Every journalist with a pulse knows that the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle’s second largest newspaper, printed its last paper edition today. Traditional reporters are horrified. Newcomers are resigned. A handful are actually excited to see what’s next.
But the Seattle PI’s move, which will be followed next month by the Christian Science Monitor, and which follows last months complete shuttering of the Rocky Mountain News should be a cymbal sounding in every credit union’s ear.
It means advertising campaigns – and especially campaigns aimed at young adults- – should no longer depend on the unexamined premise that the local newspaper is the best way to reach the local market. Unless you’re serving a university with a campus daily, that hasn’t been true for young adults for a long time, and it’s getting less true all the time. Yet, I often hear “ad in the paper” cited as a major part of credit unions’ new product rollouts and promotions.
The Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2009 shows that only online and cable news saw audience gains last year. And cable, the authors argue, probably only got its bump from wall-to-wall election coverage. Ad spending declined by 15% among newspapers, and with the increasingly fragmented media I have yet to read an analyst who doesn’t expect the sooner-or-later implosion of the traditional daily newspaper’s basic business model.
So if credit unions can’t reach the rising generation through the local paper, how can it be done?- Google AdWords. You can place ads aimed directly at certain towns, counties, or zip codes, all for much less than a traditional media buy and with a budgeting tool that keeps CFOs smiling. More info here.
- Facebook. Along the same lines, Facebook aggregates and slices the demographics you want (age, gender, locale, etc.), and lets you display straight to them. I’ve heard the standard complaints that people don’t want to see advertising in social networking. Well, they didn’t cheer for advertising in the newspaper either, but that didn’t stop anybody then. The same budgeting capability as Google AdWords is built in here.
- Earned (and partnered) media. Currency Marketing’s Young and Free program is very good at this, especially the partnering part, but you don’t have to have a slick, high-level program to attract good attention. Some great examples: Seattle Metropolitan CU pays it forward, Billings FCU attracts notice during last summer’s gas price spike with a one day subsidy, and Texas-based Members CU gets a local shout-out (ahem, in the newspaper) for it’s RealInterest checking.
- Not through blogs. Very few markets have local blogs that are read widely enough to justify an ad buy. And unless the site is optimized for banner ads (as, ironically, only newspaper and local news sites usually are), you’ll mainly see only Google AdWords supported anyway.
- Not through the telephone book. I found this AT&T u-turn story from CU Times interesting, but I – and I suspect most Gen Yers – rarely use the physical yellow pages anymore.
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Ben, it’s about time someone point this out. Excellent observations. Spot on.
Looking at newspaper advertising from the other direction, it might be easier to lay down this rule: If you need to advertise interest-bearing deposit products or your investment offerings, then run newspaper ads as part of your media mix. Otherwise, think twice, and make sure you couldn’t be spending your media dollars more productively in other channels.
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Good distinction, Jeffry. I think it’s true that the traditional deposit-side (read “older”) members will be the last off the local newspaper boat.
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Great suggestions – just another example of how important it is for CUs to be focusing their efforts on the business that they really want to get. “Spray and pray” is just not cost-effective and this is absolutely not the time to be doing marketing or advertising that is not clearly producing revenue and results.
On a side note, several years ago I read an article with a non-scientific study about newspaper advertising. Essentially, the guy that wrote the article had some time to kill waiting for a flight. He observed roughly 20 people in the boarding area reading the newspaper. After someone would finish, he walked over to them and asked if they could name a single company whose ad they saw in the paper they just read. How many could name just one? – Exactly, just one. Non-scientific, sure – but absolutely telling.
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Good points, Mike. One of the clear advantages online engines like AdWords and Facebook Advertising hold are that they allow browsers to become customers and for marketers to track the flow. Between 95% and 99% of viewers are going to ignore even a well-done online ad, but those that don’t can begin to interact with the credit union immediately.
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Good comments indeed. Before joining my CU last April, I worked for Scripps Newspapers in Florida (they also owned the Rocky). I currently use print, but only to reach an older demo. The phone book is useless – I’m currently tracking it so I can justify eliminating it from the mix. SEM/SEO and social networking is the way to go now and we’re seeing a favorable response. It’s sad to see newspapers die – but their arrogance and greed prevented them from seeing the future and investing in it. Not too long ago, they owned the employment, classified and auto categories but let them slip away to e-bay, Monster & Autotrader. Credit Unions need to be mindful of the future and invest in it – if not, they could share the same fate as newspapers.
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Ben – Above you note that credit unions should not advertise through blogs. How do you feel about credit unions blogging and the relevance towards the youth market?
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Hi Michael—For a member-facing credit union blog to succeed, I think it needs to offer clear value to young adults. I’ve seen few instances of this. The best example is (as usual) Young and Free and I think they succeed because the credit union and credit union products are present but ancillary to the conversation, which is driven by an engaging local voice.
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Generally speaking, I would recommend a credit union find an existing blog and sponsor it (e.g., with ads) rather than start its own blog. It’s much easier to find a blog with a healthy, vibrant, local following than it is to create one yourself.
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Interestingly, I’ve found blogging to be much more geared to those over 25-30. This may be a result of my credit union’s field of membership, but I definitely think blogging (traditional blogging anyway) and email are secondary forms of communication for younger people. Texting and Facebook are certainly the preferred ways of communication…and ads on either are typically scorned. The way I figure it, if Facebook is now more popular than porn for Gen Y like Time Magazine claims (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1678586,00.html?xid=rss-topstories), traditional blogs are toast! :)
Y&F has it right. The blog is the hub for a ton of creative work, for sure. But the fact that it extends to the various social networking sites to make it easy for young people to interact is key. One “site” isn’t going to cut the mustard. It must branch out in as many ways as possible to touch as many people in as many forms as possible. Otherwise, all you have is a blog. Or an ad on a blog. Or another waste of cyberspace.
Building a site is easy. Maintaining it, energizing people about it, and making it come to life is not. We’re not there yet at Members CU…and may never be. The key is for credit unions to learn from those who have been brave enough to test the social media waters, and devise a social media strategy that best fits their goals as an organization.
Unless you have boatloads of internal creative talent and budget to maintain your own social networking mecca…your focus should be earning your way into the online discussion in other ways.
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