Association Marketing

Trade association activities can be vast and include; conducting and reporting on market research, delivering online services through their website, representing their members to government and other industry stakeholder groups on important issues, as well as organising training and events such as conferences, meetings and seminars.

Marketing therefore has a number of key roles to play; promoting the association in order to attract new members, producing and managing a reliable and information-rich website, identifying and publishing research findings to gain valuable media coverage, as well as developing interesting event programmes to reflect the topical issues facing members and producing eye-catching materials.

However many trade associations often have small secretariat teams and so resourcing such extensive marketing activity can be a challenge. It is therefore important that they have clear marketing strategies and campaign plans to focus their efforts in areas that will deliver their objectives. Many not-for-profit associations will use the services of freelance specialists or marketing agencies to provide resources when and where it is required and to avoid the often unnecessary and expensive overheads associated with recruiting permanent marketing staff.

When developing a marketing strategy for a trade association there are 3 primary objectives;

1. Recruitment
2. Engagement
3. Retention

Recruitment
Market knowledge is key to any recruitment campaign. Understanding why a company would want to join an association is really important and then translating that motivation into products and services that will meet their specific needs. This information will often be documented in the membership proposition which clearly identifies the messages to be communicated and the real benefits for members. Based on this knowledge marketing campaigns are developed to target key groups. One approach is to identify the market leaders and put significant time and energy into recruiting them so the smaller players in the industry will join just to have their brand alongside the leaders and have access to networking opportunities. There are other techniques such as building strategic alliances to add value and offering incentives to get them to join, then, the retention strategy comes into play to keep them!

Engagement
In a corporate business the supplier often only has (and needs) a single point of contact with a customer, but in a trade association, it’s important that there are multiple touch points. When the FD at a member company is looking to cut budgets, subscriptions are often one of the first lines to go, but if they are faced with several individuals saying they need their association because; they need the market data to benchmark performance, or they need the discounts to control costs, or they are working on a project with the technical committee that affects a current product’s development, then that decision to axe the membership becomes much more difficult. Trade associations need to develop activities and forums which encourage participation by individuals throughout the member company.

Retention
A key indication of how well an association is meeting the needs of its members is its retention rate. Regular member satisfaction surveys provide a quick insight into whether the current benefits and services are meeting the needs of members. An association’s ability to recognise industry issues and make provisions to support members is vitally important. Likewise if a member does leave, it is important to understand why. There is little point investing in recruiting new members if existing members are leaving at a faster rate. Regularly reviewing and developing the membership proposition will ensure the membership organisation remains relevant to its members.

MRM
The key to getting all these things right is “smart marketing”. Many trade associations have very poor databases and simply produce generic materials and messages that they push out to everyone they know. The problem with this is they often risk the recipient missing that vital product or service that pushes the button for them.

A successful trade association will have good membership relationship management (MRM). This process starts with building an understanding of the organisation and what motivates members to join. Then a database can be developed to support segmented marketing campaigns and develop materials and messages that focus on the motivations of the individual target groups. So instead of having one single marketing approach there are a series of smaller, targeted campaigns providing greater opportunity to test new ideas and deliver greater results.

The MRM should also capture details of member engagement i.e. events attended, reports downloaded etc., to enable the association to identify any potential leavers and address the issue before it comes to renewal time.

The marketing effort must be balanced across all three strategic areas; recruitment, engagement and retention to be effective. That does not mean that one area cannot be given more focus at a particularly time during the year but associations should avoid focusing all their effort on recruitment to the detriment of engagement otherwise their retention will also fall. It is a well know fact that it is easier and cheaper to keep an existing “customer” than it is to find a new one!

This blog is the 3^rd in a series of 3 which looks at marketing planning and campaign design.

Budgeting
Marketing, if not planned correctly, can become very expensive and be perceived as delivering little return.  There are a number of marketing tools available and not all of them will be appropriate for all businesses.  Finding the right mix of marketing activities to meet your objectives and that you can afford is key. 

When thinking about budget, you need to consider two things; firstly how much do you want to spend on the actual marketing activities, i.e. design, print, website, postage, and how much will you spend on resourcing your marketing activity.  Most small businesses don’t have the demand or the budget for a full time marketing person but if you have other staff who have the right skills then you could enhance their role by adding marketing to it.  Alternatively you may want to try and do some of the marketing yourself or you can use external marketing companies.  Remember marketing is a long term commitment so whilst you might only require a few hours a week or month you need to ensure you can sustain the activity over a period of time in order to be effective.

Designing your Marketing Campaign
Having produced your marketing plan, agreed your marketing budget and identified the marketing tools that are most appropriate for you, you now need to pull all your knowledge together into a campaign plan.  A campaign plan will detail the tactical activities that you will undertake to engage and communicate with your customers and prospects.  This is the fun bit when you can put your creative hat on and brainstorm ideas around what messages you want to put across to each of your identified target customer groups.

When thinking about campaigns you need to focus on the benefits your product or service can deliver, avoid simply communicating product features.  Then think about how you can turn these benefits into an appealing campaign.  What images do you want to use?  Think about the use of language – are you trying to be funky and fun to appeal to a younger audience or do you need to use more formal language because you are addressing a serious legal issue?  You need to think about how your ideas will translate into print, onto your website, in your advertisements and also how you might tell the story in a presentation at an event.  Involve your colleagues or family and friends in brainstorming ideas, particularly if they fit the profile of your target audience.

Once you have your ideas and know what you want to say then you need to pull together a structured campaign plan which will basically act as a project plan detailing what you will do at specific points throughout your campaign.  Set yourself tasks to do each week whether that’s sending out an email to one target group, or following up a direct mail activity with a phone call.  Once you have your action plan in place, stick to it.  Your plan should also include agreed review points so you can look at the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Keep your campaigns simple and make sure your planned activity fits into your budget and you allocate the resources to do it.  The most effective way to start developing your marketing campaigns is to focus on one key area at a time, i.e. target a particular customer group. Over a period of time you can widen your scope to target other customer groups depending on your success.  Don’t try and market yourself to everyone at the same time, the campaign will quickly become un-manageable.  Besides, you need to consider that if you do a good job of marketing your business, then can you meet the increased demand for your products and services?

As that demand increases you can adjust your marketing activity, but don’t stop altogether.  Maybe you shift from a sales generation campaign to retaining customer communication.

Measuring Effectiveness
Finally you need to establish how you are going to measure the effectiveness of your marketing.  No one marketing campaign will work the same for different companies so it’s really important that you decide how you are going to measure your marketing performance right from the outset.

Those measures will depend on what your objectives are; so if you are looking to acquire new customers then clearly one of your measures needs to reflect that.  If you are looking to build reputation then you might want to consider doing a customer survey before you start the campaign to see what your customers think about your business, then repeat the survey 6 months later to see whether their perception has changed.

You might be looking to raise your online profile so you might want to think about measuring the volume of traffic to your website or the number of enquiries you generate from your site.

There are lots of ways to measure what you do with marketing but you need to be clear what you want to achieve.  Most importantly, remember marketing is a long term commitment, so don’t expect all your goals to be achieved in the first month.  Set yourself some landmarks to gauge your performance of a period of time.  This is good practice as it will also provide you with insight into whether a campaign is working.  If it isn’t, don’t just abandon it, try and work out why it’s not working and adjust it, maybe the message is not quite right, or the medium you have chosen isn’t appropriate.  Marketing is a learning process and you will go through many cycles as you gain a better understanding of what your customers really want from you.

If you have found this information useful, you might also like to read “Marketing Planning for the SME” and “Choosing the Right Marketing Tools”.  If you want to find out more about how Blue Topaz Marketing can help you with your marketing campaigns visit www.bluetopazmarketing.co.uk

In terms of the mix of activities that you can do, there is a well known formula in marketing that 2+2=5 and it’s been proved time and time again that if you rely on just one marketing activity then you are less likely to gain as great a benefit than if you were to do a number of different things. In order to build awareness of your company, you want your customer to see you in lots of different places. The marketing tools that you might want to consider include;

PR (public or media relations)

This includes sending press releases out to your target media maybe about a new product you are launching or a new contract you have just won, or even a new appointment to your team. There is no guarantee that your story will be picked up but there are a few guidelines that you can follow to increase your chances. Whilst the world of print has a limited amount of column inches available, the online media world has no boundaries. Many of the printed publications these days have an online version too so it’s important that you write your press release to maximise its effectiveness online. Editors also love pictures so if you can include images they are more likely to look at it than if it’s just plain text.

You might also write articles on topics that you know your target media are covering and these can often be repurposed as blogs so you can get online coverage too.

PR takes time as you need to continuously look for stories and find ways to sometimes make something that is quite dull sound exciting. Good PR is great for building reputation and generally raising awareness of your area of expertise.

Advertising

Probably the most expensive, and often the most difficult to measure. Most adverts have the same purpose as PR – to raise awareness and to build your brand reputation. A good advert will intrigue the reader with an eye catching image or headline but also have a strong call to action – you want to make the reader do something as a result of seeing the ad. That could be to call you, or to visit your website to request something, or be entered into a prize draw. To be effective adverts need to run regularly over a given period, one off ads will often not deliver the desired results. Finding the right media to advertise in is really the first and hardest challenge!

As an alternative to media advertising you could also consider sponsorship, maybe of a local event that attracts your potential customers or maybe the event brand is one which you want your company to be associated with, for example, a charity event. Sponsorship packages tend to offer a range of opportunities you can leverage.

Direct Marketing

This is where your customer knowledge can really be useful as most direct marketing activity can be highly targeted and often personalised. Personalising your communication with your customers can significantly improve your response rates. There are two main types of direct marketing; direct mail – where you can post out brochures, flyers or letters to your customers, and there’s email where you can send an e-brochure or email with a link to your website or even a regular e-newsletter. The advantage with printed mail is it has more visual impact whereas email has the advantage that it is cheap and you can track what your customers click on giving you an insight into what they are interested in. There is quite a lot of regulation around direct marketing so it’s worth checking that out before you start.

If direct marketing is right for your business then you will need to build a database of contacts – you may already have this in place, if not then you can either research your target market and build your contacts up yourself or you can rent data lists. Rented lists can be expensive and you should choose your lists carefully – try to find ones that are very specific to who you want to reach i.e. interest groups rather than the large generic directories. When you are preparing the pieces you want to mail or email, think about having different pieces for different target groups – this could be a single piece which you can overprint yourself with a specific message. It is often better to have smaller more targeted pieces rather than sending out large generic company brochures.

Telemarketing

The one that most people hate; picking up the phone. Whilst cold calling is generally ineffective, telemarketing can be useful as a way of following up other marketing activities such as a direct mail or email or an advert. This will give you an insight into the customers’ reactions to your offer and also provide you with an opportunity to research their needs a bit further to help with future campaigns. If you really don’t want to do it yourself, then there are companies that will do this for you but make sure you pick one that you feel will represent your own company values.

Web Marketing

The large majority of people these days use the internet as their first reference point. Whether you like it or not, if you don’t have a website then you are not taken seriously. More importantly, your website needs to present the right image. You also need to make sure that your website can be found by people looking for your products and services, so getting your “SEO” (search engine optimisation) right is vital. As well as your own website you can also look to build relationships with other organisations that offer complementary products and services and create links between your sites. You might also want to advertise on relevant websites.

Social Media

Social media is the latest addition to the marketing mix and one which is growing in importance. A key benefit is it is free so it provides a great communication tool for you to present your articles, blogs, press releases and any other comments you want to make on what’s going on in your market. You can also use it to drive traffic back to your website. You might want to consider joining online groups that talk about issues that relate to your business – try finding groups where your customers are so you can see what issues they are talking about, then use that information in your own marketing campaigns.

Incentives / Sales Promotions

These are generally short term campaigns that you can use to clear stock or to launch a new product. You might want to offer discounts or a free gift or other reward if your customer buys a certain product or service from you. Make sure that they are genuine promotions – don’t fall into the trap of offering permanent discounts and promotions as you will quickly lose credibility.

Face-to-Face

We all know that in the majority of cases people buy from people so any opportunity you get to sell your products and services face-to-face will reap more rewards. However this can be very expensive not only in the direct costs but also the cost of taking you out of your day-to-day business. The face-to-face options include networking meetings, speaking opportunities at relevant events, as well as attending or exhibiting at trade fairs and conferences. To be effective these can require a lot of preparation time to ensure you get the maximum benefit.

Word of Mouth

Probably the most effective marketing tool available but unfortunately the one we have the least control over. However you can offer incentives to your customers to refer you to their colleagues, friends and other associates to encourage them to spread the word about how good you are. Try and get into the habit of asking your customers to give you a testimonial so you can use it in your marketing communications – it might not be a direct word but testimonials are also a powerful tool to build credibility and trust.

As you can see there are lots of marketing tools at your disposal. An important part of your marketing planning process is to decide what combination (and I stress combination) will work best for you both in terms of meeting your objectives but also your budget. Having selected the tools you want to use, then the next stage is to formulate your campaign plan.

If you have found this information useful, you might also like to read “Marketing Planning for the SME” and “Marketing Campaign Design for the SME”. If you want to find out more about how Blue Topaz Marketing can help you with your marketing campaigns visit http://www.bluetopazmarketing.co.uk/

The purpose of this blog is to provide you with some ideas and a structure to enable you to create your own marketing plan. Unfortunately there is no one solution that fits all – your business is unique so your marketing plan will need to reflect your own goals, values and resources. Achieving a good marketing plan will also require you to be objective and realistic about your business. If you can’t do that then ask someone else to work on it with you who will give you the objective view. A marketing plan is just as important as your business plan. It is also the tool that will define how you intend to achieve the goals you have set yourself in your business plan.

In tough market conditions small businesses can fall into the trap of thinking I need to do some marketing so they send out a general mailshot or place an ad in a local paper. The need to feel you are doing something to immediately improve the situation takes over but unfortunately ad hoc marketing is invariably ineffective. It can be costly and if the measures have not been put in place to assess effectiveness then it can be seen as fruitless.

Marketing is a long term commitment. A balanced and regular approach to communicating with your customers and prospects will achieve far greater results. The marketing planning process will enable you to develop a solid understanding of your market, your customers and your products & services on which to base your marketing campaigns.

Goals & Objectives
The first thing to do is set out your goals and objectives. This is your opportunity to put the detail behind the goals that you have put in your business plan. For instance, if you have set yourself a goal to grow your business by x% then your marketing plan needs to address whether there is a market out there for you to do that. You may need to conduct some research to ensure there is sufficient demand for your type of product or service.

You also need to decide whether that business growth is going to come from existing customers buying more from you in which case do you need to make them aware of the wider services you have available? Or are you seeking to find new markets? Perhaps you are planning to launch new products or services.

You may also have set yourself other objectives such as building your brand – maybe you want to raise your profile to position your business as strong rivals to the current market leader. Or you want to build your reputation – if so in what areas; market knowledge, customer service, quality? You need to be clear at the outset what you want to achieve as the marketing activity that you do will depend on the end result required.

Market Analysis
It’s useful to conduct some analysis of the state of your business and the market conditions that you are operating in. There are two well known business tools available and before embarking on any marketing activity it is useful to go through this analysis process as it may throw up issues which you may not have considered as well as identify some new opportunities that you might want to leverage through your marketing, for example, a competitor has gone out of business or new legislation is coming in that affects your product or service.

The two analysis tools available are “SWOT” to analyse your business’ strengths and weaknesses as well as the external opportunities and threats. “PEST” to analyse the macro environment including political, economic, social & cultural as well as technological factors.

Customer Profile
The customer’s needs should be at the heart of any marketing plan so the best place to start is by documenting what you already know. You may have a database with some of this information, if not then you can look back at your sales records to see what patterns emerge. You can profile your customers by whatever criteria you feel is relevant to your business, so you might want to look at; for consumers: socio-economic groups, age, sex, postcode; for businesses: industry sector, company size, regional location.

You might also want to look at where you acquired those customers – if by word-of-mouth, who was it from; or did they come to you from your website? You want to build up a picture of your customers’ buying habits, identify repeat customers vs one-offs, and look at your lapsed customers. Do your customers buy certain things at certain times of the year? You want to understand why they buy from you – is it price, service, locality or a combination of things? If you don’t know the answers to some of these questions then ask your customers.

By knowing everything about your existing customers will help you do two things;
1. Identify the gaps where you can offer other products / services to your existing customers
2. Seek out new customers who match the profile of the people already buying from you

Many small business owners will often know this information about their customers so it just needs pulling together into a format that can be used to your advantage. The purpose of this knowledge gathering exercise is to provide you with a matrix of customers who you can then group according to different preferences and then target them with specific messages about relevant products or services that you know will interest them.

What do you have to offer?
There is a marketing tool called the 7P’s which helps you think about the different aspects of your overall offering and structure your marketing activity.

Product
What are the products or services that you offer? This is not just about listing your products; it should go deeper than that and identify what the benefits are that you are selling. People generally don’t just buy a “product”, it’s what that product can do for them that is the driver behind the purchase. A key part of marketing is being able to communicate the benefits that your products and services can deliver.

You also need to know who you are competing against and how you can differentiate your offer from that of your competitors. You need to identify your USP (unique selling point).

Price
You don’t have to be the cheapest to win new business but you do need to ensure that your pricing is competitive. Your price needs to reflect your offer so if you are delivering a high quality item then you can probably charge more than a competitor who is offering a budget/value version of the same product. You also need to consider whether you will offer any discounting for specific groups of customers.

Place
Here you need to think about how you currently sell your products or services – do you have a shop or is most of your business done online or through face-to-face sales, or maybe it’s via a network of distributors. This will affect who you market your business to and the messages you communicate.

Promotion
This is the bit that most people associate with marketing and looks at what promotional activity you are doing, whether it’s planned or ad hoc and also how you are measuring the effectiveness. 

People
What level of customer service do you offer, do you have the right people with the right skills in front of your customers. Every interaction with a customer is a marketing opportunity, so you want to be sure that your passion for meeting your customers’ needs are being met by the rest of your team.

Processes
Do you have the right processes and systems in place to manage your customer relationships and are they effective? It’s important to have all your knowledge about your customers in a format that you can use – if it’s in your head, is that an effective place if a customer phones up and speaks to your colleague who perhaps doesn’t know the history of that customer?

Physical Evidence
What is your company image – how do you present yourself to your customers? You need to think about everything including your office or your van, your personal presentation as well as how you present your corporate image say in print or online. The image that you portray will have a significant impact on the perception your customers have of you.

Conclusion
The marketing planning process will give you the opportunity to step back from your day-to-day business. By following these simple steps you will create a deeper understanding of your market, your customers as well as the products & services that you have to offer. This knowledge can then be used to help you formulate specific marketing campaigns.

If you have found this information useful, you might also like to read “Choosing the Right Marketing Tools” and “Marketing Campaign Design for the SME”. If you want to find out more about how Blue Topaz Marketing can help you with your marketing visit http://www.bluetopazmarketing.co.uk/

CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management” – self explanatory you might say.  But what does it really mean for your business.   Let’s start with a definition, Microsoft defines it as “A strategy that blends people, processes and technology to maximise client acquisition, growth and retention in a profitable way.”  So that would seem to make sense – we all want to achieve that in business, but that’s just lots of nice words that make it sound very grand – but what do you actually need to do?

I don’t believe in lots of fancy phrases that are generally written either by the manufacturers of such products or by consultants looking to over-inflate their own egos and convince you that you need to spend huge amounts of money getting them to explain the complexities of CRM.

The simplest way to think about CRM is having a central repository of all the information that you know about your customers (and your prospects).  What makes many small businesses great is that they often know their customers inside-out which enables them to offer a personalised service.  As companies grow they lose their ability to retain such personal contact with every customer so the need to hold this information electronically becomes necessary.

Why do you need to have all this information about your customers?

As consumers our expectations on those who want to sell to us have increased dramatically.  When we visit a website we expect to be able to select what information we want to see; we expect to be able to subscribe to receive information about only those products that are of interest to us.  The days of mass marketing generic messages to everyone we know have gone; not only is it extremely expensive but you also risk switching off your customers when they receive communication from you that is not relevant to them.

The purpose of having a CRM system is to enable you to profile your customers and get that deeper understanding of what drives their buying behaviour.  By capturing their every interaction with your business, you can quickly identify specific customers who might be interested in a new product or service based on something they bought, or information they requested previously.  CRM is about creating a positive customer experience and making each individual customer feel like you are talking to them personally.

You only have to look at companies like Tesco and Amazon to see the benefits of good CRM.  What they don’t know about us, as their customers, frankly isn’t worth knowing.  Whilst we may be concerned about companies knowing so much about us, we can also not help but appreciate the benefits when we are presented with relevant and timely information.  When you book your holiday online, this information is stored in a central computer and over time that company builds up a picture of what time of year you travel, your preferred destinations and your average budget.  All this information is then used to send you offers on other holidays which they know will be more attractive to you.

Now you might think that this all sounds very grand and very expensive to achieve.  Well yes it is if you want to manage the volume and complexity of customers that Tesco and Amazon are dealing with.   But there are some simple steps that all businesses can take to get up and running with CRM, to enable them to reap the benefits of a more efficient and targeted approach to growing their own business.  There is a huge range of products available to do this from using simple products such as Microsoft Excel and Access databases or Business Contact Manager in Outlook; through to dedicated CRM systems.  Even the dedicated systems are now available in modules off-the-shelf so don’t require huge investment in technical development.

Ten simple things to remember:

1.  The objective is to get everything you know about your customers in one place
2. Decide what information you need to capture before you start
3. Appoint an information manager to define and manage your data (that could be you)
4. Choose a suitable application to meet your needs
5. Keep the data clean – this avoids unnecessary cost and embarrassment
6. Get all your staff involved – CRM is the responsibility of everyone in your organisation
7. Use the knowledge you already have about your customers to get you started
8. Back it up – once established, your customer information will become your most valuable asset
9. Keep it simple and beware project creep!
10. Use the data you hold to drive your marketing and communication with your customers

If you get CRM right for your business you will not only improve your customer acquisition and retention (which leads to increased revenue), you will also open up opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell through the delivery of targeted messages to the right people, at the right time, in the right way.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Bill Gates; “how you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you will win or lose”.

Over the past 12 months many businesses have had to make significant cost cuts to ensure their survival in difficult trading conditions.  These costs are likely to include not only valuable staff but also the level of investment in R&D of new products and services, as well as spend on marketing and promoting your business.  Whilst these actions were critical to survival, some businesses will now be feeling the effects of those cuts by way of limited resources and competitive position within the market.

Small businesses rely on word-of-mouth and referrals – by far the most effective method of marketing.  But what happens when your best advocates are no longer in business or facing uncertainty about their own future?  You can’t rely on them remembering you amidst the other tough decisions that they are trying to make.

Marketing is often perceived as costly and something that small businesses can’t afford to do or if they do some promotion, it is often an early victim of cost cutting.  However maintaining visibility of your business to your existing customers, as well as your prospective ones, is vital to ensuring you are able to take the lead when the market turns.

Marketing is not just about advertising.  The most successful businesses have a mix of promotional activities happening all year round to keep their company name or brand in the minds of their customers.  Sending out a one-off mailing when times are tough but then doing nothing again for several months, will not generate the desired interest in your business.

Marketers work on a formula called the “marketing mix” which pulls together a range of activities including mailshots, PR, advertising, emails and telemarketing to form a “campaign”.  The aim of a campaign is to deliver regular (but controlled) communication to customers and prospects so that when they are in a position to buy, you are the first company they think of.  Make elements of your campaign informative by highlighting issues and problems your customers might be facing.  Then link those with your products and services (without appearing to blatantly sell) then you will also build credibility as someone who understands your customers’ needs and are knowledgeable in your field.

Many businesses develop a business plan, outlining their objectives i.e. customer profile, turnover, products & services and in some cases how they are going to run their business.  But many businesses fail to document how they intend to achieve their objectives – how are you going to find the right customers, how are you going to ensure your products & services meet their needs.  This second stage is also vital and can be as simple as a marketing plan.  The marketing plan will detail who you want to communicate with, through which routes and what costs will be associated with doing it.

There are rumours, and some evidence, that we have seen the worst of the recession but success will now depend on how effectively you can pick up the reins and get a head-start on your competitors.  Now is the time to get your marketing plans in place and start developing your ideas for reaching and communicating with your customers and your prospects.

I hope this blog will provide you with some useful hints and tips on successful marketing techniques.  The content will primarily be targeted at SME businesses and membership organisations.  Enjoy!