Estrategias De Marketing Para Microfinanzas

Building Sustainable, Commercial Microfinance Programs

Marketing Strategies for Microfinance
ACCION’s Services

The relational model of the microfinance industry
has historically relied on a“high-touch” strategy
which places most of the responsibility for sales at
the branch and loan-officer level. Today, this oneon-one, relational model is still the main go-tomarket approach to sales andcustomer retention.
The relational approach will continue being a key
component of the value offer that differentiates
microfinance from traditional banking. However,
the increasing challenges togrow at faster speed
under greater competition, more informed and
demanding customers, the evolution towards financial
intermediation (vs. just credit delivery) makes it vital
for institutions toadopt more sophisticated marketing
strategies and practices that rest on a customer-centric
versus product-driven philosophy.

Brand Development
As the need increases for MFIs to attract newcustomers and new segments at greater scale and
speed, they must build stronger emotional bonds with
existing customers to promote greater loyalty and
create institution advocates. Brand-image strategiesare
vital to this end, particularly as MFIs evolve towards
providing integrated financial services. For successful
savings mobilization, for example, building brand
values such as “trust” and“superior value offer”—
without being perceived as distant or unfriendly like
other traditional financial institutions—is a basic
component of a competitive strategy. Even for creditoriented MFIs, branddevelopment is important in
helping the institution to generate good will, promote
word-of-mouth advertising and create instant
recognition—all critical to successfully positioning the
institutionagainst its competitors. ACCION provides
a comprehensive and powerful model for brand-image
development, to assist MFIs in defining their brand
strategy, building upon it and tracking its...