NAFCU Services Blog

Each New Year, it appears that everyone finds a magic crystal ball to predict the future. In marketing, however, you really can predict the future—when you base your predictions off of trends and analytics.

Allow me to introduce you to my own personal crystal ball for marketing trends, a recent webinar that we did with a NAFCU Services Preferred Partner, NCR Corporation. The webinar, eMarketers Exclusive—Top 10 Trends of 2013, forecasts where marketing is headed and how credit unions specifically can improve their eMarketing strategy. Sundeep Kapur, Author, Digital Evangelist and Director of Strategic Marketing for NCR Corporation, led the eMarketers Exclusive—Top 10 Trends of 2013 webinar, and I encourage you to watch the recorded webinar because I truly cannot fit all the great tips from it here.

Many of the trends in marketing leading into 2013 will probably not surprise you. For example, content marketing continues to grow. Why? Because it works. Your members do research before selecting a product or service. If your credit union has educational content for members, you position your credit union as a trusted source and become part of the research process for your members. This gets you in the sales funnel sooner (which means more conversions), and allows you to build a relationship with your members by providing them the information they seek. Content marketing also helps you from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective—the more quality content you create, the higher your rankings from search engines are likely to be. So you’ll snag more of those unaffiliated future members searching on Google and Bing. Furthermore, online content marketing improves not only the quantity but the quality of traffic to your website. According to this recent case study from Brafton, a content marketing agency, visitors lured in from content had a 42 percent higher goal conversion rate than other visitors.

Other marketing trends for 2013 may surprise you—or at the very least, their scope may surprise you. According to a press release on technology trends by Gartner, Inc., “…by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.” What does this mean for your credit union? It means that an investment in mobile websites, mobile email, etc. just went from a “nice to have” to a “must have.” Design your emails with mobile in mind. For example, smaller margins and bigger buttons are a necessity for mobile emails so that it’s easy for members to read, store, and transact on mobile devices.

To learn more about marketing trends for 2013 and how you can improve your credit union’s marketing strategy, be sure to check out the recorded webinar from NCR Corporation, eMarketers Exclusive—Top 10 Trends of 2013. Can’t get enough marketing? Last year, Sundeep presented a half-day workshop on social media that was a runaway hit at the NAFCU Strategic Growth Conference. So much so that he’s been invited back to the 2013 NAFCU Strategic Growth Conference (March 12-14, in New Orleans, LA) and will be offering a full day’s worth of much broader content, not just on social media but on integrated media, called Leveraging the Power of Integrated Media. Please excuse the modest commercial here, but the eMarketers webinar is just a small taste of what you’ll learn in New Orleans. If you are at all focused on marketing for your credit union I’d urge you to put this on your calendar.

Post written by  Chelsea Sisson, Associate Marketing Manager, NAFCU Services Corp.

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