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In today’s highly competitive financial landscape, marketing has evolved from a secondary administrative function into a critical engine for growth. Credit unions have historically leaned on community ties, localized member relationships, and physical branch footprints to expand. However, as the digital marketplace intensifies, institutions are being forced to aggressively ramp up their brand investments to stay relevant.
Consumers now face an unprecedented array of financial choices. Megabanks continue to pour billions into high-tech digital acquisition campaigns, while nimble fintech platforms set new expectations for seamless UX and personalized services. At the same time, credit unions must navigate slower organic asset growth, rising operational costs, and the pressure to retain deposit relationships.
To analyze how institutions are navigating these challenges, Capital Performance Group (CPG), in collaboration with The Financial Brand, evaluated National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) call report data. The research benchmarks marketing investments across the credit union sector, highlighting how budgets differ by asset size, how spending shifted year-over-year, and how marketing correlates with key financial performance metrics.
The Growing Divide Between Large and Small Institutions
The study’s most notable takeaway is a widening strategic divide in the industry:
- Aggressive Spending: Larger credit unions are dedicating a significantly larger portion of their operating budgets to marketing, and they are increasing this spend at a much faster rate than smaller peers.
- Measurable Performance: Institutions with higher marketing allocations saw much stronger deposit, loan, and revenue growth in 2025, demonstrating that marketing functions as an essential growth engine rather than a discretionary cost.
Key Benchmarks: Credit Union Marketing Budgets
The research grouped credit unions into four main tiers based on asset sizes to observe how marketing spend correlates with organizational scale. The findings show that marketing investments scale sharply with asset size:
- Under $100 Million: Median marketing spend was just 1.23% of noninterest expenses.
- $100 Million to $499.9 Million: Budgets rose to 2.92% of operating expenses.
- $500 Million to $4.9 Billion: Allocated 3.38% of noninterest expenses to marketing.
- $5 Billion and Above: Allocated a robust 4.30% of their operating budgets to marketing.
In short, the nation’s largest credit unions invest more than three times as much of their operational budgets on marketing compared to their smallest industry counterparts.
When evaluated as a percentage of average assets, small credit unions spend about 0.047%. Mid-sized tiers ($100M–$499.9M and $500M–$4.9B) spend 0.110% and 0.118%, respectively. Interestingly, the largest institutions spend slightly less relative to assets (0.101%), pointing to powerful economies of scale that allow massive brands to amortize their fixed marketing investments across a much larger asset footprint.
A Strong Rebound in Marketing Spend
Following several years of conservative budget growth, credit unions surged ahead in 2025. Mid-sized and large institutions increased their year-over-year marketing budgets by roughly 9%—a major jump from the low single-digit growth rates seen in 2023 and 2024.
Specifically, institutions in the $100M–$499.9M tier grew their median marketing spend by 8.9% (up from 5.8% in 2024). The $500M–$4.9B cohort increased spend by 9.1% (up from 4.2% in 2024), while the largest institutions over $5 billion matched that 9.1% growth rate.
In contrast, credit unions under $100 million in assets experienced 0% median budget growth in 2025. These smaller entities face intense operating leverage challenges and limited personnel, making budget increases highly difficult even when market conditions require them.
This 2025 budget expansion was driven by several key industry factors:
- Deposit Wars: Credit unions spent most of the year fighting to retain and attract yield-sensitive depositors.
- Costly Digital Acquisition: Rising competition in digital channels drove up the cost of paid media, pay-per-click, and performance marketing.
- Fintech and Bank Competition: Major banks and fintechs kept their brand presence high, raising the baseline visibility required for credit unions to capture attention.
The Correlation Between Marketing and Financial Performance
The research underscores a strong link between marketing spend and tangible growth metrics across deposits, loans, and overall revenues.
The highest-spending tier—credit unions with assets above $5 billion—recorded a median deposit growth rate of 6.1%. The $500M–$4.9B group grew deposits by 4.9%, and the $100M–$499.9M tier achieved 4.1% growth. Meanwhile, the smallest credit unions under $100 million (where marketing spend flatlined) saw deposit growth of just 1.2%.
A similar trend emerged in lending. Credit unions under $100 million saw their median loan balances contract by 0.9%. Conversely, mid-sized and large institutions grew their loan portfolios by 3% to 4.4%, leveraging digital and traditional acquisition funnels to capture borrowing demand.
Revenue growth aligned with the same pattern. Institutions with over $500 million in assets expanded their revenues by roughly 10.6% to 10.9%. Mid-tier credit unions saw 9.2% revenue growth, while the smallest players achieved just 5.0% growth. Pre-provision operating profits showed an even starker contrast, with mid-to-large institutions posting a median profit growth of 21.8%, compared to just 0.3% for the under-$100 million tier.
The Marketing Efficiency Paradox
While larger budgets drive absolute growth, the productivity of each dollar spent yields an intriguing trend: smaller credit unions generate higher revenue per dollar of marketing spend.
The median institution under $100 million generates $69.83 in revenue for every dollar of marketing spend. This metric steadily drops as size increases: $44.33 for the $100M–$499.9M tier, $39.49 for the $500M–$4.9B tier, and $37.90 for institutions over $5 billion.
This inverse relationship highlights the changing nature of marketing at scale:
- Hyper-Local Advantage: Small credit unions rely heavily on organic community presence, word-of-mouth referrals, and hyper-local brand awareness where consumer trust is already established.
- Mass-Market Cost: Large institutions must compete across expansive, highly competitive geographic and digital markets. They invest heavily in broad brand-building activities, media sponsorships, and paid digital channels where the ROI is long-term and harder to isolate in immediate revenue calculations.
The Future: Marketing as a Core Growth Engine
The findings reinforce a fundamental shift: marketing is no longer just a support function for designing brochures or managing community events. It is a critical driver of member acquisition and long-term franchise valuation.
The credit unions experiencing the most robust growth are not necessarily those with the lowest operating overhead, but those proactively investing to capture consumer mindshare. While marketing budgets represent just one piece of an institution’s overall success—with geographic location, member demographics, and product offerings also playing massive roles—executives must carefully evaluate whether their current marketing investments are sufficient to meet their long-term growth objectives.
Source: thefinancialbrand.com