Building online awareness of your subscription or membership
Earlier this week I read an article “Membership Development from the Ground Up” by Tony Rossell. In the article Tony outlines a series of programs that he would put in place to get membership moving. In summary the results driven steps are as follows:
- Build Awareness and harness the web using tools like search engine optimization, search engine advertising, ad networks, and social media.
- Recruit New Members by establishing regular mail and email promotions to both house and outside lists and never stop testing your promotions.
- Engage New Members with a multiple step orientation that helps the member to become engaged in the association and orients the member to the products, services, and opportunities provided by an association.
- Upgrade members by putting in place an up-sell program to move members from one membership tier or product package to the next higher one. It might be as simple as moving student members to a professional membership, adding additional periodicals to the membership package, or including newly published books as a part of the membership.
- Renew Members with effective renewal systems built on multi-media contacts using a combination of mail, email, phone, and fax integrated with a Web renewal tool.
- Win-Back Programs to encourage the lapsed member to rejoin and convince the member of the benefits of the association membership.
Anyone who works in subscription or membership marketing should follow the link and read the article as execution of the steps is the key to the successful management of your subscription base.
Here are my recommendations on some tools you can use to build awareness (step 1):
Search Engine Optimization Think about your membership or subscription business in terms of what potential members will be searching for and then do some keyword research to find ‘search terms’ that your members will be entering in to the search engines. For this research Google has an excellent tool called the Google Search Based Keyword Tool. Once you have decided on your key search terms include them as ‘tags’ in your site. There are a number of steps in the process so I recommend using an SEO specialist to assist if you are short of time or ‘technically challenged”. Search Engine Advertising and Ad Networks Once you have your keywords, you can boost your awareness campaign by advertising with the search engines. Many people start and finish with Google Ad Words but there are many more effective solutions for online advertising. I recently attended the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in NYC and found many new and interesting options for online and search advertising. Visit the SES website and view Participating Sponsors & Exhibitors. Social Media The key is finding social media websites and groups that relate to your association or subscription niche and then adding to the discussion. Some excellent sites I use include:
- LinkedIn – Through Linked in you can start, join or contribute to a group and this is a great way to build awareness about your subscription.
- Digg, Delicious, Technorati – Find articles relating to your association or subscription and use the tools to network. Also use these sites to promote your news or interesting research.
- Twitter – Use Twitter to gain a following and tweet messages and links to newsworthy information to your followers. Use Twitter search to find people who are commenting on your membership or industry.
- Facebook – Set up a Facebook page for your subscription and invite members to follow you on Facebook.
As always I welcome your feedback or suggestions of how you have used online tools to build your membership or subscription base.