On this episode, I look at my word of the year (alignment) and discuss how and why alignment is important for your credit union marketing.
Listen now or read the transcript below.
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Got questions about whether your marketing is aligned? Email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Hello everyone, and welcome to the CU social strategy podcast. I am your credit union copywriter, Jennifer Roland Cadiente, and of course, the host of this podcast. This year, I have done something that I’ve never done before, and that is come up with a word of the year that I’m using to guide what I’m doing. Typically, I haven’t done this because it just never seemed like the right fit for me. A few years back, people were everyone was like, Oh my gosh, what’s your Word of the Year? What’s your Word of the Year? And so I tried to think of one, and it just didn’t feel like a useful way for me to to make plans for the year, but the other day, I just woke up and the word alignment popped into my head, and that just felt like something that was really useful in guiding Me as I grow my credit union copywriting business and the other things that I’m working on, so I decided to do award of the year alignment. So what that means for my business is it means I’m only going to be taking clients who fit my mission. I’m only going to be taking work that I’m experienced in and qualified for or interested in learning more about and I’m only going to be working with people that you know, that I enjoy working with. So last year, you know, I put the podcast on hiatus because it didn’t really feel aligned with what I was doing. But this year, after taking a few months off, I It feels like the right thing to do, so I’m bringing it back for the episodes I’m going to work to keep them aligned by, you know, keeping them short. I think short and sweet works for me. Feels aligned with what I want to do, feels aligned with the people that I want to be working with. You know, I’m a busy person. The people that I tend to work with are also busy people. We don’t need a three hour podcast, certainly not about social media and marketing. So when I was thinking about, you know, how the word alignment would guide me. I also, you know, thought in general, what does alignment mean in marketing? You know, a lot of times in our marketing, we think about the how, you know, the how are we going to communicate this? How are we going to talk about these products and services? How are we going to make sure that we’re using our colors and our logo correctly? How are we going to make sure people always know that we’re the ones talking to them and that right there is where alignment comes in. When your marketing is aligned, it shows who you really are, not just what you offer. So even though, in credit union marketing, we do spend a lot of time talking about our products and our services, but when you’re aligning that you’re not just talking about, you know, the numbers, the basis points, the you know, the timelines involved, if you know, say it’s a certificate or a Christmas club type account or something like that, you’re talking about what it means, how your products and services represent you and your members, and how you’re working to serve your Members and help your members grow their financial capacity. And it sounds it sounds hard, but once you get used to doing it, you’ll find that it’s really natural to make sure that every message you put out aligns with your mission and your values, not just the things that we do as credit unions. So specifically, you know, for credit unions, not just marketing in general. You know, I I talked about how so much of our time is spent focusing on our products and our services, and that’s because we’re in a crowded market in financial services, we’ve got a lot of traditional and non traditional organizations out there trying to offer the same types of things that we do to the same types of people that might need it. And much as we all want to serve everyone, there are people who are right for our credit union and people who are right for some of those other financial services. So when you’re looking at, you know, talking about your products and services go deeper than just, you know, the features you. And sometimes even go deeper than than the benefits. You know we look at, you know, when, when we’re say we’re talking about a savings account. You know, everyone knows that savings accounts are tremendously rate driven. We’re always chasing that higher yield as a consumer. So we want to talk about that number. If we’ve got a great rate, we want to share that with people. So that’s our feature. Is our you know, if we’ve got whatever percentage on an online only savings account, so that we can compete with all of those online only banks out there. But what does that mean? That’s when we start to get into the benefits. If you get a higher interest rate, higher yield, you earn more money with your your deposits. That’s a relatively easy benefit for us all to understand, both as you know, as our marketers and as consumers. But what does that really mean? And that’s where you can get aligned. Think about why your ideal member wants to earn more on their savings account. Is it the long term goals like finally getting to buy a house of their own, saving up for their kids college or their own college? Is it about going on a great vacation. Think about those things and how you can ensure that that when you’re talking about them, you’re also including what makes you great. As a credit union, one of the ways that you could do that is, you know, having your staff talk about how they’ve used this account to, you know, save up for vacations, save up for a down payment on a house, achieve the other you know, financial goals that that they’ve been working toward. And you can use that across lots of different channels, perfect for Tiktok, because you can keep it pretty short, then you can, you know, repost those on Instagram as reels and on Facebook as reels. And the short videos also work on, you know, X slash Twitter. So it’s, it’s a good way to, you know, to make sure that that you’re staying aligned. And it also lets your potential members see the staff that they’ll be working with when they come in. I know, you know, the example I gave was an online only savings account. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, people aren’t going to come in eventually. One of the things that makes it really, you know, easy for credit unions to align them get really aligned in their marketing is that credit unions are so mission driven, as long as you know you understand your mission and the things that make your credit union special, whether it’s the people that you serve, the ways that you serve them, you know how you appear in public, whatever it is that makes you special, as long as you know what That is, you can make sure that your marketing highlights that one of the one of the drawbacks is that a lot of times it’s just a gut test to see if your marketing is aligned. Do I feel like my messaging is human and understanding, and, you know, communicating everything that’s special, or is it just the facts? It’s a really hard thing to quantify. And we always like to quantify things in marketing to see if things are working. But for alignment, so many times it is just, does this feel good to me? Does this feel wrong? And if it feels wrong, go back and try to figure out why, so that you can make everything aligned. So if you have done work in your credit union to make sure that your marketing is aligned. Or if you’d like some ideas about how that might look in your specific situation, I’d love to talk to you. You can email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn, Jennifer Roland Cadiente
And let’s, let’s connect in and talk about what alignment means for credit union marketing.
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