As the financial realities of the Covid-19 crisis really begin to bite, membership organisations are facing perhaps the most challenging time in their history. Now is the time when members will truly see the value of the organisation they’ve been paying fees to for all these years – or not.
It’s vital that you are more important to them than ever, but how can you use this time to become truly ESSENTIAL to their needs, right now, and throughout the many stages of this unfolding crisis?
Those organisations that move from important to essential will be those who rapidly develop a greater focus on personalisation, digitisation and data driven performance marketing.
Don’t just adapt and survive… plan to thrive
More than ever, what organisations do today will determine how well they fare in the future. And according to a recent survey from Marketing Week and Econsultancy, over half of all businesses polled have started changing their marketing strategy. While the steps many are taking to demonstrate immediate value to members are inspiring, it’s also vital to use this time to re-assess your strategy to ensure you seize this opportunity to move your organisation from important to essential.
So beyond reassuring members and cutting prices, what can leaders do to ensure their organisation gets through this climate of unprecedented uncertainty and bounces back in an even better position?
Using lockdown to level-up
Despite the obvious disadvantages of being locked down, there has never been a better time to accelerate your member marketing to ensure it cuts through and truly earns its living.
While so many organisations focus on the immediate chaos, your organisation should be moving pre-emptively – and fast – to support your members with a sharper, smarter marketing approach.
CMDi’s 10-point Crisis Marketing Health-Check and Action Plan will help you create a marketing strategy that cuts through the crisis:
1. What are your organisation’s marketing objectives now vs. what they need to be to help you and your members emerge stronger and future fit? What actions are required to re-focus your organisation’s current goals on what matters most right now and throughout the various stages of the crisis still to come?
2. How strong is your brand? What actions do you need to take to sharpen it for a new era of chaos and uncertainty?
3. How focused are you on evolving members’ needs? What actions do you need to take to align your products and services to meet them, so you are best positioned to help members get ready for recovery?
4. Is your member segmentation, database and/or CRM system ready for a world where budgets need to be focused on only those members that deliver growth and profit? What actions can you take to build deeper value for members and build a deeper, more personalised engagement strategy?
5. How well do your communications drive action? What actions do you need to take to focus on the things that matter right now to increase share of members pockets, in a way that supports your purpose and meets their essential needs?
6. Is your website focused on the right calls to action? What actions are needed to improve member journeys and deliver greater performance against high priority goals?
7. Is your online offer ready to capitalise on the massive acceleration in online usage and demand to do more things online, whether service support, or training and advice? What action plan can be developed to speed this up?
8. Is your content saying the right things to the right people to deepen engagement and trust – what actions are required to sharpen your messaging and creative to stand out and provide authentic messages that build trust? How can you improve the impact of your content, social media and email marketing to increase its ROI?
9. Is your digital and performance marketing working as hard as it can? What more can you be doing to improve your online offer and make sure it gets found through intelligent SEO, PPC and remarketing?
10. How are you resourcing your marketing, what is your team capable and not capable of delivering quickly, or at all, and are the external partners you currently work with fit for action and delivering their services at optimal cost? Have you identified required changes both short and long-term to ensure your team and partners are working as efficiently as possible?
CMDi’s Crisis Marketing Health-Check is designed to ensure you manage your way out of the crisis with a strategy – not gut instinct.
The current unprecedented crisis requires an immediate response by membership organisations in order to demonstrate value to members. Many marketing departments are working hard to address the current situation, but in so doing, have little time to plan ahead. This is where independent, agile and specialist advice can make all the difference.
CMDi has a proven track record of steering membership organisations successfully through some of the most severe crises during the past 20 years. We provide the strategy and tools to help our clients reassure, retain and build membership value, with smart goal driven action.
Our unique methodology ensures a collaborative approach, but one that minimises the time, input and effort required by our clients – leaving you to focus on urgent priorities during the chaos, while we get everything ready to activate a new, more relevant and engaging approach to their membership marketing – fast.
We’re currently working with leading organisations to accelerate member-focussed actions such as personalisation and segmentation strategies, to data driven performance marketing to radically improve ROI.
We’re ready to do the same for you.
Request your marketing health-check to assess how to emerge fighting fit from this crisis and ensure your members get ready for recovery.