5 Best Practices in Digital Marketing for 2020

As credit unions continue to pursue growth and search for the most effective ways to attract younger members, refining your digital strategy and keeping up with the latest best practices is vital. Several new trends are on the horizon this year, but it’s equally important to incorporate the fundamentals as you create new campaigns that resonate with your target audience and increase brand engagement.

1. Get Real

With the continuing popularity of social influencer marketing, video content and interactive media, being authentic matters now more than ever. If you want to connect with your audience, be the voice they can trust by providing relatable content and tools that are simple to use. Focus on what matters to your field of membership specifically, and expand your network through others in your community that have strong followings, engendering trust in related ways.

2. Research, Research, Research

All great campaigns begin with research. This remains especially true in the digital age as you decide where and how to best reach your target audience. Three of the basic questions you should ask before developing any marketing campaign are:

What are we trying to achieve? If you want to drive auto loan growth, you need to focus on car buyers. If you want to increase deposits, you may be after a different demographic entirely.

Who should we market to? If only 15% of your members have their mortgages with the credit union, you may want to start with the low-hanging fruit by marketing to existing members. If you’re at an 85% penetration rate on auto loans, it’s probably time to look outside for growth.

How best can we reach them? If your credit union serves a specific geographic area, geo-fencing Google display ads may be an excellent strategy to help you reach potential home buyers, car buyers and others on their mobile devices. The more you know about where your audience spends their time, the better you can target them.

3. Use Channels & Messages That Resonate

Your research should help guide you to the right placement to reach your target audience. Like most things, there is likely no silver bullet or single placement that will achieve all your goals. Even digital campaigns require multiple channels and repetition to be successful. Think boosted posts on Facebook, Google display, ads and banners on your own website and online banking.

Messaging should be carefully crafted toward the target audience as well. The best placement in the world won’t make an off the mark message resonate. Just look at reactions to Peloton’s ill-fated Christmas ad in 2019.

4. Keep Your Design Fresh

Digital channels can be noisy. Ensure your ad stands out with fresh design concepts. Some of the trends to watch for 2020, according to SocialMediaToday.com, include panoramic backdrops, realistic textures, abstract data visualizations, yellow backgrounds and accents.

Whatever design trends you decide to incorporate this year, be sure to take the consumer’s view and make your ad stand out in the crowded online marketplace.

5. Analyze Your Results

In addition to deciding whether to rinse and repeat or try new channels, measuring your digital campaigns can help you further refine your target audience and your message.

Were your total impressions and the number of unique users exposed to your ad high but engagement, or those who clicked to learn more, lower than expected? It might be time to tweak the messaging, offer or artwork to increase engagement. Was engagement relatively high, but your overall reach lower than expected? It may be time to broaden your audience and expose more potential members to your message.

Breaking down your results, i.e. new loans or deposits, should also include the source of each new account. Did 95% of your new loans come from your online banking banner? That’s great, but it probably means you can back-off some of the paid channels that weren’t as effective or use them differently.

The Rise of Experiential Marketing

Another trend for 2020 is the projected increase in experiential marketing, which lets consumers experience your brand. For credit unions, the member experience has always been a key differentiator, but are there new ways you can create unique experiences for potential members or digital-first members?

Think about your community events and the experience of interacting with your credit union’s digital channels. What impressions are consumers left with when they engage with your brand? How can you increase interaction? Experiential marketing can include a wide array of activities with the goal of immersing the consumer.

Elisa Rode is President of Kearley and Company, Inc., a marketing and branding firm serving credit unions and credit union service providers in Fort Worth, Texas.