Membership Growth Blog

In a world of choices, how does your membership organization stand out from the rest? What value do you give to your members that they cannot get anywhere else? What is your niche?

Dear Readers,

In a world of ever expanding choices, most organizations are going to have to stop targeting everyone and focus on a niche for growth. If you don’t focus on explosive growth in a core market, then you might only grow a little spreading yourself too thinly. It takes a lot of value, effort, and marketing to drive growth across all markets, but you will find with the right value set and pitch, that you can drive growth where it is most important to your organization.

Questions to ponder today?

1. What is the market for my membership organization?
2. How many people are in that market?
3. What is their most common method for my potential members to learn about my organization?
4. What is the most cost effective method to reach my audience?

The questions you are going to ponder will take some work to answer. You might even need to hire a professional. However, if you take the time to think about who you are targeting and how you are going to reach them, you will be on the path to sustainable growth.

My goal is to help organizations realize that. I have seen to many non-profits and subscription based businesses get some press, boom, and then lose a majority of their membership due to unsustainable growth. They stopped service the core niche that allowed them to get known and now are no more.

Good luck and keep growing,
Chris

Have you looked at your web page today?

Ask a stranger to look at your web page. Do they feel compelled to click through to the rest of your pages?

Look at the last updated tag at the bottom of your page. Does it have a date before 1999? Unless you somehow got bit by the millennium bug a bit late, then I am guessing that technology might be a hindrance more than a point of leverage for your organization.

But I know that you don’t have time to blog, build web pages, or update your web page. That is why you are spending all of your time reading about it and not doing it. So what to do?

Hire someone. Talk to an organization that has a great webpage. Ask them who did it then hire them.

Now hire someone to post on your blog, update your videos, and interview members of your organization for your podcasts.

Done.

You are now on your way to leveraging technology and not letting it be a hindrance.

Easier said than done right?

Trust me. If you said yes, then you need to ask around and talk to an expert.

If you Google something you are interested, what do you usually find? If it is a “hot” keyword, you find ads, link sites, and sales letters. When you start to learn more about the internet marketing business, you will find literally millions of sites that try to teach you to turn those Google searches into sales, membership growth, and link backs. Here is my question, is it worth it?

Does it matter if you are able to get one more member out of a thousand page views to join your organization or buy something from your site?

This just might be the dirty secret of internet marketing. SEO, finely crafted sales letters, and gimmicks just aren’t the most effective tools to get real growth in an organization. Real, honest growth in any organization takes getting personal with your audience and making a connection.

Yes, I am talking about good old fashion word of mouth. Something that can’t be faked, automated, or put into a sales letter. I am not trying to bash the whole internet marketing business. Honestly, I have and will continue to develop sales techniques to grow the interest in this blog; however, I know that true growth will only come from the relationships that I forge with other people.

That has been and always will be the key builder of organizations, the quality of the relationships you build. I believe that more now then ever, our organizations grow not from our marketing of value, but our demonstration of value from the personalities within our organization.

I don’t think I have begun to scratch the surface on this topic. If you agree or disagree, please drop me a line and let me know of some examples or counter examples.

Here is a great post I found by the author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time, Keith Ferrazzi.

In his blog post, he reviews the book Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent

Though the book is about how corporations can attract young talent, I thought that it would be possible to apply this same principle to any organization, be it a foundation, a club, or a major multinational corporation.

The main points he laid out in the post are:

- Get help from people are influential in your recruits’ lives.
- Sell your people
- Deliver on your promises

Think about how you can apply this to any organization and not just business:

1. Think about ways to get big names to support your organization. Imagine the kind of interest you will get in your organization if it is mentioned by a former President, a major sports star, or a talking head on TV.
2. How does your organization sell its members? Think of how much value your members will get from your organization if they use their membership to increase revenues, get more clients, or grow personally.
3. This is a big one for me personally. Does your organization do everything it says it is going to do? What is your value proposition and are you serving your members in line with your values?

This looks like it will be quite an interesting book and I hope that its ideas will become more mainstream.

More questions…
How many lapsed members did you personally reach out and talk with today?
Did you ask someone famous for an endorsement of your organization?
Did someone tell you how they got their new job because of their membership in your organization?

What are you waiting for? Get out there and get building!

Happy Wednesday,

Chris

When people ask me why they can’t attract new members, I ask them how they demonstrate value to potential members.

It is a question that many organizations do not have a good answer for. I understand that many organizations have traditions, a name, or even a large membership. All of those are good, but when was the last time you sat down with your executive team and really asked the tough questions:

Why are our members in our organization?

What have we done to provide them with value today, this week, month, or year?

Where are our members coming from?

Are we attracting the members that will allow us to provide more value in the future?

Do we serve ourselves or our members?

If you find your membership lagging, I think the last question might be the most important one to answer. No matter how old or distinguished your organization is, if you are not adding value to your members lives then you will not grow as an organization.

Next time you meet with your executive committee, think about those questions and ask yourselves, “Is this for me or for them.”

How many new members did you add today?

Chris