Harnessing the Power of Content Marketing for Credit Unions and Community Banks

Today, ad campaigns run across multiple content marketing channels. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools drive sales strategies. Given these advances, can credit unions and community banks still produce content that markets themselves effectively?

Absolutely.

Providing personalized service by understanding customer needs is still the goal of content marketing. AI makes it easier to do this. Helping community banks optimize their content marketing initiatives and enhance their brand positioning.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of content marketing for community banks and credit unions. We’ll also examine the most effective content marketing strategies in finance. Plus, look forward to future trends in content marketing for banking institutions.

Benefits of content marketing for smaller banking institutions

At its core, content marketing focuses on building strong customer relationships to help businesses retain existing clientele while attracting new clients. The difference now is that AI helps generate content and targets ideal customers. It can also identify the channels that best reach them.

This offers several advantages, including:

Building customer relationships

In the past, bankers built personal contacts with individual customers to sell banking products. Today, AI can help do the same thing at scale by:

• Tagging and tracking the content clients engage with.
• Using predictive analytics to learn what products customers need.
• Engaging with customers at preferred touchpoints like email or text.
• Producing personalized content that promotes products or services customers need.

Boosting brand positioning

Credit unions and community banks that are helpful sources of financial information and support attract customers. Creating content that provides the financial advice customers need helps build this brand.

This includes creating blog articles on financial topics relevant to a target audience. It might also mean producing a finance podcast on niche issues relevant to customers. By positioning itself as a trusted source of educational content, a credit union increases its brand awareness. And subsequently attracts more clients.

Enhancing community engagement

Creating good content means engaging with a community. This can be through emails, online surveys, and social media posts. By asking people what they need, you can identify customer pain points, making it easier to improve services. It also informs the type of content marketing your teams need to produce to address issues relevant to clients.

More importantly, connecting meaningfully with existing and potential customers builds a sense of community. This enhances trust, which motivates clients to engage with banking institutions.

Top content marketing strategies for credit unions and community banks

Community banks and credit unions need to optimize the AI tools available to them. This lets them produce content on multiple platforms, connecting them with many audiences.

The following strategies help accomplish these goals:

Content marketing strategy 1: Create a targeted campaign

Overview

Tracking tools show which customers respond to calls to action in your content material. Focus on these customers as you offer additional promotional content to increase customer engagement.

AERO Federal Credit Union launched a 30-day email nurture campaign that tracked campaign messaging. This increased Home Equity Loans by 93 percent year over year for the company. It also earned $72 for every additional dollar spent by the credit union on marketing.

Implementation steps

• Offer useful educational content in initial communication: AERO’s first email provided links to blogs aimed at customers doing work on their homes.
• Provide testimonials related to the promotion. AERO’s second email offered a testimonial about the credit union’s home equity product. This showed consumers how the product could help them reach their own goals.
• Track clicks from recipients. AERO’s third and fourth email blasts contained links to promotion details. Tracking and tagging anyone who clicked to learn more helped gauge interest.
• Focus on interested contacts. AERO’s final email only went to contacts who clicked on links or answered surveys about working on their homes. By segmenting the list, engagement became higher.    

Content marketing strategy 2: Publish on multiple platforms

Overview

Blog posts and marketing emails are only the beginning of an effective content marketing strategy. These days, people consume content from multiple channels. This gives credit unions and community banks more opportunities to expand their reach.

Take community bank Yampa Valley Bank as an example. They built an effective social media marketing campaign by creating social media content for both Facebook and YouTube. The campaign reached over 20,000 individuals. It also connected almost 5 percent of the local community to the bank via Facebook.

Implementation steps

• Determine which platform will be the most effective in promoting brand awareness. Facebook, YouTube, and other channels all provide opportunities for social media marketing.
• Emphasize visuals. Photos and videos illustrating how the bank or credit union engages with and assists the community make an institution appear more approachable and friendly.
• Engage with the community. Yampa Valley Bank’s social media team posts and responds to comments from users throughout the day. In addition, it tags its customers’ businesses on its social media, promoting its clients, and building goodwill.

Content marketing strategy 3: Connect with younger audiences

Overview

To expand its clientele, credit unions are connecting with younger audiences. Alliance Credit Union targeted young people needing second chance checking by publishing ad content that would appeal to this demographic.

In two months, the campaign engaged 5000 contacts. This resulted in 46 second-chance product signups. It also generated 151 general checking signups. 

Implementation steps:

• Identify the target audience. Alliance CU engaged with a below-40 demographic.
• Connect with the audience. The campaign used social ads that appealed to young people. It connected fashion with finance, using the tagline, “Fashion Comebacks are Debatable… Your Financial Comeback Isn’t!”
• Create a sense of community. Ad models were credit union employees who dressed in returning fashion styles.
• Offer opportunities for engagement. Visitors clicked on ads to enter Alliance CU’s website and learn more about second chance checking.

Future trends in content marketing for credit unions and community banks

Future ad campaigns will target Gen Z, which only makes up 4 percent of credit union membership. This will require credit unions and community banks to invest more in digital financial tools, like banking apps, that younger people use.

Credit unions and community banks will also use customer data to learn more about their clients. This will result in more personalized service and content developed for specific customer needs.

Using AI to build targeted campaigns

Technological advancements are making content marketing strategies more sophisticated. Especially for credit unions and community banks. These technologies help build more targeted campaigns. Ones that show customers the benefits of working with community banks and credit unions. This improves customer relationships and makes smaller financial institutions a more viable entity moving forward.

Ready to add some top freelance finance content creators to your marketing team? Connect with a ClearVoice content specialist to begin outsourcing your content marketing tasks to a reputable service provider.