Free benchmark
Benchmark your marketing budget.
Two numbers from your last call report, one decision about posture, and you'll have an industry-benchmarked answer to the question every budget season starts with: what should we actually be investing?
Full dollars, straight off the call report.
Your posture
How to pick: let your market set the floor. A crowded, expensive metro, think Dallas or Las Vegas, pushes you up a posture, and the most contested markets or a full rebrand can justify spending beyond Grow. A quieter single-market footprint can hold a lower one.
Your digital advertising benchmark
Within a total marketing benchmark of for your credit union at this posture, with 45% deployed to digital advertising: above where most credit unions run today, deliberately below the roughly 61% consumer brands average.
How it's built
Percent-of-assets method: · Per-member method: · Your benchmark is the blend.
How we'd deploy it
Top of funnel · 35%
Awareness. Being known before the moment of need: video, display, audio.
Mid funnel · 45%
Intent capture. Present at the moment people are actually researching: search, social, targeted display.
Bottom of funnel · 20%
Conversion. Closing the considered: retargeting, geo-targeting, offers.
One honest note at your asset size: credit unions under $100M actually average closer to 0.05% of assets on marketing. The benchmark above reflects how $100M+ institutions behave, so treat it as the ambitious end of your range.
Where these benchmarks come from
The average credit union spends 0.10–0.12% of assets on marketing (Financial Brand study of 227 credit unions; 2026 NCUA call report analysis), with per-member budgets averaging $11–$20. Industry guidance puts the stay-competitive level at 0.15% and growth postures at 0.20% and above (CUInsight). Digital's share of channel budgets averages 61% across industries (Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey).
Two clarifications: these benchmarks derive from the call report's educational and promotional expense line, so they exclude marketing salaries. And this is a benchmark for your budget, not a quote for our services; what an engagement costs is a different, shorter conversation.