Showcase How Irresistible Your Association Is
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What member-only value does your organization offer that members and prospective members alike can’t resist? You want your members to love you and hope that you can keep them coming back to access your resources, attend your events, engage with other members on your message boards, participate in your committees, etc., so how do you create that for your members?
Chris Vaughan, Ph.D., chief strategy officer at Sequence Consulting in Chicago, offers insights in his Four Steps to Creating Irresistible Member Value article on ASAE.
Step One: Narrow Your Focus
If you want to be irresistible, you first need to ask yourself, “Who do I want to be irresistible to?” You don’t have the right to win every game, and you won’t have the right to win every member. The more narrowly you define your target, the more value you will deliver. That may sound wrong to you. You want as many members as you can get, right? But the way to get (and keep) them is by segmenting them as clearly as possible.
Step Two: Find the Unmet Needs
Your audience has many needs, as any member needs analysis will tell you. But one way or another, most of their needs already get met. You will find your right to win in the gaps—the unmet or under-met needs for which there is no other solution. Filling those gaps may be more challenging than it sounds. You must briefly forget your current offerings, have honest conversations with actual members, and listen openly to what they say. Their unmet needs may not end up being what you expected.
Step Three: Focus on What’s Unique to You
Every organization has unique assets and capabilities, things they have or do that no one else could easily imitate. It could be your reputation. It could be data or information. It could be your ability to bring people together. Your unique assets are the ingredients of your right to win—your best chance of winning is in places where no one else can play.
The intersection of unmet member needs and your unique capabilities is the key to your way to play. If you meet the unmet needs of the right members, in the right way, when no one else can do it, you will have the right to win their membership. Your member value will be irresistible.
So, what irresistible value can you provide your members that they need, will love, and cannot access anywhere else?
