Great Marketing Starts with the Member

I hear questions like this once a month:

• “Why do members only complain? They don’t recognize what we do well?”
• “I’d like to create this printed brochure, can you give me your comments?”
• “We started posting all our news to Facebook. What should we expect?”
• “I am thinking about going back to advertising in this publication.”

Marketing is more than an activity or two. Most businesses that have marketing problems that could make so much progress if they had a marketing – and communications process across the organization.

When they don’t, they do things like realize an event is planned, and they rush at the last minute to report the news about it.

Could this be you?

Great marketing starts at the beginning. And the beginning is the same as the end – your member.

Marketing is the process that establishes your value and commitment to your member, manages the process of member satisfaction, and keeps those members coming back (or coming) to your events and classes in the first place. So the focus of great marketing is on the members, not just on the marketing tactic.

This means that to develop more effective marketing plan, think closely about your members (or prospects). What should you think about? Try something along the lines of:

What are their daily problems in their industry? What would they like you to provide that they could turn to you for help?

What news and information is important to them?
What other services would they like from you that you don’t offer today?
How satisfied are they with your high-value services (list them out)?
How can you help them, and in turn get them to recognize that you are there to help them?

The answers to these questions will help guide you to a sensible choice of creating your marketing tactics, and give you a better idea of what you need to include in your messages.