The late, great Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know
where you are going, you might end up someplace else.”
His thoughts certainly hold true in membership marketing. Everyone likes a catchy phrase. A leader may have stated a goal like, “20,000
members by the year 2020.” However, the frustration and challenge for many
membership marketers is the goal may have been set without understanding the
context of what it will take to achieve the goal.
Setting a membership development goal is a great idea, but
to make it realistic, it requires the answer to four foundational questions.
·
Who are the prospective members that you want to
recruit and are there enough of them to achieve the goal?
·
What is the value proposition that will appeal
to these prospects and are there products and services to support the value
proposition?
·
How will these prospects be reached (marketing channels), how often (frequency), how will they be incentive to act (offer),
and how will the results be measured?
·
What is the economic model to reach the goal
including the necessary budget availability, the required ROI, and the
projected life time value of a member?
These are not easy questions to work through for an
organization. And there may be some resistance
to the process because everyone is looking for a “silver bullet” answer or they
may feel they already have the answer, “if we only do this, we will solve our
membership problem.”
But if these important planning questions are not addressed,
the likelihood of ending up “someplace else” other than where you hoped is very
likely.
The bottom line: before setting or agreeing to a membership
growth goal, do the homework to make sure that it is reasonable, sustainable, measurable,
and economically feasible.