These findings indicate that the FinServ industry must reassess their appeal and market position as it pertains to millennials and the capital they represent. Naturally – and as a result of the 2008 market crash – the financial services industry has been scrambling to gather, understand and quantify data surrounding the financial behaviors, habits, patterns and proclivities of millennials in order to better position themselves with this powerful and educated emerging market demographic. As organizations continue to invest valuable time and resources in new and innovative marketing and advertising initiatives aimed at breaking into and appealing to the millennial mindset, it is prudent to allocate some of those resources to seeking strategic guidance for constructing and implementing business development and marketing platforms that specifically target this increasingly powerful demographic.

Claim Your Youth Culture, for example, is a strategic consulting outfit that has developed a suite of programs that work together to assist credit unions, across the United States and Canada, to comprehensively engage the dynamic and energized youth market in order to grow and spread the credit union footprint and movement. And, if the millennials have shown us anything, marketing to and understanding the youth market is vital in order to not only expand market share, but to stay relevant. The CYYC team leverages years of experience from experts in credit union member engagement and the credit union movement, at large, to assist credit unions with strategic guidance for engaging this important and valuable demographic.

So, while credit unions and small community banks consider takeaways from the Facebook study to meet millennials where they are – such as offering solutions that address their most pressing needs, repositioning credit to align with those needs and helping millennials to develop a financial plan – Claim Your Youth Culture helps organizations to develop and utilize targeted and individualized strategies for cultivating and sustaining relationships in key areas to help directly grow credit union membership, loan and market share.

The future of the financial services industry requires the proactive, strategic positioning and utilization of the youth market, and organizations that wish to succeed in an ever-increasing, millennial-centric economy would do well to utilize the expertise that strategic consulting firms have to offer in order to ensure their own futures. The future is now – it’s time to start investing in it strategically.

Michael Barrio is vice president of public affairs, Leverage Point, Inc. He can be reached at 505-338-4228 or [email protected].