The Veterans vs USAA

    USAA is a company that focuses on veterans and attempts to give them support. For those who don't know, USAA, it is an insurance agency that provides financial assistance to exclusively veterans. I saw a number of their ads while I was on Instagram the other day and decided to look through some of their content and comments to see what people thought about the company. I knew of USAA before as a couple of my friends' parents are military or ex-military and use their cards and some of the other services they provide.

    Their one and only thing that they do is support veterans, which is kind of their whole value proposition too. It boils down to, "we hope to lift up the people and families associated with the military through financial support". 

    Despite this mission, lots of people don't like USAA and it seems that chief among them is military customers who used the service, which is disappointing to see. After searching through their social media and reading dozens of comments, I found that although a few commented positively on the posts themselves, the service was only reviewed poorly by the comments. As an example, I saw and clipped these 3 comments:

    People who used the service are incredibly dissatisfied with it and comments like these are frequent on their advertising posts. I gathered that this was not as reliable or good natured a company as I originally thought it was. The first one talks about all the money that he needs that USAA is not providing even though he is owed it. Not only is it bad that he has to go through this, it's the fact that they promised these things and won't deliver on the product they claim to provide. The second is no better, and discusses a horrible situation involving their dad who is a veteran getting a complete lack of attention, support, and after it was all sorted, was expensive too! USAA needs to rework its systems and re-emphasize the importance of helping individuals. This is quite emphatically agreed with by the 3rd comment which talked about how, while USAA may used to have been about veterans and the military, it's not anymore and it's focus is entirely wrong. This type of bad publicity on their social media is a bad sign for their business and unhappy customers can cause a lot of problems.

    USAA is mainly trying to sell 3 things with their posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Their insurance (primarily car insurance), their banking, and their offered financial help/counseling. Each has their own types of ads usually but most are generic and don't tell a story or give you the 'why' you should bank with them or use their insurance.

    Their marketing strategies are lackluster, especially on social media. Lots of their ads have no exciting or interesting format. They are still in the same style as the old TV ads that we cast off so long ago. They aim to interrupt and somehow get through to you using that. Every once in a while they will go out and find or get footage of a veteran who they helped and post them along with a part of their story on the official page. This strategy, while slightly more effective, still isn't super effective because it's aim is still to interrupt. They don't try to connect with the consumer in any meaningful way, however on most of the comments talking about their distaste for the company, USAA was fairly quick on responding to them which gives them a couple points in Meerman's book for staying on top of and responding quickly to negative feedback. However, when the brand gets as much negative feedback as this one, they should realize that they need to make some changes. As a whole, I think their goal is to be remarkable, it's to become the single most used source for veteran support, but not only do they need to work on their product which is less than ideal, they really need to work on their marketing. 

    The main marketing challenge facing the brand is a lack of quality content. In Meerman's work, he ranks the importance of different aspects of marketing but a phrase and an idea he refers back to consistently is that content is king. USAA struggles to make their content easily available or accessible and when you do find it, you'll realize there isn't as much substance as you were hoping for. They're trying to expand sales by creating relatable content or making lots of short form videos. I don't know for sure but I would guess this probably isn't what veterans care about regarding the company that handles their insurance. They're not going to care about how relatable they are or how many videos they have, they want to know what USAA can do for them.

    USAA needs to shift their focus back onto helping their customers and making it clear that they care about veterans more than giving very minor support on a large scale. As far as marketing strategies go, they might start a sponsored blog for veterans to share their war stories or talk to other veterans to share their experiences. I think it would boost consumer engagement massively and aid the company in appearing more authentic to both the general public and those that work closely with USAA. Not only that but provide more platforms for veterans to do things, whether that's hosting events or having them speak on the social media account, growing their brand trust and establishing connections with customers could help them massively.

    I never knew that USAA had such a bad reputation among veterans before this and it taught me that although a company may be one of the largest in it's field, that by no means signifies its quality. Although they are a massive corporation that claim to be dedicated to the military, their service quality and poor product stint their growth and their ability to pull in buyers which may eventually lead to the end of the business if there isn't any reform.

God bless America and our veterans who fight for our freedom and the protection of this people. May the Lord be with you and bless you always!