The growth of your trade association memberships can be a daunting task. You may not know where to start, or what steps are necessary to grow your memberships.
But the truth is that building up a strong membership base for your organisation makes it much more visible to non-members. Especially within the community. This visibility is what provides the opportunity for mass growth across a wide geographical spread. Build your foundations strong and focus on the fundamentals first in order to gather a wider audience.
The following tips will help you build up your membership base.
Using Social Media to Grow Your Trade Association
We feel that social media is a necessity. It can be used to share information about the trade association, its members and its benefits, for free. For example, you could use it to promote an event that the trade association is organising or attending.
Social media can also be used to promote membership benefits such as discounts on products or services offered by other members of the association.
Social media has two layers, paid advertising and organic posting. Paid social media advertising is a brilliant way to grow your trade association quickly. Using paid methods, we can target potential members based on a variety of demographics including age, gender, location, industry, interests and more.
When promoting your association on social media you would need to first understand which platform your members are likely using. We always recommend LinkedIn and Facebook for this method of paid advertising.
The reason for paid advertising recommendations is due to how granular you can get with your target audience when using these platforms. We can be very specific about who is able to view these adverts meaning higher returns on ad spend.
Market Your Trade Association To Potential Members
Once you have your association’s website up and running, it’s time to market your organisation to potential members. Marketing can be difficult as there are so many avenues to take. Digital or traditional?
The traditional marketing methods you should include:
Brochures
A brochure or flyer that explains what your association is all about and outlines the benefits of membership. Simply design a small booklet that lists current members, as well as testimonials from them about how much they appreciate being part of the association. These brochures can be designed by The Lunn Agency if necessary as we have a great team of graphic designers ready to assist you with that journey.
Events
Events or exhibitions can be a great way of attracting and building members. Simply getting a space at a relevant industry exhibition could encourage footfall with thousands of people reaching your stand.
These events occur up and down the country and are filled with people within your industry looking to join associations. This could be used to either expand the association or meet like-minded people. There are tons of exhibitions suitable for any industry so be sure to find the dates and times relevant to you.
Let’s think smaller than exhibitions like events in the local area. Get involved in community activities. Identify ways you can help the local community by sponsoring or planning an event or developing partnerships with other businesses that have a similar focus.
Offering free advice, supplies, training sessions or internships through your association’s membership programs can really drive memberships.
The digital marketing methods you should include are:
Paid Advertisements (Google and Social Media)
Paid advertisements can be a fast, easy way of building your members. Utilising paid ads, you can narrow down demographics with ease. Simply target people that are more likely to convert into members with your ads.
- Google Ads or social media ads are both great ways to achieve these results.
- Narrow down your target audience.
- Focus on adverts based on past data and previous conversions.
- Focus on high-performing keywords to improve the cost per acquisition.
- Gather memberships at a greater speed.
- The Lunn Agency can help you further if required or give some great, free advice.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) For Your Trade Association
Similar to paid advertisements, this method involves putting your service in front of the customer at little to no cost. SEO, however, is a slower process, often taking several months. This involves creating mostly keyword-rich website content to increase organic traffic to your website. This method doesn’t use a budget to pay to be at the top of Google and therefore it’s not guaranteed to have you appearing 1st on Google, however, agencies like ours will focus on getting you onto the first page of the SERP (search engine results page). Definitely preferable over long periods of time.
Social Media
We’ve outlined the benefits of social media for trade associations above, however, if you want more advice then contact us. Equally, if you are yet to create a website or brand, we at The Lunn Agency can help you with this.
Encourage Members to Recruit New Members To Your Trade Association
You can also incentivise members to recruit new members. For example, you could give them a bonus or incentive if they recruit someone who is not yet a member of your trade association. Referred prospects will be guided by the testimonial of the person referring them and will then be more seriously interested in the association.
You could also offer a discount on other products and services to encourage them to be involved in the association beyond just attending events. This could be subscriptions to industry trade magazines, or entry fees into relevant exhibitions etc.
Conclusion
Being able to bring in more members will help your association to expand. More members mean you have more people working towards a common goal, which can be very powerful.
It’s important that you take the time to find good candidates for your association and make sure they are serious about joining. We can find great candidates through the power of great marketing.
We’re excited to see the ways in which members of your trade association will grow in the coming years. We hope that our tips have helped you get started on a path to success, and we encourage you to keep learning and growing as a professional.
