In this episode, Meredith Olmstead and Kristin Mock break down how credit unions and community banks can advocate for bigger, smarter marketing budgets. From connecting marketing efforts to core data to shifting the mindset from "expense" to "investment," they share actionable tips to align your budget with real growth goals.
Key Takeaways:
Data Changes the Conversation: Connecting your core and marketing systems can prove that marketing drives revenue, not just impressions.
Budget Shouldn’t Be Just Marketing’s Job: Your website and digital assets support sales, service, and operations—so their budgets should too.
Think Digital = Your Most Important Branch: It’s time to treat your digital presence like the branch it truly is—an asset that deserves serious investment.
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FIGROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing, sales and service consulting agency. We work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. And I am here with one of our senior inbound marketing strategists, Kristin Mock. Say hi, Kristin.
Kristin Mock:
Hello.
Meredith Olmstead:
So Kristin and I were just talking about marketing budgets and I've been having this conversation with a lot. We've been having a lot of conversations around marketing budgets with current clients, with potential new clients, with people that we're working with to deliver great services to credit union and regional bank clients. And I was like, "You know what? Let's push record. Let's hit record and talk about this a little bit in a little bit more detail."
Because basically what I hear all the time, and I also hear this as a board member for MAC, for the Marketing Association of Credit Unions from some of our members, is how do you really drive larger marketing budgets at banks and credit unions? So I was like, "Let's talk about this." The first thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that marketing budgets actually do need to increase.
And we talk with people all the time, and Kristin, I know you hear this from clients, constantly pushing back on budget this, budget that penny-pinching here and there and everywhere to try to save money wherever they can. And so this is something that actually, we really butt up against a lot in website projects because websites nowadays, good websites are expensive, and getting a full service content management system that has all kinds of automation and communication options built in is expensive.
And so one of the things that's funny that somebody sent me recently is about Chime. So Kristin, would you say that typically when we are talking to new clients about websites, that they refer to things like SoFi or Chime as inspiration user experiences?
Kristin Mock:
Yeah, absolutely. We start website projects with a exploratory phase and we get some example websites of things that potential clients like. And Chime and SoFi both come up, I think almost every time.
Meredith Olmstead:
Or Amazon. These super hyper personalized, smart, very, very custom user experiences that surface relevant suggestions to the individual user. So I had somebody recently send me a post from Instagram about Chime and they were talking about the comparison between the average financial institution and an online only financial bank or potentially a lender like Chime.
And they said it should be noted that according to S1, which is an online publication, Chime has spent roughly $500 million a year over the last three years on sales and marketing. And so if you compare that to the average banking credit union, who typically spends about one 10th of 1% of their total assets annually on marketing, Chime is spending in line with what a $500 billion bank would be spending on marketing and sales.
So that's where we are constantly trying to push back because people want to compare themselves to regional other credit unions down the road or a small bank in their area. But at the end of the day, if you're really trying to get in front of younger consumers and you want to drive member age, customer age, average customer age down, you're competing with the national big banks and big digital bank only options out there, and Chime is a big one.
And they're spending big bucks on their websites, on their online marketing, digital ads, all this kind of stuff, branding, everything. So if we're talking about how we can better define them, I think what you really have to do is connect the dots better for your executives and your boards that are really driving budget conversations around, where is the benefit that you're going to be getting from spending more on marketing and sales possibly?
So what's the first thing? And we just did a webinar about this last week, but what we really are pushing our clients all to be doing, something that is we think very important to show actual results. So what's that, Kristin?
Kristin Mock:
You really need to connect all of your data. You have a lot of information in your core, in your LOS. You've got some marketing numbers, but most institutions are not utilizing that. I think it's common to see a loan team with a much larger budget than a marketing team because the lenders are who bring money to the institution.
But marketing can do that just as well, if not better if you're doing it right. So there's no reason why your marketing team should be fighting for budget when your lenders get everything that they ask for. If you can really connect that data and prove that you're also bringing money into the institution, then you're going to see that budget get easier and easier to get.
Meredith Olmstead:
I think that's the key, to show marketing is driving revenue, not just a cost center basically. So for sure, trying to bring your data in on a daily basis, even real time if you can, to show started applications, completed applications, funded loans, new accounts opened, and then to be able to really track back, okay, what were the marketing efforts that helped drive those new accounts, those new dollars, those new deposits? All of those things coming in is huge.
But if your core data isn't in some way connected with your marketing reporting, it's impossible to do that. So we did a whole webinar last week with one of our partners, Vertis.ai AI on how to do a better job of segmenting your existing members and potential new members based on transactions and then really sending out smart campaigns and that involves connected core data. So that's really important first.
And then we also talk about the fact that a lot of marketers still really focus on marketing numbers, but they're not really looking at larger revenue goals or strategic goals of the institution at a very high level. So what would you like to see that looking like, Kristin?
Kristin Mock:
If your reporting looks like, hey, we had 100,000 impressions last week on this post or this ad, that doesn't really speak to your board or to your executive leadership's goals, but if you can say, "Hey, we have a institution-wide strategic goal to drive auto loans and this specific marketing campaign brought in X dollars in new loans or brought in 100 new auto loans last month."
If you can connect your data and prove that what you're doing is impactful to the overall strategic growth goal, that's another way that you're going to get a lot more attention from your executive teams and a lot more money from them as well.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, 100%. I think too, if you can show... Because we build these very complicated and then they're almost evergreen digital onboarding programs for our clients that you have to show the deeper relationships from those efforts. So you got to show that people who are going through your digital onboarding are engaging, they're opening, they've reached out, they've opened another account, their average number of products or services is growing compared to your overall average of the institution. So also could be very impactful when it comes to budgets.
The other thing that I always find that I try to push people on is looping in other departments to find some budget resources. So why is a website only a marketing expense? That's insane. That should be retail, that should be lending, it should be operations. All of those budgets should be contributing or all of those areas of the financial institution should be contributing because you're talking about the most traffic branch. That's retail.
You're talking about where the vast majority of your loan applications are starting or coming in. That's lending and sales. All of these things. And service, when people are sending in inquiries or self-helping through their website experience. Huge for service. So again, I think trying to combine forces potentially and bring in some additional budget for some of those larger digital assets like a website rebuild, because it can be a huge impact to all of these different areas.
You could be driving surveys through your website and your new website content management system or your marketing automation. So all of that is really, really baked into service, retail, lending, all of that. And then the last thing, I think, is looking at some of these investments as just that, as an investment in an asset versus an investment or just an expense. So let's talk about brick and mortar versus your digital branch.
You should really be considering both of those as owned assets for your institution, something that you're investing in. It's not just a spent money that then goes out the door. So it's really, really important, I think, to try to shift thinking from thinking of things as an expense to thinking of things as more of an asset. Are you seeing with your clients, people trying to make that shift?
Kristin Mock:
A little bit. I think people are very slowly starting to see the digital world as the way that your members and potential members are interacting with your brand, but honestly not as fast as things are changing. It's pretty shocking to see the amount of money and the difference, just that disconnect between how much an institution will spend on a single brick and mortar location, talking from construction to decorations, to salaries, all of the utilities costs and everything, the disconnect between that and how much they'll invest in digital. And we are really living in a digital world and it's time to keep up with the times.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I agree. I think sometimes just operating expenses at one branch location can exceed the budgets that people are allocating to an entire website redesign for one year. You know what I mean? So they'll have just their utilities, just the utilities, the taxes and all of that for one brick and mortar. One location can be more than even a billion-dollar institution wants to allocate to spend on a new website, which is just mind blowing to me.
And then when you hear numbers like that from Chime, where they're spending $500 million a year on their digital assets, their digital efforts, their sales follow up, their marketing efforts, there's no wonder why people are leaving regional institutions, especially young people, and going to these online only options because they're surrounded by that messaging and by that amazing user experience.
And if we want to be able to compete with that, with the Amazons and the Chimes and the American Expresses, I think even these smaller institutions are going to have to shift their priorities. So awesome. All right, well, thank you so much, Kristin. These are great tips.
If you all want to learn more about connecting core data or anything else around budget and digital marketing for your bank or credit union, we would love for you to visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other great podcasts, we have webinars, we have blogs and case studies, so please come over and check us out and otherwise let's just all get out there and make it happen.