5 Keys to Branding Success

Credit unions are facing many challenges today: Growing deposits, increasing membership, gaining more wallet share per household and generating income while facing economic headwinds.

While all of those are very real, you may not actually have a member growth problem, a loan problem or a deposit problem. You may have a brand problem.

As Jim Stengel said in his business book “Grow,” “In terms of growth and margin, brand is really what it comes down to in the end.”

Why? Because branding touches everything. Often, your growth comes down to how well you develop and execute your brand.

So what are the keys to branding success for credit unions? Here is a five part framework you can use to reinvent your brand.

Assess

The very first thing you must do with your brand is assess it. You need to spend time thoroughly understanding your existing brand. All progress begins when you become honest about where you are at currently.

Answer questions like “Is our messaging resonating with consumers?” “Is our logo outdated?” and “Does our staff know what makes us different?” In this stage you look for blind spots (every credit union has them) and discover brand gaps (every credit union has them as well). Assessment steps could include mystery shops, a marketing audit and staff surveys.

During a recent marketing assessment, one credit union CEO said, “We’ve learned to glance at our competition and glare at ourselves.” When was the last time you truly glared at your brand?

Research

Once you have analyzed your brand (the good, the bad and the ugly), it’s time to dive deeply into your markets. Do some research. This can take many forms, including focus groups, member surveys, data analysis on your existing members and demographic information on various communities.

As Ray Davis said in his book about Umpqua Bank, “Leading For Growth,” “I don’t think you can be very successful in leading your company on a path of growth if you don’t pay attention to the market you serve.”

Branding is not just about colors, graphics and design. Branding actually involves a great deal of both qualitative and quantitative research.

Strategize

Once your assessment and research are complete, it’s time to actually build your brand strategy. During this phase you must answer questions like, “What makes us different?” “Who are we trying to reach?” and “What is our core message?” The outcome from your strategy is a brand plan that includes your vision, target audiences, message, value proposition and implementation details.

With your brand strategy come several traps.

One strategy pitfall many credit unions fall into is trying to be all things to all people. That’s a great theory but a terrible reality. Credit unions must choose three or four key groups to reach with their brand. As business speaker and CEO of StoryBrand and Business Made Simple Donald Miller says, “niches lead to riches.”

Another potential strategy trap is not remembering that there is a difference between alignment and consensus. With consensus, everyone agrees on everything (or at least they say they do). You don’t want that. You want alignment – where everyone doesn’t necessarily agree with every detail, but they are aligned with the overall direction and vision.

How do you gain alignment? By making your brand vision real. You can come up with a grandiose mission statement that means absolutely nothing. Your employees are smart: If your strategy is not authentic, they will sniff it out.

Create

When many people think of branding, they often think of the logo, colors and look. But as you notice, the creative is actually the fourth (not first) key to branding success.

The creative step covers many elements: Your website, social media, colors, words and graphics. However, perhaps the most important component of your creative brand is a good logo. It needs to be slick, high quality, low on copy and adaptable to different formats and merchandizing. According to Zippia.com, 75% of consumers recognize a brand by its logo. They also note that the average lifespan of a logo is 10 years.

So when was the last time you updated your credit union’s logo?

Part of a successful creative brand then is linking your assessment, your research and your strategy to your logo.

Train

How your staff lives your brand matters. You can have a differentiated strategy and a unique logo, but if your staff is not delivering an excellent member experience to consumers then none of that matters.

As Nicholas Ind said in his book “Living the Brand,” “It is the collective power of individuals in an organization that provides and sustains a competitive advantage.” If your brand says “friendly” and the people answering your phone are rude then your brand is inauthentic.

While marketing may put the public face on your brand, it is your people who deliver on your brand promise.

They don’t just do that by osmosis. You must train your staff on your brand. Your team must see the connection between their daily job and your brand. As we routinely tell our clients, the biggest threats to your brand come from within.

Brand training can take several forms at your credit union: New hire brand focus, Brand Days (carving out a day to dive deeply into living the brand), ongoing member experience training and even monthly videos that reinforce different aspects of your brand.

Tom Asaker, author of “A Clear Eye For Branding,” said “There is no such thing as a branding ‘project.’ Branding is an ongoing process of renewal.”

When it comes to renewing your credit union’s brand, it is critical to assess, research, strategize create and train to your brand.

Mark Arnold is founder and president of On the Mark Strategies, a Dallas, Texas-based consulting firm specializing in branding and strategic planning for credit unions.