Event-Driven Memberships: What Association Professionals

Need to Know

Suzanne Carawan Vice President, Global Marketing

Events Moving into Minds of Marketers

• Marketers’ dream: • Content • Demographics, psychographics • Transactions • Isolated population to study • Multichannel opportunities • Actionable • Measurable • Multi-touchpoint

Events are Pink Hot for Engagement

• Increases as a marketing and sales tool are on the rise and projections just getting bigger

• Social media & access to information increases demand for face to face

• Emphasis of SoLoMo (Social, Local, Mobile) increases the number of events

From MPI

What’s New About Events?

• EVERYTHING!

• Formats (virtual vs. f2f, one2one, speed networking, slow vs fast, pecha kucha, hybrid, pods…)

• Technology

• Focused on experience

• Blending of worlds (SXSW….)

Enter the Power of Virtual Events

• Webinars & Webinar Archives

• Livestream & Video Archives

• Virtual Tradeshows

• Virtual Learning Centers

• Tweet Ups/Tweetchats

• Google Hangouts

• Private Social Network Events

• Event Parties/Pods

What’s Great About Virtual Events?

• Elicit emotion for upcoming f2f

• Topic Continuity

• Time/place for follow-up conversation following reflection

• Create more content that can be easily packaged and used for additional marketing

The Big Question

• If your organization ceased to exist tomorrow, what would happen? Would anyone notice?

Scary Answer

• No one may notice

Why ?

• Traditional View: Associations have treated publications, events & membership packages as the product

• Innovative View: Treat information as the product

What’s Really New About Events?

• Starting to be run like a marketing campaign

• Longer periods of time to measure

• Multiple events within an “event campaign”

• Changing metrics for ROI

Is This You?

Publications

Advocacy/ Government

Relations

Events

Membership

Component Relations

Marketing & Communications

Self-Check

• Does your organization have a CMO?

• Are publication, event, advocacy etc conversations joined by the marketing staff?

• Does marketing set pricing on events? Membership? Publications?

Marketing-Driven Worldview

• Marketing is a core competency

• Marketing is in the C-Suite

• Marketing follows the “pure path” & different from Communications

Marketing-Centered

Product Marketing Strategy

GTM: Events

Prospect

Members

Loyal Members

Product Marketing-Driven Association

• Identify the market need

• Identify the buyer persona

• Identify the differentiators of the product

• Identify how to communicate/reach the targeted buyers

• Measure & change offering over time

Demand Creation 101

• Identify what people don’t have or need

• Make them want what you have/believe that you have what they need

• Partially fulfill their need or fulfill the need and create a new one

Product Differentiation Statement

• Our organization is the only association that can provide _(information)______ to _(what set of people)_____ to create the _______(differentiator)_________.

Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategies

• Based on demand creation

• Create demand by:

• Connecting with an emotion

• Fulfilling a need with your product

• Delivering more than buyer expected

GTM Strategy: The All Powerful Event

Q: What does this have to do with events?

A: Events are the perfect petri dish for association product marketers!

GTM Strategy: The All Powerful Event

Q: How powerful are events?

A: Developing sub-specialty of marketing evolving called “Event Marketing”

Why Are Events So Powerful for Associations?

• If your product is information and the way to collect/distribute information is people, well…..

• Getting people together to exchange information is the key!

Events vs. Virtual Communities: Member Perspective

• People are human. Humans can only take being virtual for so long.

• Social media has connected us.

• At some point, want to take connection up a notch and be face-to-face

Events vs. Virtual Communities: Marketer Perspective

• People are human. Humans do things. We can observe action and capture behavior.

• Social media gives us new insight.

• Events give us more insight.

• At some point, we will construct a comprehensive profile on each member or groups to allow us to predict behavior.

What Do Association Marketers & Communication Profs Need to Know on

Events?

• How to use the event as the petri dish to get the rich data on members!

Event-Level Data: Badge Level Data or Persona-Level Data?

• Are you collecting this?

• What are you doing with the data?

• Are you thinking past logistics?

• Are you creating new programs that create more member-level data ?

Extreme Networking Mini Events

Events Give Total Person Data

• Demographics • Psychographics • Firmographics

Association Marketers

• Focus on providing the right information to the specific member’s needs