Marketing Your Membership Benefits
Implement a pull marketing strategy to pique interest from potential members by displaying your past events and let your potential members see what they might have missed out on!
Marketing to your potential members is just as equally important as retaining your current members, but how do you do that without being too pushy? In this Forbes article by Pia Silva, Silva states that your brand credibility is a pull strategy on its own. And in your case, building your organization up can attract potential members who are interested in you – hence, pulling them in:
“The pull marketing strategy involves focusing your effort predominantly inward. You spend time building your skills, value and brand credibility rather than searching for the next sale “
Pia Silva, Forbes
Events Are a Reflection of Your Brand
Your organization’s events are an extension of your brand. What you display can showcase how your brand takes action and walks the walk, not just talk the talk. Our natural tendency is to display and market our upcoming events to increase participation, but a potential member might want to look back on what previous events you hosted to see how frequent your events were or what experiential benefits your organization would offer in your membership.
Pique Your Potential Member’s Interest
It’s important to set up your website and widgets to speak for your organization. By doing this, you can peak the interest of your potential members and pull them in as new members. Rather than pushing your organization to potential members, let your organization’s brand pull them in.
Let’s use an example – Your organization states that its mission is to build strong membership communities as a foundation for better professional communities. A potential member, James, is interested in joining a professional association that values a strong membership community. James wants to see if your organization is accountable to this and decides to look through your website. James takes a peek at your event calendar and sees all your upcoming events, but he notices that some of your future events haven’t determined a location and are not yet complete. To continue his search, he decides to take a look at your previous events.
The Benefit of Displaying Your Past Events
The Old Way – Future Events Only
If your event calendar only displays future events and not past events, your calendar will look barren to potential members like James. To James, the lack of past events communicates that your organization hasn’t been active or accountable to building membership communities quite yet, which heavily influences his decision to join. Here’s what James sees:
The New Way – Display Past & Future Events
Instead of setting your calendar to only display future events, you can allow your event calendar to display past events too. Potential members similar to James can get a glance at what type of events you host, how often they occur, and what they can expect. When James sees that your past events have been frequent, he is more likely to join your active organization. It makes a difference to see past events when you flip through the calendar:
This is a great way to show off your past events to your potential members, giving them the opportunity to visualize the benefits of joining your organization and allowing them to recognize the value of their membership.
One-Click Setup
It’s easy to set up – it really only takes one click in your event widget settings (we’re serious… the proof is below)! You can also customize how many events and/or months in the past you want to display and which layout you want the past events to display in – the calendar or the list layout. For an easy one-click setup and a high-value benefit, what’s there to lose!
What About Your Existing Members?
We can’t forget about your existing members too! Not only does displaying your past events benefit your organization and its prospective members, your existing members are also at a benefit! Your members have the opportunity to see what events they may have missed, look back at the dates of your past events, or have a moment to reminisce on the great events that happened in the past!
Questions?
If you have any questions regarding Membee, please contact Membee support staff at support@membee.com or jump to Help from the Hive’s main page and search for “Past Events” (Membee login required)