Last week we started our next chapter in Wednesday Roundup! July’s focus is association revenue growth. If you missed last week’s post, check it out here. To recap, we discussed membership benefits, membership levels and how to use your automatic dues notification campaign to increase dues collection. This week’s post focuses on members. How do member needs drive strategy? And how does that strategy increase revenue? We break it down below.
Member Needs First, Always
Your ultimate goal as an association leader must be members who are dramatically better off because of their relationship with you. – David Noor
David Noor is a business advisor for associations. He drives success through “disruptive innovations to fuel… growth”. He recently wrote a post on strategies for revenue growth. Some key words from his post were “member needs”, “member benefits”, “customer relationships”, etc – you get the jist. Noor’s ideas for growth revolve around serving the members in each segmentation of your database. Meaning, craft benefits that serve 20+ year members and new members. It’s likely they have different needs. Members will notice you paying attention to their unique needs. They may even share your work and convince a colleague to join.
Consider The Member Cycle
Before you apply your revenue growth strategy to all members, think about where they are in the member cycle. Noor highlights a typical member pathway below.
- Unaware (works in the industry, wants to join a group but doesn’t know about your association)
- Interested (prospective member who is investigating your group)
- Engaged (recently joined your group)
- Informed (has been a member for a year and is engaged in discussion groups, has attended one event)
- Advanced (10+ years membership, on two committees and leads a discussion group)
- Expert (20+ years membership, many years experience in industry, on the board, helps plan events)
You probably won’t offer members at the “expert” level the same thing you’d offer new members, right? Their needs are different. The way the interact with your group and level of engagement is different. “…Create stair steps of value that serve the needs and capabilities of everyone from the prospective member not yet aware your association exists to the long-term member whose relationship with you has reached expert level,” (Noor).
Provide Value First
As we consider the member cycle, think about ways to you offer value to each level. Prospective members probably need more value up front. What kind of resources, documents, benefits can you offer them? Providing a flow of information to a prospect lets them know you care about their needs even before they join. That you want to be a resource in the industry. After you’ve gifted enough resources, a prospect may be convinced to join.
Along with downloadable content on your site, there are other ways to engage and provide value. Here’s an example from Noon: maybe you want to invite prospects to an event your hosting. It’s a great intention but asking them to physically show up and purchase a ticket? They probably won’t go for it. Noon suggests providing some middle ground – instead of making your prospects commit to physically showing up, “simulcast or record [the event] so that non-members can experience your value, albeit at a shallower level (non-interactive) and a lower price point (or even free).”
Increasing your association’s revenue is challenging. The strategies for growth are endless yet confusing. What works for your group? Test out some of the ideas we suggested and then analyze your metrics.
