Membership Growth Blog

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

1. Have you called or sent a card to potential members?
2. Did you attend a networking event?
3. Did you send a press release announcing an important event?
4. Were you mentioned in your or someone else’s blog?
5. Did you submit an article to a magazine or blog about your organization?
6. Did you stop by and see a member that hasn’t been active in awhile?
7. Did you discuss cross promotion with a similar organization?
8. Have you posted your next meeting location in free newspapers, craigslist, coffee shops, online organizational sites, or on telephone poles?
9. Did you talk about it with a coworker?
10. Did you show someone the value of being in your organization today?

In the past three months, I have given three talks on building membership in organizations. After each of these talks, people have come up to me and asked about where they could find more information on building vibrant membership orientated organizations. I had to look at each one of these people and say, “I don’t know. My talk was put together from my own experiences, observations, and collection of disparaging resources.”

I felt bad that I was unable to point them to one resource that gave tips, tutorials, and articles on how to build a killer membership base. After today, I won’t have to feel bad.

This blog is about one thing, building a diverse membership for your group, church, non-profit, or network marketing business. It is based on one guiding principle, that your membership is diverse, busy, and hard to reach so you need to try a lot of different tactics until something works.

I hope that this blog will provide you the inspiration and tactics you need to build your membership.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I sincerely hope that you are able to find the resources that will help you grow your membership.

Best Wishes,
Chris