What do you MEAN, all your marketing's spent on calendars?!?

by Ron Daly

Came across this article on the brand new CU Water Cooler blog. It's called "Top Five Myths You Hear Credit Unions Say" by Mark Arnold. It's worth the read, and it made me want to speak out on two of the five "myths". 

(2) We can’t afford to do __________________

Insert your own project, new product, technology, marketing idea or anything else that gets pinched in a tight budget. Let’s be honest: the truth is you probably can afford to do the initiative, you are just choosing not to do it. So don’t blame money: blame your priorities. If you really want to accomplish your goal then you might have to tweak other areas.

I tend to agree with this. True, many CUs have been dealing with diminished budgets and a smaller staff, but that might just be the right time to bring in a creative solution. Such was the case recently with Northwest FCU's member relations department and their collection email series (click here to read about this). DigitalMailer gave a hand, saved them some money and continues to streamline collections calls.

(4) We have to reduce the training and marketing expenses because of the budget 

 Every year is a tough year on the budget. But if you continually cut the training and marketing budgets in the short term, you only harm your organization in the long run. Stephen Covey said it best, “If you have to cut things out you just cut people; you cut training and development; kill the goose that lay the golden egg; for a short term period of time you improve your profits. But then you’ve liquidated the human resources…in the long run you have to live with the consequences of a dead goose.” The truth is you don’t have to cut training and marketing; now is the time to invest in these key areas.

When it comes to marketing, cutting back is always a heartbreak for the folks that make it happen. 

Denise Wymore has been writing about the death of "traditional advertising" on her blog for the past week or so (click here to read her "RIP" series). Lots of folks have had to readjust, pushing and pulling from print, billboard, and even phone book (that post is a funny one) to get into email marketing and other forms of electronic marketing. Creative marketers find ways to MAKE their budgets work - even in a recession. 

One thing that was (and is) a pet peeve of mine is branded calendars. Calendars are expensive to print, exhaustive to get rid of and are useless to most working professionals. When your phone can plug into your computer and share a common calendar that sends you little messages when your to-dos are coming up, a little pocket calendar doesn't mean much to you. There are whole stores that just sell calendars with whatever you want as the month-to-month theme, why bother shoving stock-photos of mountains and grass at people? Giving away calendars is a money dump for your marketing budget - period. Let's put that money to better use. 

Come on, I KNOW you people have your pet peeves about what your marketing budget "has to have" every year. Tell us all about it, and what you'd do with that money if you could spend it how you wanted.

Comments

[Credit Union Warrior]

A printed, monthly newsletter seems outdated to me...at least at the quantities most credit unions print them at. It's crazy that in 2009 we haven't decided to go all digital with our newsletters, or better yet, deliver our stories individually as the come via some sort of digital distribution channel (email, blogs, etc)

[CU Writer]

I agree that you can do a lot better than calendars. More thought needs to be given to what customers want/need and will use. I believe there is still a place for print. With e-news, e-mail, facebook, etc. etc. people are now being bombarded online and can tune if those channels are over-saturated. While I like to get quick info digitally, I still like the ease of receiving and reading a printed newsletter, as do many people. I think it is important to use a variety of tools and channels to get your message out: print, web, e-mail blast, online social media.