Marketing and Positioning Strategies for Community Banks and Credit Unions

Aggressive competition, shifting consumer behaviors and commoditization within the industry are requiring financial institutions to rethink traditional marketing efforts and take steps to ensure their brand positions are aligned with their market opportunities. Market Insights partners with financial institutions to develop strategies that promote alignment between marketing efforts, brand positions and available market opportunities.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Historically, marketing efforts in financial services have emphasized tactics over strategy. But success in today’s marketplace however requires placing greater emphasis on the latter. Too often, marketing decisions are made without clear or realistic goals in mind; without a clear target market; and without a solid understanding of an institution’s current customer or member base.

Market Insights can help your institution develop an effective marketing strategy that will help you:

Establish a clear target market
Better understand your existing customer and/or member base
Set realistic goals based on dollar potential available in your markets
Understand the competitive landscape of your markets
Align your products and services with your target market’s needs
Align your marketing efforts with your market opportunities

POSITIONING STRATEGY

As competition and consumer choice continues to increase, the issue of differentiation and positioning has become critical to the success of today’s banks and credit unions. Stemming from our work in developing marketing strategies, our consultants can help bring clarity to your brand position with a focus on two important areas: 1.) Points of differentiation and 2.) Strategic messages. Establishing both the points of differentiation and strategic messages will help you:

Clearly understand how your institution is different from the competition
Allow consumers to see the difference between your institution and the competition
Create an emotional connection with your target market
Leverage points of differentiation as a competitive advantage
Prepare your staff to clearly and consistently communicate how your institution is different
Make strategic choices about your marketing mix to support your position

OWN YOUR MARKET

Recent shifts in the industry have resulted in the need for greater attention to the issue of brand in financial services. More specifically, it requires that today’s financial institutions leverage their brands as means to take advantage of their unique market opportunities.

As a result, Market Insights has established a strategic alliance and joint service with Creative Brand Communications to provide financial institution clients with a complementary layer of sophisticated market assessment, brand development and marketing solutions. The alliance gives financial institutions unmatched access to a cohesive program that brings a broad array of intricately connected services together with a common team.

The service is called Own Your Market, and is an innovative service that helps forward-thinking financial institutions align market opportunities with brand strengths to develop market dominance. Own Your Market will help you:

Understand your markets and opportunities in those markets
Create a brand that is relevant to your market
Position your institution and your brand for competitive advantage
Convey your value proposition through your customer experience

Additional information about Own Your Market can be found online at www.ownyourmarket.net

EXECUTION SUPPORT

The best plans and strategies will get you nowhere without execution. And while many institutions have the intention of taking action and implementing strategic plans, we realize that those plans are often interrupted by the need to conduct daily business or the lack of resources to move quickly and take advantage of today’s opportunities. Recognizing this reality, we stand prepared to help our clients prioritize their action steps, implement our recommendations and guide their decision making processes along the way.