Selecting an Association
Professional Associations can be an important part of your business development strategy. Sponsoring them often requires a significant investment of finite marketing funds, so picking the right association(s) is important. Further, evaluating the total investment required to make your sponsorship pay off must be considered up front.
Start by considering what you hope to achieve by sponsoring the association. Is it more important to develop your network on a local level or statewide? Are you more concerned with achieving legislative results, developing professional education or finding new business opportunities? Having a strong sense of your goals will improve your ability to measure the return on your investment. Once you know what you hope to achieve, the following four steps will help you to determine if a given association is the right match for you.
1 – Evaluate the Membership
Review the list of members looking for prospective clients and potential industry partners, as well as competition. What is your total participation costs divided by the number of prospective clients? Are there a lot of competitors in the association or is it a greenfield of opportunity? If no competitors are in sight, is it because they tried and found there was not much to be gained with the association membership or is the association simply an untapped resource?
Even more important than the simple quantity of members can be the quality. Is the membership small, but elite and in your core niche of who you want to target, or is the audience very wide and all over the map in terms of interest areas? Also consider the demographics of the group, such as age range. For example, many senior managers allocate technology and Internet facing projects to younger members of their team. If you offer a technology solution, perhaps a group with a younger demographic might be a better fit for the solutions your firm is offering.
2 – Consider Your Class
Many associations are intensely member focused, and tend to treat corporate sponsors who want to connect with their membership as second-class citizens. The association may be happy to take your money, but fail to respect your business goals as a sponsor. Telltale signs of first-class treatment for corporate sponsors include: verbal recognition at routine events, proactive efforts by the association staff to introduce you to other members, a corporate sponsor council that meets regularly to provide feedback to the association staff on corporate sponsorship interests, and access to event registration lists that allow corporate sponsors to plan their conference strategies before the conference starts. A key indicator that your contribution is just a cash donation: the only time you hear from the association is the annual renewal time.
3 – Location, Location, Location
If your company is only interested in certain geographic regions, then you should pick an association that best targets that area. Sometimes your geographic target is limited by the range of your service delivery footprint or division’s interests. There is no point in expending costs on an association where over half the members are outside your service area. Keep your eyes open for chapters that might be a better geographic fit and offer better economics on top of it.
Location is also a critical consideration as part of the overall engagement process. If you don’t have staff in an area that can routinely participate in the association meetings, it might not be the right fit for you. If you can’t back up your sponsorship with “boots on the ground” engagement, then the geography might be a problem.
4 – Face Time Opportunities Matter
Associations are generally pretty good about pushing brand identity by displaying your logo on signs and websites. But the best return on your marketing investment comes from routinely showing up and building relationships and trust. It is the “art of showing up.” That can’t happen from the comfort of your office and it rarely happens between the hours of 8 and 5. The association should have a built in schedule – either as the parent organization or through its chapters – of routine gatherings of its members. As a corporate sponsor you should ensure that you are invited and that you attend. If the association offers no opportunities to get face to face with members, make sure there are many other reasons to support the organization.
Before making a marketing investment in associations, you want to make sure you find an association that aligns with your geographic footprint, respects the investment you are making in its members, and affords the chance to personally engage the members.
Finally, make sure you are taking advantage of all the benefits offered in exchange for your sponsorship. In our experience, companies frequently fixate on one or two elements of their sponsorship and completely ignore, to their detriment, the array of benefits they are afforded as sponsors. You paid for these marketing tools. Use them.