September 12, 2007

The Real Problem with Growth

Posted by Kevin | Print This Article

The real problem with membership growth isn’t that it’s an unimportant metric — it’s very important. The real problem is that too many organizations forget that a metric is exactly what it is, not an end in and of itself. Membership numbers are a measurement. That means that ultimately they are measuring something else. (A cup of water is measuring the water, not the cup.)

Too many organizations have an unhealthy Membership Obsession. We’ve all seen these organizations. You can smell their desperation from a mile away. Their appeals get more and more frequent, their offers more and more convoluted, their postcards glossier and glossier. These are the ones whose marketing flyers have screaming headlines like “Join XYZA Today and Save $100!” (As I’ve written before, these are nothing but a lost opportunity, since I can obviously save even more by not joining at all.)

They launch things like “Member Get a Member” campaigns and wonder why so many members don’t respond. (As Scott McKain said at ASAE in 2005 — we later brought him to our organization’s conference — “Customers want reciprocal loyalty, they get endless prospecting.”)

They itch and twitch over every fluctuation in monthly membership recruitment and retention figures. They have focused their entire being on membership numbers — and lost sight of the well-known business rule that the worst thing that can happen to a mediocre product is a good advertising campaign.

Because that, all too often, is what the issue really is. A mediocre product.

The solution to a declining or stagnated membership is almost never a marketing campaign. I suppose there might be some organizations that offer enticing programs, stellar service, and rock-solid value whose only problem is that they’ve been too quiet about it. But far more likely, the best thing a declining association can do to grow its membership numbers is to stop caring about them — and start providing the types of programs and services that its customer base actually wants. (As opposed to what its always done, or what certain volunteers want done, or what certain departments want done.)

Do that, and growth — if that’s what you want — will come.

Sure, it’s simpler to say than it is to do (let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to send out postcards touting 3 free months of membership than it is to continually develop and launch new programs for your members) — but based on my experience, it’s actually not nearly as hard as some associations seem to think it is. And ultimately much more rewarding.

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