Using Membership Marketing Partners to Help with Your Membership Challenges

One of the questions that I find most interesting in our Membership Marketing Benchmarking research is, “What are your organization’s top challenges in growing membership?”

The answers fall into two broad categories.  The first are environmental challenges outside the organization.  These are situations like the economy, competing organizations, market perceptions, and industry consolidation.  The second are institutional challenges inside the organization.  These are challenges like the ability to communicate value, insufficient staff, identifying prospects, lack of marketing expertise, and the lack of a plan or strategy.

The outside challenges often need long-term strategic changes in the organization and can be more difficult to address.  However, the inside challenges many times can be addressed by adding outside partners with specialized expertise for a period of time.

For example, an experienced research firm can help an organization better understand its value proposition and select the marketing messages that best communicate it to members and prospects.  And when peak work times are present, staff can be supplemented through marketing temporary firms or contractors.

When identifying prospective members is the challenge, a list broker can help.  List brokers have numerous tools and contacts available to help find prospects for your marketing efforts and since they receive a commission from the owners of the prospect lists they find for you, their services are effectively free to you as the list buyer.

Finally, there are a number of marketing firms that specialize in membership marketing including my company, Marketing General Incorporated, which often will provide a free consultation to help you define your needs and possible solutions.

If your organization’s membership growth is being held back by issues that can be addressed and solved by adding expertise from partners in the membership marketing community, why not reach out and ask for assistance?