My Marketing Strategy

Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder

How are you determining the justification for expenditures on special target initiatives?

While working on a marketing audit for a new client recently, reviewing lots of demographic data about their market made me reconsider some initiatives that had been mentioned from the senior management.

For example, I was looking at the percentage of youth in the updated American Family 2005-2007 community study. My next step was to confirm how these statistics of youth compared to the Credit Union percentages. An example is:

Here are some of the questions that I use to analyze what to do with the information:

• Does the credit union show a similar percentage amount as the general population to warrant attention?
• If yes, it is similar, does the credit union need to invest to retain and grow the target?
• If no, is there a strong case for marketing dollars to increase this percentage?
• If an initial expenditure of budget is made to attract and build a specific demographic group or target, what will it take in budget to sustain and/or build the relationships over time?
• Does the target group offer a short-term or long-term return on investment?
• Will the funding of marketing to a specific target create a halo effect in terms of impressing other member groups to generate more income?
• Will there be sufficient support internally for the strategy employed, in manpower, commitment from senior management, and dollars?

While the questions above are starters, there are more that can be asked to further refine the argument to focus precious time and money towards a target group. In the chart above, I see the need to enhance the younger “under 18” segment as a feeder of new young adults. Especially important when a statistic from CreditUnions.com reports that 73% of young CU members open their first savings account before age 18 and 53% open their first checking account before age 18.