To make an emotional connection with someone, you have to tailor your communication to their wants and needs, not your own. This seems pretty obvious — most people know that they should use simpler language and and talk about “kid stuff” when talking to children, and they probably shouldn’t use swear words around Grandma.

But changing your communication style to fit your audience is one of the very toughest possible tasks in the world of marketing. It’s abstract and distant — you don’t have a specific, real person in front of you with all their helpful nonverbal cues. Your window to someone’s world might be the half a second they spend glancing at your postcard as it flies to the trash.

No wonder there’s so much marketing written for marketers, not members. Here’s a general example: Hands up — how many of us have run ads featuring a huge loan rate and little else except “Apply Today!” and a cloud of fine print? All of us, right? That’s a heartbreakingly common example of an ad written strictly for you and the ten or twelve other people in town who also work at financial institutions and who know and give a hoot exactly what the current comparable rates are. The product, media, message, and execution in these kinds of ads are based on what is familiar, easy and makes sense to us, not the target audience.

To truly connect on an emotional level, you have to develop a useful understanding of several kinds of people who aren’t you. What motivates them? What’s important to them?

One very useful way to do this is to borrow a technique from the world of fiction, and write out character studies. Based on your own emotional intelligence, write out a description of one specific fictional member who is the perfect target for your product and message. Don’t make it someone you know, but base your character on several people.

What’s important to her? What does she do for a living? Where does she live? Is she proud of her kids? What are her parents like? Give them names. Who does she turn to for financial advice? What kind of car does she drive? Why does she need a new car? What kind of car is she thinking about? What kind of money worries does she have? What happened to her the last time she tried to buy a car? Why doesn’t she trust banks? What did her mother say to her last night when the kids told her mama’s car sounds funny? Does she even read newspapers?

Add more and more detail. Keep it real and authentic — don’t invent some ideal member. Invent a real, imperfect one. (As in my example, you can certainly place her at the point in life where she’s thinking about a car and a car loan.) If it’s working, at some point, your character will do or say things you didn’t really expect or plan. Many fiction writers have discussed the startling and exhilarating moments when your characters start to do their own thing.

To choose a well-known example, Stephen King mentions several times in his book On Writing that when things are working well, he’s just as eager to see what happens next as any reader — it’s the feeling of uncovering a story that’s already there. It’s not magic, but it feels like it.

In psychological terms, you’ve internalized your character well enough at this point that your subconscious fills in the gaps, and they become as well-known and complete as many of the real people you know. However you want to explain this process, when you understand your character well enough to understand her motivations, fears, dreams, and hopes, you are finally ready to send a message to her.

And you’ll likely find she has plenty of company.

You may be sick of hearing about Boomers, but we are not about to stop demanding attention anytime soon. With 78.2 million Boomers with $46 trillion in assets just starting to head into retirement age, your CU needs to have a plan to keep them happy, healthy and active.

Happy. Become a trusted advisor. Experience and convenience are very important to Boomers, so expand your offerings to match expectations. Try to provide travel planning, and credit monitoring services along with complementary retirement “road tests” to help Boomers plan ahead.

Boomers are naturally optimistic about the future, and the family is the foundation, so grandchildren are going to benefit. Think education savings accounts, investments, and estate planning.

Boomers are also interested in improving the world and the environment. Publicize your efforts to decrease your ecological footprint. Connect with volunteer organizations in order to keep Boomers connected to the CU.

Healthy. Boomers are living longer and they want to look good. Find a way to finance home gyms and plastic surgery, along with laser vision correction and dental procedures. Boomers may be vain, but vanity can be profitable.

Staying healthy leads into an active lifestyle. Active lifestyles will lead to karate and yoga classes, ceramics and cycling. Consider sponsoring community activities and organizations. Not only will Boomers make the connection, but each of their interests can be your intro to new members.

Active. Boomers aren’t as likely to completely retire. Even with a growing trend of starting their own businesses, Boomers don’t want to necessarily deal with the details. So increase your online services to handle payroll and supplier payments, along with assistance in accounting, taxes, human resources, insurance and benefits.

Consider a promotion to capitalize on their “Boomer-preneurship” such as the one by Filene’s i3 team (”What’s the Big Idea”). Four CUs participated in the pilot program that was aimed at helping to test the market worthiness of aspiring businesses. Respondents got advice and feedback, and the winner got a free logo and printed stationery. (And the CU got lots of new deposit accounts and loans.)

Most importantly, don’t forget to tell Boomers what you are doing just for them. We like that.

For decades the only way to reach the people most likely to want what you were offering was through traditional media — TV, radio, newspapers and direct mail — and your buy had to focus on reach and frequency. Your strategy was based on interruption marketing; blasting your message to as many people as possible as often as you can. You had to spend more than your competition, because those with the most money bought the most reach and frequency.

No wonder people started tuning out the noise. Today, DVRs let us skip commercials, iPods tune out the radio, and newspapers are losing readers to online sources. If the goal of your marketing is to build relationships, how do you get people to tune back in?

Stop shouting your marketing. Listen, and start a dialog.

With traditional media audiences declining, your best opportunities may be online. Nearly 80% of Americans are online, along with almost 100% of businesses, and the two most common tasks are email and search. When you think of those two activities as new media outlets that will actually allow you to find out what they need, starting a conversation is a natural step.

Search. People don’t usually remember web site urls. When people want something, they search for it, and nearly 80% of all web visits start with a search. The results show up in two formats: organic listings, and pay-per-click ads.

Just by having a web site you can probably be found somewhere in the organic listings — but you may not like where you appear. By designing and optimizing your site for search engines, you can increase the odds of your site appearing higher in the organic listings.

You can also add a blog. Blogging adds to rankings, as they have all of the characteristics search engines look for: keywords, frequent updates, recency, titles and inbound linking. An RSS connection on the blog can also help connect your site to other sites, another quality that increases your rankings to search engines. Just keep in mind that an RSS feed is open source, so while your home banking is still protected by security, the content you publish will likely be picked up and linked to by others.

Pay-per-click advertising is measurable advertising. Your ad will appear every time the right keywords or search terms are entered, but you only pay when your ad is clicked. This is a very efficient way to connect to someone looking for what you are offering, but it may not come cheap. The position of your ad is dependent upon how much you agree to pay for that click versus what your competitor offers, both on a per-click and daily cap basis. Be aware that this is a prime example of a market economy; Google and Yahoo have no problem letting advertisers escalate their bids.

Email should not be treated like traditional direct mail or interruption marketing, or recipients will toss it faster than junk mail. Broadcast Email messages need to be based on data in order to get to the right person at the right time, so be sure to tailor your messages and send them to the right audience. And give people the control to opt out of future emails.

When you get a reply, treat it as a conversation. Ask questions. Listen to the answers and respond appropriately, and not only will you have a one-on-one dialog, you have the chance to build a relationship.

Most of your credit union’s assets are not on the books but in the heads of the people who work there. So how do you turn those assets into something tangible? According to Martin Edelston and Marion Buhagiar, authors of I-Power, you should turn your staff into an idea factory.

Set up a system that encourages suggestions. Have everyone (yes, accounting too) come to a meeting with 2-3 ideas for making his/her department more productive and enhancing the performance of the credit union. Keep the atmosphere completely free from negativity. Everyone needs to feel comfortable and say things off the top of their head. Write the ideas down and note the employee who came up with it. Make this meeting a regular, ongoing event.

Consider bribes to get the ideas flowing. Bring in a bunch of tchotchke giveaways. Reward ideas based on their merits. Even better (if you can get away with it), bring in a stack of crisp bills for that first meeting. For every reasonable idea, give a dollar. Every good idea, $5. Great idea? $10. Vote on the best idea and give that person $50 or the biggest tchotchke. No one will get rich, but the credit union will likely save money or make money based on the suggestions, so view it as an investment. And everyone will look forward to the next meeting.

Have a system in place to implement the ideas. Ideas are wonderful, but if nothing happens, you have wasted everyone’s time and enthusiasm. Assign responsibilities to senior staff and management, and set dates to report results — either in a separate meeting so the idea factory does not get too long, or make it a quick summary at the next meeting.

Reward employees whose ideas are implemented. Not only will you have made improvements at the credit union, employees who are rewarded become more invested in their jobs. And their co-workers have more incentive to come up with their own ideas.

Wouldn’t you assume that most everyone knows the difference between savings and checking? And wouldn’t you assume that most everyone knows that a loan or charges on a credit card have to be paid back (plus a bit more with interest)? If you accept that most everyone can and does understand those concepts, then when people get into trouble by spending more than they know they have — should they really be considered a victim?

Sure, there are victims. A victim is defined as “a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency.” Some of your members may have lost their jobs, had unexpected medical expenses, or be trapped in a cycle of revolving credit debt. But many others have simply been living beyond their income.

I know that on TV, using your Mastercard for what you want is “Priceless” and “Life takes Visa” so you don’t want to be a social pariah by using (heaven forbid!) cash. But those are ads — good ads, granted — but still ads, that are recognized as ads by those watching them. They may be slick, but there’s really no cheating or dishonesty there. And ignorance can’t be used as an excuse if everyone knows how credit cards and loans work.

To be a victim, something has to happen to you that is out of your control. Isn’t the decision to use a credit card still controlled by the holder? Does anyone really not understand that they will have to pay for it eventually? Or is “Retail Therapy” simply a fun way to avoid reality, and it’s easier to worry about “all those details” tomorrow?

Do these members really need more “Financial Education” on how it all works? Seems to me that simply shifts the blame from the member back on “The System” or on a lack of education about finances — and conveniently makes it easy to think of that member as a victim. I understand that no one likes the bearer of bad news, but are we afraid to tell members that they are accountable for their actions? More importantly, are we doing them a disservice by letting them stick their heads in the sand?

What if credit unions changed “Financial Education” into “Financial Responsibility” lessons? Laura Enock of CUVA, Inc. brings up this concept, along with several good points in the 4/23 issue of Credit Union Times. Her opinion is that until financial responsibility is recognized and emphasized as the problem, any other solution will be temporary at best.

So how does your CU help these members? How can you get “victims” to take responsibility for their actions, and provide them with the tools they need to change their whole approach to money?