no matter your charter) will need to find ways to forge partnerships with businesses in the community by becoming a community partner, an educational partner, a resource partner, a business partner, etc., with a clear focus on finding ways to help the company owners as well as their employees enhance the quality of their lives.
Credit scores impact almost every aspect of peoples' lives, so build your value as a credit union by offering unique programs that no other financial institution offers and become their most valued partner.
Celeste Cook is president/CEO of cuStrategies, LLC and can be reached at
