‘People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.’ (Simon Sinek)
If you’ve never come across Simon Sinek, you might want to add his book ‘Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action’ to your Amazon wishlist (treat yourself!). In it he explores how people are drawn to those who are good at communicating their ‘Why’ and how we are inspired by those who have the ‘ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone’.
Understanding
In our quest to recruit more members, understanding who they are, what they want/need and clearly communicating our ‘why’ in a way that resonates and inspires is critical.
If you don’t know the reasons why prospective members might engage, you could start by gaining understanding of why current members engage (a short digital survey can help with this). This may help to inform your understanding or may help to guide you into new ways of doing and communicating if your current and prospective members look quite different.
Review your MVP
Taking the ‘why’ approach to creating a compelling Member Value Proposition (MVP) is an interesting prospect. Sinek says that ‘for values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs’. In other words, look at how you can translate your MVP into a statement of activity which you can then reinforce with your Member Benefit Statement (MBS).
It may be worth investing in the expertise of an SEO/digital marketing agency to assist in weaving any possible key words into your ‘why’ messaging and thereafter ensuring that your content is optimised for those words and that you are bidding on relevant ad/keywords and PPC which can aid discovery through organic searches.
Culture
Once you’re confident your message is clear and will inspire connection it needs to be embedded in the culture of your organisation in order for it to have the weight of integrity. This is the springboard for amplification via all channels at your disposal.
Knowledge
When you amplify your message it’s also important to gain an understanding of what’s working, so ensuring trackability of connections is not only helpful, it’s a great ROI metric. There are many ways to achieve this from a simple ‘how did you hear about us’ dropdown on your contact form or joining process, to tracking website visitors, email and ad click-throughs etc.
You may choose to promote valuable content and only make it fully accessible through a short registration process. This then grows your prospective/lead marketing database with permission to follow up and potentially convert to membership. The National Hair and Beauty Federation recently used this technique to great effect gaining 25,000 new leads from a single ‘back to business’ campaign [watch video case study from 07:20].
Long term
Good news travels fast, and member-get-member referral schemes often prove to be highly successful aspects of an acquisition strategy. Members are more likely to connect with others to whom becoming a member would be beneficial. This approach is common in the commercial world with incentivised referrals bringing both new customers and increasing existing customer loyalty.
Finally, always come back to your ‘why’. Following through on that attractive premise of inspirational purposeful activity is critical to engaging and retaining the members you’ve connected with long term. Dissatisfied people often vote with their feet so whilst your acquisition strategy is important, it will count for little if you can’t retain your members and build upon the value of your relationship giving them reasons to keep engaging with you.
NetXtra are a team of strategic, creative and digital experts who partner with organisations in the not for profit sector. Call 01787 319393 or email [email protected] for more information.
Leave A Comment