11/28/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 6: platform selection

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward + Part 4: jump start your program + Part 5: should you require a log-in to participate?

Are you overwhelmed yet? I have published a lot of blog posts in the past two weeks on challenge marketing for credit unions. In hindsight, I likely should have waited until the end of this series to release our new programs, but we were so excited to get them done early that I figured why not.

So, lets dive back in and finish out my challenge marketing series so I can get that white paper done!

Building your program on a suitable web platform

In this part, I will begin with specific features and functionality that I recommend including as part of your challenge marketing web presence and will finish up with website platform considerations in broad terms.

Recommended features and functionality

A blog with an RSS feed is a must. Your blog is the best way to push out a steady stream of content and encourage return visitors. I suggest using FeedBurner to power your RSS feed. FeedBurner provides great usage statistics and plenty of other features including the ability to subscribe to your feed by e-mail.

Your website must have the ability to embed videos, podcasts and other widgets from various web services. Most popular blogging platforms including Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress allow embedding. If you are relying on a web design firm or your IT department to build a custom blog, make sure that you have the ability to see and edit the source code of your blog posts and content pages within your content management system—this will allow you to embed third-party code exactly where you want it throughout your site. You will definitely want to test out embed codes from various web services to ensure that everything will work in advance of your launch date.

The most important thing to consider is the site layout and design. Your site layout must incorporate various ways to reveal all of the great content within your site. Your homepage should feel fresh everytime a visitor returns and give quick access to what is important. A standard blog is fresh by design—the latest post is at the top—but the major problem with hosting a challenge marketing program on a standard blog is that typical blog layouts are great at displaying what's new today, but they are very poor at displaying historic information. I suggest providing quick links on your homepage and throughout your site to all of your contest entrants and other popular content. This will promote longer site visits and more interaction.

If your challenge will include a public vote, you will need to design a voting system that is easy to use and completely secure. I am not a fan of the unlimited voting allowed by popular talent competitions like American Idol where individuals can cast hundreds of votes. In a small local competition, the results can easily be gamed by a small group of people. Consider building in an e-mail confirmation or some other way to verify that people are not voting multiple times. If your voting system relies on cookies to block mutliple votes, browser cache is easily cleared and people can vote over and over. Your voting system should be able to track IP addresses, computer platform, browser and other key information—this will enable you to quickly spot vote gaming if it occurs. It is important to ensure that you are conducting a fair competition.

Another important voting consideration is to predesign your phases. You should have a search-phase design, a voting-phase design and a winner-phase design. It is much easier to do all of the design and development work in advance, because once your challenge is live there won't be any time to test and proof your different phases. Ideally, all you should have to do is update your finalist and winner details and your system should provide a way to switch between phases on the fly. I do not recommend taking your site down for extended periods of time to make phase changes—this will frustrate your visitors.

Promote lightweight ways to interact throughout your website. Not everyone is comfortable leaving comments on a blog. In fact, according to Forrester Research, only 20% of Gen Y Internet users and only 4% of Baby Boomers Internet users have ever left a comment on a blog. Consider adding polls, submit a question forms and even the ability to add to a regional calendar or a resource library relevant to your challenge.

I also recommend including a forward to a friend function and the ability to subscribe to a regular e-mail service.

Include your product offer on your site on a dedicated page and include links throughout the site to this page. Keep your product offer subtle but always present. On your product page, make sure to do a good job of selling your product benefits and provide an easy way to sign up.

If your challenge program will have a presence on any mainstream social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube or others, make sure that you include prominent links on your site to your page or profile on each service.

Looking to take it even further? There are a number of white label social networking platforms on the market where you can add all sorts of functionality and interactivity to your site. Make sure to check out Kick Apps. I haven't used any of their services yet, but the demo videos on the Kick Apps website look very impressive.

Finally, a couple of notes on things not to include. Don't include Flash intros or splash pages. Let your visitors cut right to your fresh content. Agency creatives love Flash, but keep in mind that social web users as a rule are annoyed by Flash. Also, do not include any videos that start playing automatically.

Microsite or a section on your primary website?

First a few thoughts about where your challenge should live on the Internet.

Most corporate social media initiatives are spearheaded by the marketing and communications department and are launched as a separate microsite with its own URL. And just so we are clear, I am including a blog or a company sponsored social network under the microsite umbrella. A microsite is essentially an auxiliary supplement to a primary website. There are technical and marketing reasons for the decision to go with a microsite.

The most common technical reason for this decision is that corporate IT departments prefer to keep their networks as closed as possible. For example, your IT department would probably not be very open to embedding third-party code from YouTube or providing direct links to Facebook or MySpace on your primary corporate website. Even though the security risks for doing so are low, most credit union IT departments are intentionally conservative when it comes to Web 2.0. I completely understand this position, as IT's first priority is to keep your network up and running and to make sure that your members have uninterrupted access to your online banking system.

In addition, larger platform issues may be at play. Quite often, the head of IT may have set a global policy that dictates that your credit union can only use Microsoft technology. Again, this makes sense from an internal technology point of view. IT can easily deploy Microsoft technology across all of your desktop computers, servers and applications and hire certified-Microsoft IT employees that fully understand your chosen platform.

I am not anti-Microsoft. Microsoft's .Net framework offers a comprehensive suite of development tools and technologies that allow you to do everything that you could possibly want with your challenge marketing program. But the world of Web 2.0 and social media is largely build on more open platforms, including Linux and PHP and to a lesser extent, Adobe Cold Fusion. Many of these alternative platforms and frameworks require less time to build out complex social applications and, in many cases, these technologies are open source and cost less or are even free.

Another consideration that pushes marketers to by-pass IT and build a microsite on their own is the question of capacity. Like I stated above, IT is in the business of keeping your credit union's technology infrastructure up and running. You request for a custom, feature-rich website section will require a lot of resources to build, test and deploy and can likely be accomplished in less time within your marketing department or with an outside vendor.

Marketing's desire to push the envelope and shout from the roof top by whatever means possible often causes tension between marketing and IT. Having your challenge marketing program running on a separate microsite will likely be easier to execute and will allow you, the marketer, the sandbox you desire to experiment with the latest embeddable social applications.

Nike is renowned for its use of microsites. Nike.com is literally made up of hundreds of microsites organized by countries and sports. The rationale is simple. If I am a golfer, Nike immerses me in its golf offering on Nike Golf. If I am a runner, Nike immerses me in its running products and community on Nike Plus. By giving each of its market segments its' own microsite, Nike is able to create deeper relationships with niche groups.

As you can see, there are many reasons to go with a microsite. However, there are also numerous reasons to go with a section on your own website provided that your IT department is open to embedding third-party code, has the capacity to build the features and functionality that your program will require and has the ability to give your challenge section the distinctive and exciting flavour that it will need to attract and retain a group of committed site visitors. Advantages to a section include the simplicity of having everything under one website content management system, the control offered by having everything in-house and the ability to easily point existing site visitors to your new section.

URL considerations

Whether you decide that a microsite or a section within your corporate site is right for your challenge marketing program, you will need to decide how you will brand your URL. Here are three basic structures to consider.

www.your-challenge.com
your-challenge.your-cu.com
www.your-cu.com/your-challenge

Although including your credit union's URL has merit, I prefer a unique and separate URL. A unique and separate URL can be shorter, easier to remember, easier to include on all of your promotional support pieces and will likely be more readily accepted by the community you are attempting to create.

For example, www.changeeverything.ca is much easier to remember and fits much better with Change Everything's vision and purpose than www.vancity.com/changeeverything.

Whichever way you go, make sure to provide lots of visible cross links from various parts of your primary corporate website. Constantly aim to inform your established traffic that there is something exciting going on at your credit union. I recommend placing linking banners throughout your primary site, including placement on your home page and on your online banking exit screen. I also recommend changing these banners up from time to time.

What about no website at all?

If you prefer to totally bypass IT and not even build a site for your challenge marketing program you can! Maine State Credit Union recently ran a "Maine Through a Mainer's Eyes"  photo contest and posted all of the entries on Flickr.com. 

This is a great example of a simple challenge marketing program executed without a dedicated website section or a microsite. In creator Andy LaFlamme's words, "Running this contest cost almost nothing other than an investment of time and effort."

I have seen a few user-submitted video contests hosted directly on YouTube lately. YouTube recently expanded its channel customization options. You now have the ability to add graphics and more closely match your credit union's own website and brand.

Embarq, a US telephone and Internet service provider, just ran a 48-seconds video contest directly on YouTube.

The nice thing about this approach is there is no development or hosting costs and it would take very little effort to get your challenge up and running. But don't be fooled into thinking that the millions of people on YouTube will happen upon your channel, you will still need to heavily promote your challenge on your credit union's website and through other marketing channels.

If this approach is of interest, you will want to consider your URL carefully. Your YouTube channel will begin with www.youtube.com/user/, so your URL won't be easily remembered or be something you necessarily want to brand on anything. One way to work around this would be to buy a unique domain name and have your registrar redirect it to your YouTube channel URL.

Let's analyze our example sites

All three of our example sites are microsites with unique URLs. But the similarities end there. Each site has very different functionality and was built on three very different platforms.

WhatAreYouSavingFor? is built on the very popular and free open-source Wordpress blogging platform. There are two flavours of Wordpress: Wordpress.com which features easy setup and free hosting within a global blogging community and Wordpress.org which offers the free download of the Wordpress software which in turn needs to be installed on your own Linux server or a third-party hosting service's server.

The advantage with downloading and installing your own copy of Wordpress is that you have access to thousands of open-source plug-ins and can customize the look and feel of your site (known in the Wordpress world as your theme) as much as you like. The disadvantage is that you will need some coding skills or the help of outside expertise to help you if you want to significantly customize your site.

WAYSF's creator, Matt Davis, is a self-confessed non-coder, but managed to customize a premium theme and deploy WAYSF on his own with very little outside help. WAYSF makes use of embedded YouTube and Vimeo videos and numerous free Wordpress plug-ins. Matt has also used Wordpress as a quasi social network by enabling visitors to become site members and submit their own savings goals to the site.

Change Everything is a microsite with its own unique URL. It is built on the robust open-source community software platform, Drupal. Drupal is an ideal platform to build complex social networks. In fact, major social networks like FastCompany.com are built on Drupal. However, unlike Wordpress, Drupal is not necessarily as easy to deploy and requires the assistance of very specialized developers. The original concept and design for Change Everything was facilitated by the social media consultancy Social Signal in 2006. Earlier this year, Currency was contracted to completely redesign the user interface. We worked in concert with Affinity Bridge, a specialized Drupal development firm that handled all of the theming and the deployment of the new code base. Change Everything has full social networking capabilities including user profiles, user blogging, friending and nudging.

Young & Free Alberta is a custom design deployed on an Adobe ColdFusion content management system (CMS). MySpace, one of the world's most popular Web 2.0 websites, is a built on ColdFusion. It is also widely accepted and used in the corporate world with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies relying on ColdFusion. Our technology partners, K1, have a feature-rich platform that includes dozens of available plug-in components. For our Young & Free sites, we utilize the blog, the calendar, the FAQs, the polls and the custom form components throughout the sites. All of the forms include the ability to subscribe to our monthly e-updates. Two unique features of the site are our voting system that requires confirmation by e-mail and the ability to instantly switch between launch, voting and spokesperson term phases. The CMS also has built-in e-mail functionality that enables us to easily send regular e-mails to all Y&F Club members. Young & Free Alberta makes use of YouTube videos, 12second.tv videos, UStream.tv live videos, Flickr photos and many other third-party embedded code.

There you have it. Likely more technical gobbly gook than you ever expected from my blog! Hopefully you will find this information useful as you navigate the various technical questions that come up as you consider your own challenge marketing program! I will leave the final choices to you, your marketing team, your agency and your IT department.

Next up: creating a steady stream of entertaining and educational content.

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11/25/2008

New: The Big Idea Biz Challenge

By Tim McAlpine

Based on Filene Research Institute's open-source concept, The Big Idea. This challenge will appeal to would-be entrepreneurs of all ages including everyone from business students to recently retired Baby Boomers that have an interest in self-employment. Really, anyone who is actively considering starting their own small business.

The challenge

• Convince site users and our judges that you deserve the $10,000 business starter package by filling out an entry form, submitting a business plan and creating a 60-second video on why you deserve to win.

The reward

• We recommend a total giveaway value of $16,000
• The grand prize is $15,000 in funds, mentoring and services
• The two secondary prizes are Quickbooks Pro ($500 each)

We will develop a custom name and find a unique domain for your challenge.

+ Get full details on the Big Idea Biz Challenge
+ Read my blog post that explains our full challenge marketing offering

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

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11/25/2008

New: The Mommy Blogger Challenge

By Tim McAlpine

Mommy bloggers are a huge part of the blog-o-sphere. This challenge sets out to hire a mother to blog part-time on behalf of your credit union. Your new blogger will help mothers navigate life as a mother in your region. Blogging topics will include everything from money tips to mom-friendly product and service reviews. We are talking to 25- to 45-year-old moms who are actively using mainstream social media including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other social applications.

The challenge

• Applicants complete an entry form, a blog post and submit a favorite mom-themed photo and produce on-going content to convince site users that they deserve the job.

The reward

• A part-time position with the credit union for one year.
• A Macbook laptop computer and a Flip Mino digital camcorder to keep.
• Two Flip Mino digital camcorders for secondary prizes.

We will develop a custom name and find a unique domain for your challenge.

+ Get full details on the Mommy Blogger Challenge
+ Read my blog post that explains our full challenge marketing offering

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

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11/25/2008

New: Youth Scholarship Challenge

By Tim McAlpine

All credit unions give away scholarships. Why not stand out from the crowd and encourage students to compete to see who is the most deserving? We are talking to 17- to 25-year-old students who are actively using mainstream social media including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other social applications.

The challenge

• Applicants complete an entry form, create a 60-second video and produce on-going content to convince site users that they deserve the scholarship.

The reward

• We recommend a total giveaway of $10,000
• The grand prize is $5,000 plus a laptop computer
• The two secondary prizes are $1,500 each

We will develop a custom name and find a unique domain for your challenge.

+ Get full details on the Youth Scholarship Challenge
+ Read my blog post that explains our full challenge marketing offering

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

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11/25/2008

New: The $25,000 Youth Enviro Challenge

By Tim McAlpine

Promote the fact that your credit union cares about the planet and about young people with our unique environmental challenge. The $25,000 Youth Enviro Challenge is an annual three-month program taylored to your credit union. We are talking to 19- to 25-year-old students who are actively using mainstream social media including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other social applications.

The challenge

• Convince site users you deserve the grant by filling out an entry form and creating a 60-second video on why you deserve to win.

The reward

• We recommend a total giveaway of $25,000 in grants
• The grand prize grant is $15,000 for the cause and a laptop computer for each team member (maximum 3)
• The two secondary grants are $3,000 each

We will develop a custom name and find a unique domain for your challenge.

+ Get full details on the $25,000 Youth Enviro Challenge
+ Read my blog post that explains our full challenge marketing offering

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

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11/25/2008

New: Be The Change Challenge

By Tim McAlpine

Show your credit union cares about your community and its future leaders by launching a Be The Change Challenge. We are talking to 19- to 25-year-old students who are actively using mainstream social media including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other social applications.

The challenge

• Convince site users you deserve the grant by filling out an entry form and creating a 60-second video on why you deserve to win.

The reward

• We recommend a total giveaway of $25,000 in grants
• The grand prize grant is $15,000 for the cause and a laptop computer for each team member (maximum 3)
• The two secondary grants are $3,000 each

We will develop a custom name and find a unique domain for your challenge.

+ Get full details on the Be The Change Challenge
+ Read my blog post that explains our full challenge marketing offering

Subscribe today + RSS + Blog by E-mail + E-newsletter + Follow me on Twitter

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11/25/2008

An intermission, an update on Young & Free and an exciting announcement

By Tim McAlpine

I am half way through my blog series on challenge marketing for credit unions. Not only are the articles twice as long as I expected, but it is taking me longer than I thought. My goal with putting this series together was to give our readers tips and insights into running their own challenge marketing programs. Hopefully you are enjoying these (very) long blog posts and are learning something along the way!

But rather than delay a really exciting announcement, I am going to call this the intermission and let you know what we have been working on. Then I will get back to work completing the series, incorporating thoughts from the comments and turning it all into a white paper.

An update on Young & Free

Since going public with our plan to exclusively offer Young & Free to one credit union in each US state and Canadian province, approximately 150 credit unions and groups of credit unions have expressed interest in taking on the program. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to Young & Free Alberta for Servus Credit Union and Young & Free Texas for TDECU, we have two more US states licensed and our next launch is scheduled for the beginning of February 2009.

I am delighted with our two 2009 spokespeople, Myles in Alberta and DeAndre' in Texas, and I am really excited about two new things in the Young & Free universe.

• Collaboration: we are starting to see the benefits of the master brand approach. Myles and DeAndre' are collaborating and we are featuring our different Y&F Zones on each site. It has been very refreshing to see credit unions in different areas embracing each other and requesting links back and forth on the sites we are building.
   
• Living Young & Free Video Series: I think the greatest opportunity we have with Young & Free is to help young people understand the credit union advantage and to also gain a better understanding of financial topics in general. We got a taste of the power of simple, entertaining and educational videos with Larissa's Difference Between Banks and Credit Unions series directed at young people living in Alberta. But other under 25-year-old crowds have the same questions and concerns about their financial lives.
   
  That's why we've given our new Young & Free Spokesters a mission: during their term, reach out to the young people in their regions and research a number of financial literacy topics. Turn that research into creative, entertaining, educational and memorable videos. These videos make up our Living Young & Free Video Series, and are available on the Young & Free sites and on YouTube. Credit unions throughout the world are able to post these videos on their sites as well, turning Young & Free into a truly worldwide movement.

But not every credit union can afford Young & Free

The common refrain that we hear is that credit unions love Young & Free, but with the current economic uncertainty, most are unwilling to commit to a 52-week annual challenge marketing program on the scope and scale of Young & Free. This is very understandable.

We have had dozens of requests for something smaller.

Personally, I bristled at the thought of offering a Young & Free Lite, but the more we thought about it and deconstructed the Young & Free Program, the more we realized that credit unions could likely offer a 12-week annual challenge with all the intensity and excitement of Young & Free. And the challenges could be very different—the last thing I want to do is diminish the importance of Young & Free to our credit union partners and to our company. We will continue to persevere to bring our Young & Free vision to every corner of the continent.

Without further ado, I am pleased to announce our new challenge marketing section. We have six different programs to start and will be releasing more programs in the coming months. I encourage you to take a look around.

I will also release a series of blog posts today that showcase each concept one by one.

Thanks for your continued support and interest.

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11/24/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 5: should you require a log-in to participate?

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward + Part 4: jump start your program

The next three parts of this series are really going to get into the meat of running your challenge marketing program, but first I want to use this post to discuss whether or not you should require a user to set up an account and profile to participate on your website.

What are our three example sites doing?

Three different approaches for three very different challenges.

• On Young & Free Alberta, there are no user accounts. All content and interactions on the site are available to every visitor.
   
• On Change Everything, there are a few activities that you can do that do not require you to be logged in. These include viewing all of the content, voting on the latest poll and commenting on blog posts. Every other interaction is only available to members of the site.
   
• On What Are You Saving For?, if you are not a site member, you can only view the content. All interactions are only available to members of the site.

You better have a very compelling reason to make people log in

The social web is maturing and becoming more mainstream. Almost everyone seems to have a Facebook account. I personally have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, Friendfeed, SlideShare, Brightkite, Digg, LinkedIn, Evernote, Google, 12 Seconds, Wordpress, Blogger, Remember the Milk, Wesabe, Flickr and a few more that I have forgotten about.

The social applications listed in the paragraph above have useful functionality, significant financial backing, large dedicated development staffs and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of registered users. I am involved in many of these services because friends sent me invitations or there are people there that I want to connect with and keep in touch with.

None of these sites are the marketing property of a corporation that is using the platform to try to sell me its products.

I have user accounts on Amazon, Apple and plenty of other e-commerce sites—all of which are definitely trying to sell me something. I also have accounts for my five-year-old son on social networks sponsored by Hot Wheels, Lego and Webkinz—three corporations with incredible marketing and undeniable emotional brand hooks.

Every one of these services listed above offers significant value to the members that are signed-in. This is an extremely important fact to remember if you are considering requiring your participants to set up a user account on your site.

The only corporate-sponsored social networks that I have accounts on are Banktastic, because it offers an attractive value proposition for me in my chosen profession, and Change Everything, because Vancity is a major player in our marketplace and I wanted to see what the site was all about.

Internet users are over-subscribed

I know that I am not a typical Internet user, but I do believe that Internet users in general are over-subscribed to social applications that they rarely use.

I strongly believe that very few credit unions are capable of successfully pulling off their own sponsored social network. In fact, Vancity may be the only one. Change Everything is a glowing example of a vibrant, thriving credit-union-sponsored social network. It has more than 4,000 user accounts and boasts more than 8,000 daily visitors. However, Change Everything has the backing of a $12 billion credit union with 400,000 members and the site debuted more than two years ago before the proliferation of the countless new Web 2.0 sites that are commanding everyone's attention. It's also worth noting that only a handful of community members sign in each day.

It could be argued that What Are You Saving For? is a credit-union-sponsored social network. I agree to a certain extent—you have to create a user account to participate in the site and even to comment on blog posts—however, WAYSF really is a tightly integrated support group for a real-world product more than it is a social network.

As Matt said in the comments of part 3, "We allow members to set their savings goal online or offline. When a savings goal is set, we enter it in the core processor, write the goal on a WAYSF pig graphic to be displayed publicly in-branch and encourage the member to share their story on our blog. This way, no matter where the member conducts his or her business—offline, online or at multiple branches—staff, members and the public can access and share their goal and associated progress toward that goal."

People are not stumbling upon WAYSF and setting up an account. Credit union employees, as trusted advisors, are introducing the site to members and helping them get set up. This is a big difference.

Reasons to require a log-in

On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons to want people to become members of your website. Site visitors who take the time to set up an account and become site members are more likely to return and to participate again in the future. Also, site members may feel more connected to your initiative and be more inclined to tell others about it compared to passive site visitors.

In addition, you are able to give logged-in site members permission to actually create content. For instance, members of Change Everything can blog and create changes on the site. And members of What Are You Saving For? can create and display their savings goals. By allowing site members to be creators it solves one of the biggest challenges in maintaining any type of social media website—the steady creation of creative and compelling content.

For purely selfish reasons, requiring site visitors to sign up for an account can give your credit union more insight into who your visitors are. And depending on how you design your user-account-activation process, you can also ask for permission to communicate and market to your site members in the future through e-mail or through network messaging.

Change Everything allows site members to follow and nudge other site members much like Facebook or Twitter. These feature can help create inter-personal relationships between site members and increase the sense of community and the perceived value of your website.

The bottom line

If your credit union is considering a challenge marketing program, think long and hard before creating a website that requires users to create an account in order to interact with it. And, if you decide to require user accounts, make sure that you are delivering extra value to your site members.

Next up: building your program on a suitable web platform.

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11/24/2008

Happy 100 to the US credit union movement. Would a credit union by any other name smell as sweet?

By Tim McAlpine

Anytime you get a bunch of credit union fans together in a room, or on Twitter for that matter, the discussion comes around to how bad the credit union name sucks.

On this historic date in history, where ironically the first US credit union is named St. Mary's Bank, lets rename the credit union movement in the comments.

But rather than a serious discussion like the one Trey had on Thwart Mediocrity a couple of months ago about why he felt credit unions should be known as cooperative banks, let's just have a silly discussion, because you know the name is never going to change!

Here's two thought starters for you.

• Lil' Bank
• Bank Junior

Your turn!

P.S. And just so we're clear: I mean no disrespect to credit unions. I love credit unions and think its awesome that today is the 100th birthday. Did I mention that I love credit unions?

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11/22/2008

Challenge marketing for credit unions part 4: jump start your program

By Tim McAlpine

If you are just jumping into this series, I suggest starting at the beginning. + Part 0: preface + Part 1: introduction + Part 2: it's OK to sell + Part 3: your challenge, your product offer and your reward

Using traditional and non-traditional marketing to jump start your program

In Field of Dreams, an Iowa corn farmer hears voices and interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields. He does, the Chicago Black Sox come and everyone lives happily ever after.

Let's adjust the previous paragraph to better reflect a typical credit union's social media strategy.

In Credit Union Blog of Dreams, a credit union marketer hears voices (likely the voices of her CEO and board) and interprets them as a command to build a blog. She does, thousands of new credit union members come and everyone lives happily ever after.

Field of Dreams is a wonderful work of fiction that, unfortunately, doesn't translate well in the real world of marketing. There is a problem with the-advertising-is-dead-social-media-is-the-replacement marketing strategy that is being touted as of late. If you add another website to the billions of other websites on the Internet, you cannot expect anybody to magically find it. You need to tell your marketplace that it exists and that there is a good reason to visit and to keep visiting.

There has to be more to your plan than signing up for a Twitter account and attempting to follow thousands of people who are unlikely to reciprocate.

Start off with a big local bang

An integrated marketing strategy that includes social media is what you need to get your challenge marketing program off the ground.

Go back to the vision that I discussed in Part 3. Your challenge marketing program's vision should detail your target market, your product offer and your goals. Once you know these three things, you can begin to build an appropriate media and public relations plan to launch your program.

Build a master consideration list

Start with an unbiased consideration list of every available media option in your area. Add three columns: must have, consider and definitely not. Meet with everyone involved in your project, including your team and your agency (or agencies, if more than one is involved) and discuss the pros and cons of each line item.

You will need to share your budget in advance so everyone at the table is basing their input on not only target market appropriateness but also with an understanding of how deep your plan can really be. There is no point considering TV if you don't have significant dollars to invest and there is also no point in picking 20 items from the list if you can't do any one of them well. If your budget is limited, consider doing just three or four different items really well.

Here is a good start to your list, but by no means should you limit your considerations to these choices.

• TV
• Radio
• Newspaper
• Magazines
• Outdoor
  • Billboards
  • Transit
  • Mobile advertising
  • Wall projections
• Sponsorships
• Cinema advertising
• Personal invitations
• Text messaging
• Events
• Online banner advertising
• Social network advertising (Facebook, MySpace, MSN, others)
• Google Adwords
• Street team activations
• Promotional items
• Direct mail
• In-branch point-of-purchase
  • Posters
  • Brochures
  • Plasma screens
  • Floor decals
  • Window decals
  • ATM screens
• Statement stuffers
• Statement advertising
• Ads on your primary website and online banking site
• E-mail
• Newsletters
• Press releases
  • Traditional
  • Social media releases
• Appearances and interviews
• Word of mouth
• Social media activity
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • LinkedIn
  • Microsoft Live
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Viddler
  • Ustream
  • Yelp
  • 12 Seconds
  • Commenting on other blogs
  • Asking for reciprocal blogroll listings

Building your plan

If you are launching a youth-centred program, your plan will likely be light on traditional media and heavier online and with guerilla tactics. That doesn't mean that you should automatically rule out newspapers and radio. In fact, university newspapers and college radio might be really popular and affordable in your area.

Traditional media outlets are very hungry for advertising dollars and are getting more aggressive—and creative—with their advertising packages. A great idea is to meet with representatives from competing media outlets and give them each an RFP that describes your program. They may be so excited about getting involved with your unique promotion that they come back with ideas that you hadn't considered yet.

Transversely, if you are targeting Baby Boomers with a program like Filene's Big Idea Challenge, you may need to invest heavier in traditional media and lighter in online and guerilla tactics. Again, that doesn't mean that you should automatically rule out a localized Google Adwords, Facebook or LinkedIn advertising buy or guerilla street team activations.

For Young & Free Alberta, we had the luxury of a decent media budget. In year one, approximately 60% of the budget was invested in online advertising on both Facebook and MSN (MSN is very popular in Canada), while the rest of the budget was split between radio, outdoor billboards, direct mail and in-branch POP. In year two we didn't do any billboards, but we added in exciting new tactics including our Y&F GoMobile Truck and wall illuminations.

What Are You Saving For? was launched on a very small budget. All of the creative was done in-house and there was no external media purchased. Matt and his team relied on point-of-purchase displays, word-of-mouth, press releases, statement advertising, press coverage and cross linking from other promotions like their Football Pick 'em videos and from their corporate website.

As I mentioned in Part 3, Change Everything was a just one component of Vancity's 2006 brand advertising campaign. With a reported annual seven-figure budget for brand advertising, Change Everything was able to piggy back on this investment and to gain mass-market momentum through TV, radio and print advertising plus significant press coverage. William and his team also pre-launched the site to a hand-picked group of about 500 social media and social change advocates.

Be clear on what you are advertising

If your program has a product tie-in, you will have at least two key messages that you are promoting at the launch of your challenge marketing program:

1. Come enter and participate in our challenge
2. We have a great new banking product

My advice is to centre your message around getting your creators involved (remember the 90-9-1 Principle). Your challenge program's success is hinged upon getting people interested in participating in your challenge. Your product offer should always be there in the background, but doesn't necessarily need to be the star of a Facebook ad.

Monitor and adjust your plan each year

Because your challenge marketing program is a multi-year endeavor, you have the luxury of experimenting and refining your plan over time. If you find that direct mail yields very little return in year one, either try a different message, a different format or drop it altogether in year two. Make sure to monitor and measure every piece of your integrated marketing plan and be honest with everyone involved about how each component is performing.

On-going promotion

I recommend that your initial media plan cover the first two to four months. After that, your program should be up and running and you can rely on a steady volume of interesting content to keep the community going. With Young & Free Alberta, we advertised for an eight-week period in the fall of 2007 to find our 2008 Spokesperson. Once Larissa Walkiw was in place, there was no supporting media for her nine-month term. Interestingly, web traffic, participation and new account openings continued to grow throughout the year.

Going back into the year-two search phase, Servus Credit Union (formerly Common Wealth) invested approximately the same budget again to find the 2009 Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson. This additional investment in media has resulted in a sustained 50% increase in day-to-day traffic on the site.

Your supporting media plan is as important as the challenge itself. Taking the time to plan is well worth it.

Next up: should you require a log-in to participate?

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