Memorable
If your association wants to generate new members constantly, you should design the association memor”able”: Are prospects, members, and partners easily “able” to remember what your association stands for and what not. What does your association do to make the world a better place and what are you “fighting” against? Standing for something that’s relevant for your potential members is one of the strongest attractants. Consequently, it means making every offer and step of your organization recognis”able”. Only when people are easily able and ready to remember you and recognise your position then they are able and ready to recommend you. Then you are recommend”able”, allowing your association to grow.
Uniqueness attracts. Assertiveness and courage accelerate. If you think of WWF Worldwide Fund For Nature you probably have a panda bear in mind. With the story and values of WWF combined. However, such an association’s brand is not created by asking the founder or CEO only since that’s just an individual perspective. It’s based on specific values and a story concept developed by the staff top down. So that every staff member knows and supports it. Creating this brand concept is a once in a lifetime investment – probably the most important one of all. Does your association have this kind of professional brand guide as a compass? Do you have a story easy to remember and symbols/visuals supporting it? And is this narrative in the head, heart and hand of every one of your association’s staff?
Identifiable
Clearly defined values in a great story as well as a professionally and emotionally committed staff create internal identification. This is the foundation for any external identification clients and partners build with your associations position. Identifying cornerstones are your employees closely followed by how your association acts publicly and what it offers. Do members constantly discover association values in what you tell and do? Do they regularly feel them in the members journey: In the most important touch points, in the communication, the association’s design, and in the choice of your partners, suppliers etc.?
How would your closest members and partners enthusiastically describe your association in one word? Would this word fit your core value? If yes, then your positioning is successful. The recipe for it is clarity, identification, and consequent realization. Check bitcom e.V. in Germany – if you ask 100 business people almost all would say: Ah – the “voice of digitalization (industry)”. With the corresponding purpose of digitalize Germany.
Positionable
You’re only POSITIONing yourself by communicating your core values, if it’s directed at and focused on your main target groups. I personally don’t believe in the “magic” of social media marketing or search engine marketing. Of course, every organization competing with others has to play the social media game to a certain extent. But if you want to talk to your potential members, would you choose the loudest room with the most communicators mainly? No. Of course you have to show your best assets in this social media circus in order to be discovered. So optimize your profiles and sites and talk on it constantly according to your brand. With some ad budgets within your limits.
BUT: As associations the most valuable and exciting positioning strategy is using “personal connection”: In a regular phone call, a personal mail, a handwritten letter, a gift package, a personal invitation, an individually granted advantage, a personal privilege granted etc. Obviously, as associations we use mass mailings for event flyers. And mass e-mails for newsletters. In a brand defined way.
But the rest is appreciative, true personal contacts – not to a member”ship”, but to individual members. When I founded and built up the German Speakers Association, still the second biggest speaker association out of more than 20 worldwide, I as president or vice president knew over 80 % of members personally and communicated with most of them regularly in person – supported by my staff and the best relationship software we could buy. Members don’t want to receive impersonal mail. They want to feel individual appreciation and gratitude. If your association serves thousands of members, it’s not an excuse not to join the personal contact club. Just hire great staff by lowering your ad spendings online if necessary.
Community-able
Associations are communities by definition. So be a real one. My observation: The older associations are the more they tend to: offer, sell, repeat. It’s the yearly program which is executed like clockwork. With occasionally some new innovations. A communal, lively association is a community. A place where people want to be and go even if there is no invitation. Do you have that kind of place? As a regular physical place, but much more importantly nowadays as a digital platform?
The community I talk about is based on the collective membership intelligence (by networking, exchanging, collaborating, prototyping, experiencing, innovating etc.) combined with emotional experiences. Do you know and use what your members know? Supported by AI tools. Do members think of you and your platform and use it when they need something in their (professional) lives? Are great and easy member connections possible 24/7?
If you want an example executing most of this then look at PCMA in the MICE business: They are living the brand as a platform, they innovate and orchestrate it’s community and achieve highest international relevance mainly by doing that.An association community works when it’s really cool, open minded and not the same of the same. Because that is the future where even generations Z and following want to be.
To explore these ideas further, contact Siegfried Haider of experts4events.