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Category: Marketing Cures

  • Consultant Saves 25% over In-House Cost for Member Research

     

    Cost Comparison between In-house and hiring a consultant for a typical member research project. Assumes In-Depth Interview method, with 20 Interviews, and recommendations report.
    consultant      inhouse

    Costs calculated based on 6-month project, utilizing 15% of three salaried employees’ time and costs. Consultant saves 25% overall.

    There are lots of reasons to hire a consultant: to drive additional revenue programs, add to your creative firepower, review your efforts with an outside, impartial perspective, add to your staff’s existing skill-set, and now there’s one more – saving money! Many executives have a perception that hiring a consultant is an additional expense, is very expensive, and a waste of money since they are already paying in-house staff.

    Not the case, as proven by the above graphics. By the time you add up all the expenses of using staff to do a given task, it turns out to be less expensive to outsource to a consultant in many cases. This doesn’t even account for the added expertise, and years of experience, which not only makes projects run more smoothly, but also gets them completed faster with fewer errors.

    Faster, better, cheaper, more in-depth – the right consultant can be a real asset to your organization’s growth!

    Would love to hear your opinion . . .

  • And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor . . .

    And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor . . .

    Are you really getting as much value from your sponsorship activity as you were lead to believe when you entered into the agreement? Have you ever tried to measure the gains, results, or revenue generated from a sponsorship opportunity?

    It’s tough, isn’t it? It’s difficult because there were no metrics or measurement tools built into the sponsorship, and likely no real activation point with which to leverage the value of that sponsorship into more sales opportunities. Sounds like gobbledegook, but there’s a fundamental truth buried in all that jargon: You can’t elicit or assess value if you don’t have a way to measure the return, and you can’t take advantage of visibility unless you find a way to make it turn into action by the viewer.

    Let’s take the activation portion first.

    Creating activation for a sponsorship, be it a meeting, a sporting event, a team, a radio program or other media opportunity is not easy, and it’s often not just a one-step process. Companies who’ve had success with sponsorship have found ways to really turn that awareness generated by this type of activity into action on the part of the viewer.

    Modern technology can help. The QR code is one way, the photo submission contest is another, with cell phone cameras being nearly ubiquitous in the US. The idea is to give event attendees or viewers a reason not only to interact with your brand, but to extend that interaction beyond the context within which it started to outside the venue, to incorporate it into their daily activities. Technology helps you give viewers a channel through which to interact with the brand that is new and fun and engaging, and if you do it correctly, they will become evangelists for your brand and pass their experience along to the others in their personal network, extending your reach even further.

    Now with modern technology, viewers have a method to engage, but you still have to provide a motive. They’ve got to WANT to interact with your brand, hopefully in a positive way. Motivating emotions for sponsorships tend to be the need for individuality (only people who attended in person get this shirt), aspiration to be an early adopter (be the first on your block to have one), greed (something for nothing), and the need for attention (winner gets his picture on our product box) these can take many forms in terms of the offer and the audience.

    Clearly, the brand/venue/activity/audience match-up is critical to making the most of your sponsorship, always has been, and technology hasn’t changed that much. Making smart selections based on your brand character, and your goals for the sponsorship are still critical exercises. But the need to engage, not just raise visibility for a short time, is higher than ever as message clutter has risen and attention spans have shortened.

    Now, on to measurement. Not coincidentally, engagement and measurement go hand in hand. The more actively engaged your audience is with your sponsorship activity, the more easily measured it is. Engagement involves action, and actions can be recorded, measured and assessed. If you put up a banner in a sporting arena as part of a sponsorship, that doesn’t inspire much engagement. But if you put that banner at eye-level in front of the entrance to a famous venue gate, and ask people to take a picture in front of the gate and send them in to your website for a prize, now you have engagement. The more photos you receive, and the wackier they are, the higher the engagement and the more value you get from the sponsorship.

    More sophisticated measurements can be taken if you have the need and the use for the data. There is tracking technology, built into ticket stubs, bracelets, and the like that can track attendee movement and dwell within a venue passively, over time. The readouts in aggregate can show you roughly how much exposure your physical representations got that day or that week, and give you a target number to benchmark against for future events in that venue. Connect the two methods, and you set up a sort of Where’s Waldo scenario that can lead to an avalanche of engagement, at least within the venue, for more bang for your buck.

    However you choose to do it, the basics are the same: Give them a reason and a way to interact with your brand in a positive way, and then measure the activity and benchmark it against the cost and the value of the sponsorship to assess ROI and renewal decisions. With a little extra effort, you can reap huge benefits from your sponsorship opportunity.

  • The Best “Big Data” is The Invisible Kind

    The Best “Big Data” is The Invisible Kind

    Anyone who hasn’t listed their domicile as “rock, lower level” in the last five years knows that the biggest mega-trend in marketing is “Big Data.” As with most of these media-dubbed monickers, this means different things to different people, but in general, “Big Data” refers to the use of customer information, some of it public, some of it mined from social media, some from transactions, appending services and overlays, to market more effectively to those customers. We’ll use that loose definition here as a basis for discussion.

    Most consumers see evidence of big data in use either in their mailbox or their e-mail inbox. Personalized postcards, membership cards, letters, e-mail messages etc. are visible evidence that big data is in use. For better or worse, this type of evidence is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to data, and can indicate a less desirable and more clumsy approach to data use. We contend that the best use of data like this should be virtually invisible. It’s like the movies – if you can see how the special effects are done, the movie becomes about them and not about the story. Poor usage draws attention to the mechanics and diverts interest from the bigger message.

    Big data can be an incredibly useful and effective tool for creating an outstanding customer experience, as we’ve seen with companies like Amazon or Zappos. The use of transactional and preference data to enact an algorithm to “suggest” logical and related purchases the customer might find of interest is a tremendous customer retention tool. If I know that my transactional data is being saved and used for this purpose, I’m comfortable with that, knowing that they can only really use the information I give them. Plus, if there is a problem, I know they have a vested interest in keeping that data for longer periods of time, and keeping it accurately and privately. I can reference an order and have a really good chance of them being able to access their records, see what the problem is, and correct it immediately – the data and it’s access empowers their customer service staff to solve problems quickly and completely.

    For outreach marketing, lead generation, membership recruiting and the like, the use of big data gets trickier. You may or may not have any transactional data to use, so often the underfunded marketer falls back on extensive and repeated use of the data they have, by over-personalizing their outreach materials. It’s like the insecure guy trying to prove how smart they are to the pretty girl, it looks obvious and a little desperate. If I receive a piece of correspondence with my name or address liberally sprinkled throughout the piece, I get the feeling they don’t know me and are trying to fake it.

    Brilliant use of big data is unseen by the recipient. Big data is behind the fact that you are receiving the message at all. But that’s just the beginning. Modern computing power is such that each message can be customized to the recipient in a vast array of ways, either printed or digital. Keying photographs, imagery, copy, messaging, offer and other elements to appended data makes for a powerful and effective marketing punch that gets results. Outreach marketing is about triggering an emotional response, and one thing we know reaches our emotional triggers is things we’re familiar with and comfortable with. Seeing an ad served to you on your favorite social media platform from a site you recently did some shopping with shows the marketer’s hand, but is effective because you’re familiar with the shopping site and know how it happened. A personalized postcard for a national swimwear marketer with my name all over it, featuring beach clad models sent to an address in Minnesota announcing a sale in February is not likely to resonate as well. The data could have been used to swap out the image for one of Eskimoes in swimwear, and change the headline to “Coming Soon. . . ” just based on the zip code and the date. Let us know you at least gave us a moment’s thought . . .

    The best bet is to put yourself in the shoes of the recipient as effectively as possible, for as long as possible, and to use the data to effect the outcome, not to show you have the data. Use that data you have cleverly and wisely, rather than show how much data you have. Show us you thought about us, not that you know about us. Invisible data speaks the loudest, and contributes the most to the bottom line.

  • 3 Ways NOT To Fall for a Clever Headline

    3 Ways NOT To Fall for a Clever Headline

    In a routine scan of my e-mail inbox, the discussion pages of my 40-some LinkedIn groups, various news sites and marketing sites, I counted over 100 headlines like the one above, promising everything from business lead generation to building up my profile, to keeping my windows from sticking, to where to go in Ocean City. All tempt the reader with a memorable number of simple solutions, neatly encapsulated in a short, easily digestible list, suggesting that if you compile enough lists about all the elements of your life, you’ll have all the answers and your life will run smoothly.

    Is this what content marketing practice has distilled itself down to, a clever headline offering quick easy solutions to life’s tough problems? I certainly hope not, because if your life is like mine and those of my colleagues here, it’s never that clean and neatly arranged – life is just plain messy!

    Marketing is a difficult, complex and widespread discipline, vastly misunderstood by the rank and file and by many of it’s practitioners. It takes YEARS of experience to master even the rudimentary elements in a coherent fashion, to be able to apply them in some fashion to a company or organization’s challenges, to identify and isolate the problem, and devise a strategy to combat it with well-thought-out tactics that do more good than harm, won’t break the budget and will return many times their cost. That’s a tall order for any single discipline, but marketing covers roughly 20 different disciplines within it, all of which can and should be considered when assessing and formulating a plan of action. If you can fit that in a list, I’d love to see it.

    Don’t get me wrong, lists of reminders can be very helpful and useful as a memory joggers of the various rough spots and pitfalls that can befall the forgetful. But I think the use (and overuse) of the catchy tip-laden headline is the lazy way to go. If our business attention span, our ability to learn new concepts, to absorb data and information, has sunk to the level where lists of tips guide your operative day, we are truly in a crisis. From the outreach side, they are a crutch for the lazy man, a cry for attention in the digital wilderness, where solid, impactful and dense information are traded away for quick thrills and easy clicks, screaming “Hey, look at my stuff, not that guy from the learned institute over there, I’m faster and easier.” They are the cliff -notes of a practice and a discipline that takes time and effort to learn, trial and error to master, and guts and determination and discipline to apply.

    Next time you see a list headline with 10 tips on anything, see if you can guess what at least five of them are before you open it. If you’re right, skip the list and it’s author and move on. I’m off to write the next entry, “10 Ways to Be Labeled an Old Curmudgeon Without Really Trying.”

  • When In Doubt, Do SOMETHING!

    When In Doubt, Do SOMETHING!

    Granite Partners ‘ sole reason for being is to help trade and professional associations excel at what they do, to grow and thrive and move forward confidently in their work of improving their members’ professional and business lives. Many of the engagements we take involve marketing, and one of the most frequent things we’ve been asked to do is essentially play the role of “energizer” for the organization’s marketing efforts.

    They’ve done the same thing year after year, promoted the same conference the same way, recruited the same type of members in the same way for years, and are starting to see their results deteriorate. Their membership numbers are flat, retention is down, conference attendance is dwindling and fragmenting, and the whole organization is struggling as a result of curtailed budgets, reduced momentum, staff ennui, and a general lack of verve for the organization’s mission.

    We come into the organization, review all their efforts, work with senior management and staff to break down some of the reasons why things are done the way they are, maybe slaughter a few sacred cows, generate some ideas for new initiatives going forward, and then work with them to implement them. From 10,000 feet, that’s what our practice looks like. Under the hood, however, there’s a lot more going on. Counteracting all that inertia, brightening up the mission and the message, assessing member’s preferences and needs, researching new member segments, generating program initiatives, all takes time, resrouces and energy. But what it really takes is courage.

    There is often some long-standing doubt surrounding these new initiatives, some deeply-rooted skepticism among the staff, many of whom have been working there for years, and have seen initiatives come and go, to no apparent effect, and don’t expect these to be any different. The courage to change the status quo is difficult to locate and harder to draw out and nurture, to bring to light and expose for all to see, so that it can spread among the staff and be transmitted to the membership. That’s our real job.

    Often what it comes down to is this: Something is better than nothing, so when in doubt, do SOMETHING and we’ll figure out if it worked later. Getting this type of thinking started takes the courage of managers and rank and file alike, and is a cultural anomaly, especially among older employees. Asking forgiveness rather than permission is counter to most Association cultures, build up after years of top-down management and communication, lack of mid-level empowerment, long chains of budgetary approval and micromanagement. Breaking that paradigm (I hate that word, but it actually fits here), is a tough challenge, but the benefits are myriad and multifaceted.

    Marketers in many organizations have been working under this new “Do Something” regime for a while now, and the one’s who pull it off successfully have earned the respect and understanding, and in some cases the admiration, of senior management in their organizations, having proven themselves to be solid, reliable producers, despite what might be seen as the use of unorthodox methodologies. Unfortunately, this new disease is not highly contagious, and needs to be spread deliberately among other staff departments. The courage to take the initiative, to empower the staff to think for themselves, to solve problems pragmatically and immediately, takes time and effort to develop, but the results are unequivocally worth it.

    Do yourself a favor – when your marketing program seems stale, your efforts start to look tired and hackneyed, the results start to droop – DO SOMETHING! You’ll be glad you did.

  • Members Behave Like Consumers . . . and Make Decisions The Same Way!

    Members Behave Like Consumers . . . and Make Decisions The Same Way!

    As the debate rages on as to whether non-profits would be better off behaving more like for-profit corporations, it would be wise to keep in mind that the central reason most non-profits were formed was to serve the members, and in that aspect non-profits could learn a lot from their for-profit counterparts. If you were to substitute the word “member” for “customer” in much of the modern marketing and advertising literature, there is a deep mine of wisdom that non-profits could plumb in order to more adequately frame their value proposition, and find greater success in the ever-present quest to find, recruit, and keep members.

    There is an obvious schism in the way corporations reach out to consumers. The two schools of thought – the “logical” and the “emotional” – are forced to co-exist, and if done properly, can work cooperatively to achieve their goal of building customer base and consumer loyalty. The “Logical” school, promoting features of the products, and the benefits thereof, using statistics, facts, information to make a “case” for their product’s superiority; and the “Emotional” school, in which images and messaging that appeal to some of the more base emotional motivators to influence purchasing behavior appear.

    This can perhaps be seen most readily in the automotive industry, possibly due to the sheer volume of television and print ads for cars that pervade national media. In roughly half the ads, the manufacturers promote things like fuel efficiency, flexibility in seating arrangements, crash safety, popularity with consumers, cargo space, back-up cameras or parking assist, features that make it desirable to certain segments of the buying population. The other half feature imagery and messaging that promote how the car will make you look, feel, how it will make your neighbors envious, how you’ll be more popular or get more attention if you own one, how it will make your co-workers jealous, appealing to the base emotional drivers like need for recognition, elevation of status or popularity, vanity or need for acceptance.

    In nearly all the non-profits we’ve worked with or counseled, the value proposition has been of the “Logical” variety – here’s the benefits you get from joining and staying a member. The other half, and some would say the much more powerful half based on some recent consumer research on buying behavior, has been left out in the cold, as if because they are a professional organization appealing to other professional organizations or persons, there is no emotional reward for becoming a member. This bloodless approach is unfortunately too typical of B-to-B marketing in general, but the ethos surrounding non-profits is so laced with the need to be taken seriously, many cannot bring themselves to voice the benefits of membership in any sort of emotional way for fear of being seen as weak, or needy, or heaven forbid, unprofessional!

    By injecting some of the emotional component into their outreach approach, non-profits could certainly experience great success in their recruiting efforts, as they would find a much larger segment of the buying population would respond to their appeals. Even in a B-to-B purchase decision, there are one or more PEOPLE making that buying decision, people with emotions, feelings and attitudes that can drive behavior in a much stronger way than the typical “Franklin List” of pros versus cons of joining an organization. By taking a “business only” approach, membership marketers have sidestepped a huge driver of consumer behavior – the need to belong, for acceptance, for praise and recognition. Maybe they feel that the emotional appeal may not be strong enough to pry the dues check out of the fingers of hard-nosed business members, who need a business case to justify every decision. Maybe they’re uncomfortable using a more emotionally based appeal to reach their potential members because they can’t guarantee to “deliver” that type of benefit year after year. Whatever the reason, there would seem to be tremendous gains to be made by positioning their organizations emotionally as well as economically.

    Maybe a look at another area of their operation would yield some insights – many non-profit, member-based organizations have a charitable arm or foundation of some sort, and the search for donors is often not only more aggressive and better focused than the member recruitment effort, but the appeals tend to vacillate between the logical and the emotional appeal, doubling the reach of the organization and driving donations beyond what the membership could logically support. Much can be learned from corporate marketing efforts and applied to non-profit recruitment and retention efforts. Sometimes its a case of simply looking over the backyard fence . . .

  • Engagement Turns Your Members Into Cheerleaders

    Engagement Turns Your Members Into Cheerleaders

    Under the traditional membership model employed by the majority of non-profit trade and professional groups, membership in the organization offers you benefits, but doesn’t necessarily deliver them directly to the member. That doesn’t refer to third party affinity programs or insurance underwriters – it refers to the fact that the interaction with the organization is typically voluntary and one-sided. The member has to reach out to take advantage of the particular benefit directly, the organization typically doesn’t drive the benefit to the member. As a result, what often happens is that many of the potential benefits of membership are either unknown, or unused, and as a result, there is not sufficient member engagement to really live up to the value proposition that the initial membership offer proposed.

    Studies have shown that if a member is actively engaged in the activities of the organization, either through staff or another member, their chances of lasting longer than the initial year as a member skyrocket, rising by over 400%. Given the lifetime value of a member to the organization, it would seem a smart investment to craft an engagement program to reach out and grab those new members, get them involved, give them a sense of mission, of empowerment, and of belonging, that will help retain them for years to come.

    Those organizations who do put in the time and effort find they reap fairly substantial rewards at renewal time. Renewal rates above 94% are not uncommon in those organizations we’ve studied, and the members not only rejoin, they go out and recruit as well. That’s a double win for any organization, in an era where time starvation and economic uncertainty make membership a low priority for most professionals. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or automated to show strong returns.

    Sometimes a simple welcome phone call, from a prominent member, Board member, or staffer, to introduce themselves, welcome the new member to the organization, ask some questions, including what they expect to get out of their membership. Not only does that keep staff in touch with members on a programmatic basis, but provides a constant source of research data on the value of offered benefits, and their popularity among the membership, in real time. Not a bad bonus for making a few calls a week.

    Sometimes the effort can be more formal, such as an invitation to join a committee, or to provide feedback on a new product or service prior to it’s introduction to the general membership. Sometimes it’s a request for support for a cause, lobbying effort or legislative initiative. The key is to do it early, and in a systematic way so that no one falls between the cracks. More elaborate efforts will incorporate timing features, automated systems to reach out to certain sectors on a rotating basis with a specific focus, and other bells and whistles, but those automated systems tend to dilute the impact of the effort, to depersonalize it and distance the group from the new member, the exact opposite effect of what you were seeking. The simplest and most effective is the most honest and direct method, a personal phone call or letter from an known member of prominence, welcoming them to the organization, asking what they need or expect, and helping them take direct advantage of the benefits the group offers.

    Engagement can take many forms, and the right form is different for each individual, as different as their real reason for joining. Once such a program is in place in your organization, you’ll be amazed at the increase in retention, engagement, and connectivity of your members. They wanted to be a part of a group for a good, real, reason. Tap into that need, and you’ll have a group of lifetime members who closely affiliate and identify with your mission – they become cheerleaders, and that’s where the gold is!

  • Is Advertising Dead?

    Is Advertising Dead?

    Marketers, retailers and their agencies have been relying on advertising and it’s relatively high cost and low return to drive revenue for 75 years or more. Is the time of the ad behind us? Will banner ads and social media posts fill the void? Somehow, I think not . . .

    When we approach small businesses about increasing or even originating their marketing budget, their first thing they tend to think of is “Are we doing new ads, they didn’t work too well the last time” and the ears turn off and the eyes glaze over and the rest of the conversation is spent educating them on the value of other forms of marketing. Marketing and advertising have become so irretrievably intertwined in the minds of small business executives, that any conversation about one inevitably drives toward the other. While frustrating to our consultants, it tells us something about the perception that “only big companies can afford advertising,” which seems to pervade the landscape. With 500 cable TV channels, unending YouTube channels, and enough niche and general interest blogs and print publications to choose from, anyone can advertise. But can they afford to advertise in enough places enough times to break through the clutter and actually reach a select audience often enough and well enough to effect sales? That’s the real question.

    One element that will forever dog traditional advertising is accountability. No agency exec actually went into a meeting with a client and honestly said, “These ads that ran 60 times last week on all three networks and the Superstations, gave you directly a 5% uptick in product sales” – doesn’t happen, no matter how much they try. They talk around the results, talk about branding support, about number of impressions, audience reach and Q score of the spokesmen in the ad, but direct, 1-to-1 sales accountability ascribed to specific ads is the white Rhino of the advertising establishment – it’s been bandied about, but no validated sightings can be found in the literature.

    So with no direct accountability, why is something you can’t accurately measure, that costs a fortune, that can’t be tied back to the top or bottom lines, so hard to let go of? Perhaps because nothing else has come along that gives retail products the visibility, the bragging rights – “did you see our new spot on American Idol last night?” – and the complicit permission from the media outlets and media industries to charge based on demand, like a bushel of corn, driving both media and agency revenue ever skyward, that can replace TV ads. Social Media doesn’t do that, Search Engines don’t do that, E-mail campaigns don’t do that. Nobody ever turned to their neighbor at a barbeque and said “Hey, Bill, did you see that great e-mail from Purel yesterday?”

    Until something highly visible, ubiquitous to each household, device agnostic, easily monetized and publicly recognized comes along to replace it, advertising is here to stay. It’s utility may shift, it’s usage wax and wane with budgetary support and be temporarily dampened by the next shiny new thing that comes along, but I dont’ think it will disappear altogether any time soon, no matter what the digital pundits say . . .

  • Association Member Engagement Mountain

    Association Member Engagement Mountain

    Written by Dan Varroney

     Dan at Potomac Consulting has hit this right on the head, we fully believe and recommend to clients that the engagement puzzle be solved so that true growth can be achieved that is sustainable and manageable, not just a quick promotional bump in the numbers. This shows why . . .

    It’s important that in this day and age that Associations not “leave well enough alone.” The Stay or Go Imperative could impact an Association’s financial health and well being. If membership is a distraction instead of ROI, Corporations vote with their feet and instead invest in a different solution.

    Yes,  Corporations have smaller corporate staff, in some instances one executive may wear multiple hats. However, if this executive makes the dues decision, then a strategy or a change is  necessary.

    Read the Tea Leaves

    Companies look for the connection to business objectives as part of their membership evaluation process. If these connections don’t exist, it’s difficult for any Association to execute an effective strategy to engage members. Metrics are like tea leaves they both paint a picture and they tell a story.

    If Associations observe that conference attendance is equal or less to prior years, educational meetings and fly-in attendance is significantly lower, and member retention is down for three consecutive years,  it is time for an intervention. The marketplace could also signal one or more of the following: 

    • Negative view of the culture and overall effectiveness of an Association.
    • The Association is perceived as not being as impactful in educational, policy or advocacy programs.
    • Other solutions including coalitions, conference providers or other Association programs deliver greater value.

    Never Hit The Panic Button

    Associations should embrace the challenge and convert the situation into a strategic opportunity. When diagnosing, member participation and revenue fall-off rebuild the path to engagement: one company at a time, obtain clarity on business and policy objectives, and understand what members really must achieve from participation achieve.

    CEO’s can keep in mind that success and failure are never final, the road forward offers hope, and a more definitive path to member engagement.

    Develop Data Driven Strategies

    Associations need to build a data set to help them understand why participation and revenues have fallen.  However, it’s key to put heavier weight on relationships; in a complex world the human connection matters. One member at a time, collect the following information:

    • Is the Association perceived as staff or member driven?
    • Does participation help executives achieve company business objectives?
    • Why do executives participate in other Associations or Coalitions?
    • How important is networking?
    • Would Social Media engagement on platforms such as LinkedIn reflect an attractive alternative?
    • Are educational and or certification programs relevant to career advancement?

    While Associations may develop additional or different questions, these open the door to constructive dialogue with disengaged members. Tally the responses, create internal task forces of senior managers and key staff, develop solutions and new strategies, assign performance metrics and then execute.

    Association Member Engagement Mountain

    For Association CEO’s who have or who are looking into the abyss, there is light at the end of the tunnel. An Association Executive confronting the worst dues loss in decades once reported record gains in member participation, advocacy effectiveness and revenue growth. Stepping back, building an Association wide member focus with data driven strategies proved to be a year long process worthy of the effort.

    Yes, the participation, retention and growth outcomes were record highs but the data really reflected stronger member connectivity.

    Climbing the Member Engagement Mountain is vital and necessary for every Association. It can also be the determining strategy helping Associations achieve revenue growth.

    How does your Association drive Member Engagement?

  • Professional Membership Has Great Value for the Member and the Organization

    Professional Membership Has Great Value for the Member and the Organization

    The new revolution of Social Media and its marketing potential has been one of the most heavily written about topics in recent years. The success of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of others has been postulated to stem from a need for human interaction in an increasingly isolating world. Is it really a cure, or is it another contributor to that isolation?

    There are some obvious drawbacks to the use of social media, including the threat of loss of privacy; the anonymous and random nature of the “friend” phenomenon; and the fact that there are a huge number of valuable, brilliant people in the world who have no concept of these systems and don’t participate in them at all, and likely never will. They are too busy leading real, enriching, empowered lives outside the cyber realm, interacting with people face-to-face.

    Social media is more likely a ready replacement for the old-fashioned method of meeting new people, seeking out like individuals with common interests, traits, social circumstances and desires – networking events. Meetings, conferences, charities, and professional and business trade associations were the centers of the business and social universe. Members joined to meet new people, those of similar interest to their own. They were from similar backgrounds, similar socioeconomic circumstances, (mildly) similar income and often depending upon the type of organization, geographically similar. They were by definition, a group.

    Some groups are more social than others. Neighborhood associations, fraternal and community, civic organizations, like Optimists, Rotary Clubs, Shriners, Civitans, Elks Lodges, Oddfellows, Masons and such are often built around a charity or fundraising for a specific cause or issue, but are largely social in nature. Professional and trade associations are more businesslike, especially the latter, which has corporations as members, but uses individuals as volunteers. However there are strong social components, including an annual meeting, sometimes a secondary meeting focused on specific components of their industry, continuing education opportunities throughout the year, and of course committee work and volunteer projects to recruit new members, maintain dues and enrollment renewal, and other fundraising projects to keep the organization running and viable. One of the truly valuable benefits to belonging to such an organization is this social component, and the benefits are myriad.

    To form true business relationships, one must find familiarity and common ground. One way to do that is through such business-related organizations where some of the screening has already been done and the common interest is displayed up front. One such organization whose reason for being is to help promote this type of professional interaction is Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI). It is a 74-year-old international group with 10,000 members in 30 countries and throughout the United States, whose sole reason for joining is to meet other top business professionals in their sector and enhance their professional knowledge and standing. SMEI offers a certification program for Sales, one for Marketing, and a Management certificate, recognized internationally as a sign of professionalism and excellence. Meeting frequency and purpose varies by chapter, but all have a business relationship-forming function of some sort, based on five founding principles: Professional Standards and Identification, Continuing Education, Sharing Knowledge, Assist Students, Support the Free Enterprise System. Benefits of membership include professional recognition and respect, enlarged professional sphere of influence, strong professional network and enhanced community and professional outreach.

    Those benefits mirror many other organizations’ benefits, but few are stated so clearly and succinctly, and lived by the membership so obviously. Not only does the individual member benefit to a great degree from their participation, but the organization benefits from the aggregate efforts of professionals at this level, working on their projects in their “native” turf – sales and marketing. This is true of few organizations of this type – typically the officers are elected based on popularity first and competence second or beyond. They may have an accountant as treasurer if they’re lucky, or an attorney as President for a year or more, but that’s often the extent of it.

    Professional trade associations with professional staff’s who specialize in Association management are an entirely different animal. These organizations are typically well-run, offer great benefits to their corporate or individual members, the principal of which varies from group to group, but usually include some sort of government lobbying and public marketing for the industry, education of the industry, standards and practices for the industry, statistics for the industry, and occasionally innovation and regulation within the industry. The social component as an adjunct to those benefits comes in the form of an annual meeting, some sort of recognition for outstanding performance within the group or industry, a commercial exhibition of some sort, continuing education opportunities, and networking as a byproduct of all of the above.

    The most important thing you can do to build your personal and professional reputation is to be active in your own industry, and that means joining and most importantly engaging in activities sponsored and structured by your industry associations. Find a way to justify the value of your dues payment, and the easiest way to do that is to get involved – this is truly an environment where you reap what you sow. Join a committee, work your way onto the board, pick a project and give it some time, effort and commitment – new business and an expanded sphere of influence are the smallest possible returns, and those are valuable indeed.

    Based on these types of organizations, the electronic version doesn’t even come close to the power of a personally interacted business relationship. Human beings sense elements of each other’s personality through a number of different channels, including the interpretation of body language, clothing choice, vocal inflection and word choice. Interaction with others on a face-to-face basis is essential to forming fully informed business relationships. All that meta information is lost in the cyber realm, leaving you with just the filtered choices of text and images to work with when forming conclusions about this person’s character, intent and sincerity.

    The next time you’re filing your friends on Facebook, or counting your connections on LinkedIn, ask yourself if you’d associate personally or professionally with all of those people if it meant meeting them face-to-face in a professional or social situation. Would you invite them into your home, meet them at a local hotel for dinner, recommend them for a job, refer them to your banker or broker? If the answer to any of these is no, are they really productive, solid, reciprocal relationships that foster business, or are they more like artificially garnered acquaintances that know more about you than you might like?

    If you found this valuable and thought-provoking, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”