I Am Convinced of the Potential of Association Marketing

I am convinced of the potential of Association Marketing.

I am convinced that any association has the potential to add enormous value to the member experience.

I am convinced that choosing your target audience and beginning with your association goals, you can get more members to do what you want them to do.

I am convinced that if you don’t resource marketing properly, you will not advance your value.

I am convinced that without a clear message platform, you cannot establish a connection with your members (a connection is a prerequisite to “convincing”).

I am convinced that creating a Marketing & Communications (MarCom) plan helps you segment, target, and measure your results against your goals.

I am convinced that good customer service is not enough.

Barriers you might be up against:

• I don’t have time to create a marketing/communications plan
• I can’t invest in a plan I’ll never use
• I can’t afford it
• I can’t sell this to my board
• I don’t have a marketing department
• Every department has different messages
• I want to show value but I just don’t know how to do it

Think about what you can do if you remove some or all the barriers above. And besides, none of them are true.  If you are as convinced as I am, what’s stopping you?

I Am Convinced of the Potential of Association Marketing

Create Your own Career Karma, and Make a Difference in the World

This is Breast Cancer Awareness Week, so I’m dedicating this post to those who work and fight for breast cancer awareness and other great causes.

In 2007, Bill Gates quoted one of his mother’s favorite expressions in his commencement address at Harvard. I Googled it and found that Mary Maxwell Gates’ expression originated in the New Testament: Luke, Chapter 12, Verse 48: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected." That is an inspiration.

TIKKUN OLAM is a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world.” Michael Jackson made it memorable with this song: “Heal the world, Make it a better place. For you and for me and the entire human race. There are people dying, If you care enough for the living, Make a better place for you and for me."

Do you ever wonder if you make a significant difference in just one thing, one small difference that might start a ripple of change?

Trying to make a difference is always on my mind. It’s part of my values. It’s a key component of my business. It’s part of my brand.

I think of this every Monday on my drive to Rotary. There are special people who dedicate hours and days and years of their lives to making the world better through great community causes.

·      As I review marketing material for Reach Out and Read, a non-profit in my town, I appreciate how a group of generous people can make a difference in the lives of pre-school children they don’t even know. So I help out, too. 

·      As I read in the news about my friend Barb Unell, founder of Back in the Swing, I’m again inspired by the power of one person’s tireless efforts.  Back in the Swing is a one-week campaign that helps breast cancer, and all cancer survivors, get back to living after cancer treatment. The Kansas City program will go NATIONAL this year.

·      As I help my soulmate Ethel Davis celebrate the honor of "Fearless Leaders of Kansas City,” I’m touched by the endless ways she gives back to the world. She inspires me and teaches me more about the brand of giving with your head and your heart.

·      As I see my friend Christina Eldridge lead missions to Africa and at home, I am inspired, and I think about how making a difference is a tangible piece of her values and her personal brand. 

·      And always, as I watch my mom continue to work tirelessly for our local children’s hospital, her ongoing dedication to a cause reminds me how important one person can be. She’s been volunteering her time there for thirty years.  Whenever a special occasion comes around, she tells us she doesn’t want a gift. Her standard response is always “Please just make a donation.”

I also see a lot of people working hard, but taking what they can and forgetting to give back. There are people who expect things from the world, who maybe don’t understand how good it feels to give back as well.

When I think of them, I come back to thinking to myself: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

Create Your own Career Karma, and Make a Difference in the World

A Communications Plan Comes to Life!

Rarely do I get the chance to say WOW so early in the day.  But this morning, association executive at GrNBAR, (Massachusetts) Robin Maccini wowed me.

In May, 2010 I assembled a small but diverse group of associations (in size) to do an experiment in innovation. We selected one of the biggest challenges common to all the participating associations. To gain agreement was relatively easy:  Not enough members read and appreciate our communications. This problem statement gained agreement across the board: small and large associations alike.

Over the next four months, we lost a few association executives to other pressing issues; but four of us have been meeting frequently to chip away at this problem. The process involved:

• Brainstorming the root of the problem from the AE’s point of view
• Conducting member communications survey to understand members' point of view
• Conversations and education about what innovation and communication means
• Promising practices from various associations who have addressed their communications issues already
• An overview of the strategic communications planning model
• The assignment to write a plan of their own.

This is where WOW comes in. This REALTOR® association in New Bedford, MA - with 580 members and a determined association executive has developed a strategic communications plan that will both (1) earn her respect from her board and staff, and (2) give the association, and the communications staff clear and though-out direction, including built-in measurements.

Every association has the chance to WOW your members with a renewed approach to your communications. I doubt that Robin will fail in her efforts to change the way members perceive the value of their membership.

For more information about the communications plan, click here.

A Communications Plan Comes to Life!

Calling All New Association Staff Directors! It's Time to Live Your Brand.

If you are a fair weather football fan, like me, you can appreciate the connection between coaching, playing, team dynamics, structure, process, hype, spirit, determination, coordination in football - and business. I love a competitive, well-matched game.

True football fans block out everything else and focus on the players, the coaches, the rivalry and the true grit that happens when 22 players get on the field on any given Sunday. Those like me try to learn something I can use on Monday.

So when Danny (my husband) showed me this inspiring article of a rookie who gives his heart to the team, it speaks to me that really amazing football players have their own personal brand. In my presentation on Creating Career Karma (your brand), I make the point that your brand is your internal promise, a reflection of your values, and the unique footprint that is only you. It’s the way you package and use what you have every day that makes you unique.

The second thing that competes for my attention during a football game is how one new person can change the dynamics of a team. So, new Communications Director, Marketing Director, GAD, Membership Director, CEO - what do you bring to your team that’s different, and makes the whole team perform better?

You are your story.
What is the unique feature
that distinguishes you
from all the others? 

If you want a great example of a solid personal brand and how it can change a team, click here to read a great article.

Calling All New Association Staff Directors! It's Time to Live Your Brand.

Communicate About the Latest National Housing News

Housing is front and center in the media this month: NBC nightly news on September 1st, home sales was the lead story, and now on the cover of time magazine. These are difficult times for your members who interact with consumers every day. Kudos to you if (1) your association’s lead (newsletter) story or (2) special email report addresses this timely topic.

This is a perfect time to help provide your members the answers to their - and their customers' worries. Below are five things you can do today to show empathy and relevance in light of this negative media :

- The news reports may or may not be consistent with your market. If you have current market reports for your area, publish them again.  Use e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, your website(s) and other means to clarify the negative reports. If this reaches consumers, it is all the better.

- Reinforce the reasons to own a home: build a home for their family, build community, and have privacy, and build equity throughout consistently paying down the principle of their loan. These are still the reasons to buy a home.

- Work with your AE and your MLS director to prepare simple, direct talking points about your market easy enough that a new member can understand.

- Offer someone to explain the reports - someone accessible at your office. Or schedule a webcast to review them as a group with members.

- Tell members NAR is working on a response to the recent reports.

Communications are critical now. Provide information that members can use today. This is a real life timely example of how to be relevant and deliver member value.

Communicate About the Latest National Housing News

Strategic Communications Plans

I am working with three associations who are in the process of writing a strategic communications plan.

This impressive group of three association executives began with defining a problem statement about their association’s communications back in May. They range from 200 to 800 to 4,000 members. I refer to them as Partners In Innovation. They are partnering with each other to figure out how to better communicate and get more of their members' attention.

As they look past Labor Day, each association is at a crucial step; they have all the information, conducted the research, and know the 8 elements of the plan they’ll create.

So now it’s time to write the plan. Their challenge is to block out the time, sit in a quiet empty room with all of their notes, survey results, matrices and thoughts, and prepare to make sense of it all. Their goal is to come out with something worthy to present to their board of directors.

It can seem overwhelming, but in getting to know these CEOs (and one communications director), I think they will create some great work.

For anyone who is undertaking writing a communications plan, I’d remind you, in Dave Ramsey words, “You can’t wander into a goal.” You’ll never get there without a plan. I know one thing: if this were easy, everyone would be doing it. And they are not.  Here are three reminders about constructing a usable plan:

•  Creating strategic communications ties your communications to your association’s strategy.

•  A Strategic communications plan is specific in the tactics, but first it aligns to the annual objectives of your association.

•  The plan begins with “why we’re doing it” and “what we need to change”; then it lays out the “how”.

This project began with three associations defining a specific problem with their communications.  The temptation is to document today’s communications, and justify why it still works. But we all know this is not the way to get different results. For Partners In Innovation, this is their chance to be bold, do something different, and hopefully change their minds about how they communicate.

Strategic Communications Plans

Get a (communications) plan, man!

Every day, 6,000 pieces of information travels in and out of your brain. This means there is a lot of multi-tasking going on inside your head. And for you type A personalities, this means competing priorities.

Building a business, or an association, presents a continuing dilemma of just what things to do first. Part of the leader's job is to carry the big-picture torch.

I went to a meeting this morning with two very bright, aggressive real estate professionals trying to build a business-quickly. One is the leader, another the agent. One of their reasons for meeting centered around the question "What do we do with social media? How should it fit in to our "plan"?

Social media can be miles more efficient than the most sophisticated tools from the olden days (in the 80's). Think Hoovers, Standard & Poors, Lexis/Nexis, Dunn&Bradstreet, as examples. Remember? Volumes of hard copy books sat in our office or bullpen with descriptive company and contact information.  It was already out-of-date by the time we received the volumes via postal mail. But it was all we had to get to the right decision-maker, or to determine connections.

In later years, Xerox had a department of its own with a hotline for up-to-date business information we could call to navigate a prospective corporate account.

Today, tools like this are accessible online. These profile resources are invaluable, and we can add tools like LinkedIn to the list. Social media can help make connections we only dreamed of in the 80's and in a fraction of the time.

That said, I can't stress enough the importance of setting tactics (activities) and specific clients aside, and starting at the beginning, with three marketing basics:

The WHAT: Your specific goals and time frame - To build [what area of your business] between now and [when] for [what offering or product]? This determines the connections you need to make.

The WHO: Your target market (by segment, geography or other descriptor). If there is more than one - prioritize them. EVERYONE is simply not a practical target audience. You can attend to most of your audiences, but listing them specifically forces you to think about the individual needs of each audience.

The HOW: The ways you get your message across (media choices - including social, traditional, in-house, outsource, live, technology use).

I could feel one of my coffee-mates thinking on a larger scale. He began talking about how to re-look at their next informational video for a particular area of his business, and how several activities could link together to form a campaign. He even talked about the prospect list and various components of the plan (video, email, postcard, and phone calls) based on the newly identified goals.

The other one could not get past a variety of ideas swirling around in his head and what he had to do today. And maybe, in the scheme of things, this is where his head should be.

I could tell one of them will probably carry the plan and keep them focused on the goal. That was the Broker. If the leader thinks ahead with a systematic approach, I think the team can make it work!

Get a (communications) plan, man!