Today is the day to be more positive about your future.
Today is the day to smile and say hello to more people.
Today is the day to get out there and show the world what you have to offer.
Today is the day to lead by example.
Today is the day that you demonstrate what your organization has to offer.
What are you going to do today to make a positive impact on your organization?
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.
Do you know how Wal-Mart was able to achieve astounding growth when other businesses were struggling?
Good or bad, Wal-Mart grew because they targeted markets where what they had to offer was not easily available. They offered products, services, and prices that could not be found in the communities that they set up shop. They started in small town America.
What other businesses have been successful with this model?
Mary Kay, Tupperware, and Longaberger are for-profit companies that I can think of that have shown sustainability in smaller cities. The Elks, Masons, Kiwanis, and Rotary are non-profit organizations that have also continued to thrive in smaller communities. Why is that and what is your organization doing to grow in those markets?
Too often businesses and organizations target the mega-markets to establish themselves. With a desire to grow, they think that canvassing New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago will get them the members they need to be sustainable.
WRONG!
If organizations want to grow, then they need to first target markets where they can be the only provider of a product, service, or membership offering. Why try to enter a market where the cost of entry is high? You will only be putting too much effort into to little of a return.
For membership based organizations, small cities offer a sense of community that larger cities do not enjoy. In the large urban markets, there is less a sense of community and more of a focus on self. In smaller cities, you have a much tighter social network where everyone knows what everyone else is doing and if someone is part of an interesting organization, then everyone else wants to be a part of that organization. That gives you the word of mouth growth you are looking for with minimal initial investment.
So I ask you, is your organization targeting small?
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.