Association marketing

How associations and other nonprofit organizations use brand marketing to strengthen member and donor loyalty.

Your organization’s brand shapes perceptions held by your key publics: members, donors, volunteers, legislators, industry leaders, the media and other important constituencies. But for many organizations, their “brand” evolves over time and on its own without the benefit of a brand strategy or market research to determine the role various factors play in its creation.

Know where you stand.

Many association and nonprofit executives now view brand marketing as a relatively low-cost, incremental way to shape perceptions, build recognition, strengthen market position and gain long-term member and donor loyalty.

If you’re not sure where your organization is on the spectrum of brand marketing and management, here are a few basic signs that typically spell trouble:

• Members and donors have difficulty articulating the core purpose of your organization and the benefits of affiliation.
• No substantive and statistically rigorous market research exists from the past five years.
• Your member, customer, donor and prospect databases do not capture demographics and psychographics.
• Departmental databases operate in isolation from one another.
• Marketing collateral from different departments appears to represent altogether different organizations.
• There is increasingly less distinction between your organization and other groups attempting to meet the needs of your target audiences.
• There is an inconsistent use of brand designs and lack of a unified, compelling message.
• Multiple logos and letterheads are in circulation; usage guidelines and templates don’t exist.

Know your audience.

As a first step, define as specifically as possible the people you want to serve and recruit as new members or supporters. These will be your “target audiences.”

Determine how you can use existing data about members, donors, prospects, legislators, employers, the community, and other groups to ensure your organization’s brand reflects the needs and interests of your primary target audiences. Equally important, fill in the gaps by identifying critical missing information:

• Key demographics (e.g. age, location, gender, affiliations, income, etc.)
• Organizational characteristics (e.g. staff size, budget, number and types of customers, years in business, scope of services, etc.)
• Behavioral data about participation in your organization, including level of membership or giving, history of products used and records of volunteerism.
• Interests or informational needs that provide insight into general content, new products/services and customized marketing messages.
• Communication channel preferences to effectively reach your target audiences.
• Member and donor expectations to explain why they join or give to your organization and the ways they wish to participate.

Review your staffing to ensure efficient processes exist for data collection, retrieval and ongoing data management, and review application forms and entry points that help to capture information to better define your target audiences.

Know your current market position, strengths and weaknesses.

Conduct market analysis to assess macro-industry trends on population, economic, cultural and other factors influencing the success of your organization’s brand. Now is also the time to assess your internal marketing situation by analyzing member, donor and prospect demographics, recruitment, retention and solicitation trends, product and service sales reports/histories and current and previous marketing plans.

Ask yourself a few tough questions. Based on what we know from our members and donors, what’s missing in our marketplace? Which demands and requirements remain unmet? What unique capabilities and qualifications does our organization possess? Where do our target audiences go for similar information, services and benefits? How do we compare? Which opportunities are we best positioned to pursue?

No organization can be all things to all people. You and your staff, board and other stakeholders will need to examine every service area, make a determination about its value to your constituents, and provide the level of support necessary to do it better than any other organization in your marketplace. This assessment, and subsequent commitment, complements other aspects of your marketing and business strategies.

Know what people think.

Avoid basing significant brand decisions on anecdotal research or feedback from a handful of volunteer leaders. Work toward achieving the highest level of statistical rigor your research budget will produce.

Remain open to using a hybrid approach to conducting research that might include a combination of telephone interviews, focus groups, online surveying and other methods. The research approaches selected must reflect your relationship with the target audience of respondents. For instance, e-mail messages with links to a survey housed on your organization’s web site may pull far better response rates from current members, while telephone or print surveys may be more appropriate for reaching prospects.

Develop statistically reliable and valid methods for understanding the collective impression your organization projects to your most important target audiences.
Also capture qualitative information – the opinions, beliefs, perceptions, and rumors– that determine your market position in the minds of your stakeholders.

You must have an accurate understanding of the gaps that exist between your members’ expectations and what you actually deliver. Get clarity from members, donors, customers, prospects, and other supporters about the unique and valuable benefit you provide that can’t be bought anywhere else.

Know the image you’re conveying.

Results from market and brand-related research and analysis should serve as the framework for creative concept development and designs that communicate a compelling brand image and message. Consider establishing benchmarks by asking members to use one or two adjectives describing their perceptions of your organization as it exists today, as they wish your organization could become in the future, and what they hope your organization never becomes. Ask members to describe your organization in terms of colors and other abstracts. Is your organization perceived as vibrant blue or muddy brown, and what are the implications? Gain a clear, explicit, and graphic depiction of the changes that need to occur to close the gap between what members and customers currently see and how you want them to view your organization.

Know what you want.

You’re bound to encounter opposition as you undergo the process of coming closer to a brand that accurately reflects the needs and interests of your key stakeholders. Ignore it. If your research and market analysis are accurate and timely and you have your members’ best interests in mind, they’ll notice your efforts. The rewards will come later.

Be sure your organization’s staff and volunteers receive brand education. Once you fine-tune your marketing messages and graphic imagery, make sure implementation is consistent and pervasive. Realize that you will be opening up opportunities to re-examine logos, product taglines and other sacred-cow icons. Remember, all brands get refreshed as time goes on.

Know when the time is right.

Use launch timing to your advantage. Is a grand-scale release appropriate for communicating a new brand simultaneously to the media? Is an incremental launch approach more efficient in depleting existing supplies before creating new inventories? Your organization’s financial resources and community make-up will help determine the method you choose.

Make sure someone monitors literally everything from your organization that comes into contact with your target audiences. Watch everything from high-visibility marketing collateral to staff voice-mail recordings; from letterhead and business card designs to messaging on fax cover pages and e-mail signature blocks; from enhanced web site pages to on-site signage at seminars or in your organization’s reception area. Everything must connect to build, reinforce and sustain the desired brand image you wish to convey.

Identify internal organizational behaviors or processes that work to reinforce or undermine your brand marketing efforts. Are your voice-mail systems intuitive and convenient for customers? Do you communicate with members and donors using the channels they prefer? What are the steps to conducting business with your organization by phone, fax or web? What changes are needed to create an easy, efficient and pleasurable exchange for each target audience interacting with your organization?

Know your organization and your brand will follow.

When you can answer the pressing question, “What are the perceptions of your organization in your industry, how do those perceptions vary among your target audiences, and how close are they to the perceptions you want to convey?,” then you will have the answers you need to brand your organization successfully. Strategic management of your brand will ensure you convey the right image and generate strong return on your investment for years to come.