How much should a credit union spend on marketing?

The short answer: the average credit union spends between 0.10 and 0.12 percent of assets on marketing, staying competitive takes roughly 0.15 percent, and growth postures run 0.20 percent and above. A $700M credit union at the competitive level is budgeting a little over $1 million a year. Almost everything else about the question is deciding which of those three numbers is yours.

Where the benchmarks come from

Two methods dominate how credit unions size a marketing budget, and they usually agree with each other.

The first is percent of assets. A Financial Brand study of 227 credit unions found both the average and the median marketing budget at 0.12 percent of assets. A 2026 analysis of NCUA call report data puts credit unions between $100M and $499.9M at 0.110 percent and the $500M to $4.9B tier at 0.118 percent. That is what the industry actually spends, which makes it a floor, not a strategy.

The second is per member. The same research puts per-member marketing budgets between roughly $11 and $20. The two methods converge when a credit union’s assets per member sit near the industry-typical $12,000 to $13,000. When they diverge, the divergence is telling you something: wealthier-than-average relationships inflate the assets method, leaner ones understate it, and the per-member number is usually the better guide to what reaching your membership actually requires.

The three postures

The more useful way to hold the benchmarks is as a choice among three postures.

Maintain is the industry average, 0.10 to 0.12 percent. It holds position in a quiet market and slowly loses it in a contested one. Compete, around 0.15 percent, is what industry guidance now describes as the level required to stay visible. Grow, at 0.20 percent and above, is the posture for aggressive growth, entering new markets, or launching a brand.

Your market sets the floor. A crowded, expensive metro pushes a credit union up a posture; the most contested markets, or a full rebrand, can justify spending beyond Grow. A quieter single-market footprint can hold a lower one and still be seen.

How much of it goes to digital

Across industries, digital now takes about 61 percent of channel budgets, per Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey. Most credit unions run well below that. Our recommendation sits deliberately between the two: 45 percent of the total marketing benchmark deployed to digital advertising, above typical credit union practice, below the consumer-brand average, and weighted toward the middle of the funnel where people are actively researching a financial decision.

Two clarifications worth carrying into budget season

These benchmarks derive from the call report’s educational and promotional expense line, which excludes marketing salaries. If you compare them against an all-in internal budget that includes headcount, the benchmark will look artificially high.

And a benchmark is not a plan. The number tells you what serious participation in your market costs. What it produces depends entirely on how it is deployed, and deployment is where most credit union budgets quietly underperform: heavy on awareness that cannot be measured, thin at the moment members and prospective members are actually deciding.

If you want your number, the budget benchmark takes two inputs from your call report and about thirty seconds.