Archive for the ‘Association Strategy’ Category
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
11 Mar 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Meeting with several association executives last week in DC, I heard a familiar refrain: “We’d love to do this but we don’t have any money right now.” One actually said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” The recession has hit associations and, even though they could see it coming from miles and miles away, it’s still no fun when the train actually runs over you.
The good news is they had time to get ready for it insofar as they were able. The bad news is, well, the bad news.
Even as meeting attendance has started to rebound and advertising is coming back in some association magazines, 2010 budgets were set with the lowest possible expectations. Just like with the national budget, the hard choices already made were only the beginning of the hard realities still to be confronted.
Here’s something you may not have heard. The recession isn’t your problem. Recessions end and like being run over by a train, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You survive the big one, you’ll be in better shape than you were before.
The big problem is what’s coming behind the recession. According to Booz & Company, there are six industries in serious need of complete overhaul with none of the tools to pull it off. Demographic, technological, environmental changes will have a much more profound and lasting effect than this little old recession.
Of the six that Booz mentions—chemicals, retail banking, consumer packaged goods, technology, engineered products and services, oil and gas—each has a raft of associations representing it. To this list, let’s just add manufacturing since we all know that that is, as one of my editorial board members says, “at the tipping point. If we lose more manufacturing capacity in the United States, we will never get it back.”
All of this will make associations feel like those inflatable punching clowns my kids used to play with. You punch it, it falls over and pops right back up—until you’ve punched it so hard and so many times, it slows and slows and finally just lays there.
- Recession punch. Become leaner and meaner and set your budget as low as possible to survive. Bounce back 6 to 9 months after the recovery.
- Environmental punch. Members are catching it from all sides on sustainable practices and social responsibility. Launch new programs and services, credentials and standards, all much too slowly and slightly after the fact but still. Ease back up.
- Technology punch. Adopt social media and online community. Try to be cool because that will attract younger members. Struggle back up.
- Demographic punch. Find out that younger members aren’t quite that easy to sell. They don’t just want to be able to talk, they want something to talk about that matters. Try developing content that is relevant, unique, consistently high quality and updated frequently. Slow to get up if at all.
In short, none of this is going to kill you but cumulatively, it will bruise, batter and bloody you until you might wish it had.
Or, something else you might not have heard, you could choose not to become a punching bag and instead actually be proactive instead of reactive. None of this is unforeseen but, unlike the recession, there are things you could actually be doing instead of just waiting for the inevitable to strike.
Passion Sells
29 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
“They have to advertise with us. We’re the association magazine.” An association executive actually said that to me once. That was before the recession but it was shocking even at the time. As I said in my book , “they” don’t have to do anything. They can take their ad dollars and their membership dues and their event registration fees and go anywhere they want.
Then this week, I sat in on a Vocus Webinar about trends in media where Rebecca Bredholt, Vocus managing editor for magazine content said that more associations are going to launch print magazines because the ability to deliver a highly targeted qualified audience is still a compelling message for advertisers.
Then, also this week, I saw the ad projections for the spring issue of one of our association magazines and heard that rep firms that traditionally relied on member goodwill to sell ads were having to beat the bushes a lot harder in an effort to find non-member advertisers.
According to everyone, niche magazines are where it’s at these days. Readers of niche and special-interest magazines are described as “cults.” About 12,000 readers of Paste actually donated $275,000 to keep the magazine they love afloat. Some of them actually had benefit concerts for the independent music magazine.
So here’s my question: if your association magazine has always been niche, if your readers can’t get what you publish anywhere else, if your cult is devoted to the subject matter, why are you struggling financially? It’s not necessarily easy—nothing is these days—but if you’re giving them what they want and can prove it, why don’t advertisers buy?
Possible reasons:
- Laziness. Lazy editorial and lazy ad reps. If your editorial is not cult-worthy, get out of the business. If you’re killing trees to tell readers who got elected to your board and to run pictures of your conference gala, get out of the business. If you’re publishing the same thing that your competing trade magazine publishes only not as good and not as timely, get out of the business. If your ad reps still rely on member goodwill, fire them. That scenario just hits your members for more money. They won’t get leads from it—they’re all in the same business so why would they buy from each other? If non-member advertisers don’t see your cult as worth reaching, your already dismal ad revenues will only get smaller.
- Not Going Where the Love Is. One of my old bosses used to use that expression. Play to the crowd that loves you. Specialize the hell out of it. Niche the niche into targeted audiences that they can’t reach any other way. If you’re trying to attract readers that are only marginally interested in what you offer, you’re spreading yourself too thin and won’t get anywhere anyway.
- Being All Things to All Readers. It’s tempting to plan a magazine that has something for everyone in an effort to attract readers and advertisers. Something for the C-suite as well as something for entry-level, something for manufacturers as well as something for academics; some thought leadership and some product reviews, some opinion and some how-to. Wrong. In the immortal words of the late Ann Richards, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road, but roadkill.” If you’re all things to all readers, you’re nothing special to anyone.
- Inagility. You publish what you’ve got or what’s on your editorial calendar instead of adjusting to what readers are really interested in. I saw an association magazine recently that led with an article about the shop floor. I talked to another that was considering a cover story about employee discipline. Readers just aren’t interested in that right now. They want to know how to keep their customers, how to maximize revenues. You could write about those two topics in every issue from now till the turnaround actually feels real and readers wouldn’t get tired of it. If your editorial is so evergreen that it is the journalistic equivalent of preservative-rich junk food—eat it now, eat it 10 years from now—you will not last much longer.
- Being Too Old-School. I’m a print journalist. I ascribe to John Updike’s words: To create content that results in “dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over…seems to me…a magical act, and a delightful technical process.” But dark marks on paper don’t attract revenues by themselves. Lead generation, audience management, e-commerce, content marketing can supplement traditional space advertising sales in ways that old print technology never could.
This is not a fun time to be in the publishing business but, look at it this way, you’ve got what everyone else in the business wants—a passionate audience. Passion sells, always has, always will.
It’s 2010. Do You Know Where Your Exhibitors Are?
28 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Having just come back from a speech to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributor’s Executive Council meeting, I’ve got meeting attendance on the brain. It’s down, in case you hadn’t heard. It’s way down in some industries, and not just because of the recession. Conventions, trade shows, conferences are becoming a commodity for a lot of industries. For the wholesalers, buying groups were already stealing their thunder and now are adding networking in ways that really undercut their value propositions as premier networking venues.
The business model was already pretty wonky. Matt Rowan, executive director of the Health Industry Distributors Association is trying to change the 80-20 model where 80% of revenues are eaten up by shipping, logistics, booth companies, AV providers, etc. and only 20% ends up in the association’s pockets. He’s coming up with packages for his biggest exhibitors which save them 20% and allow the association to keep 50% of the revenues. “We’ve gotten into the booth-building business,” Rowan said. That was only one example from his “power package” idea that will give exhibitors what they want: “not more relationships but deeper relationships.”
“We were slaves to the number of attendees, the number of booths, the square footage,” Rowan said. “Now the metric is how many meetings exhibitors hosted. There’s meeting space in each booth along ‘Main Street’ plus private meeting spaces around the periphery of the hall. Exhibitors want to know who they’re meeting with even before they come to town.”
The makeup of HIDA’s attendees fit the dance card approach very well. Buyers can select sellers they’d like to talk to and vice versa so that everyone’s dance card fills up and HIDA has a basis for pricing.
John Garfinkel, executive director of the International Sanitary Supply Association, has managed to maintain attendance at or near the same levels as prior to the recession by opening the doors to service providers and end users through alliances with other associations.
These are only two ideas. I’m part of a major study that will look for more.
Fast Future Research’s Convention 2020 just kicked off and will look at the future of live events, venues and meeting destinations. The study’s site allows anyone to contribute their thoughts via a Trend Wiki. The study will run through October so that meeting planners can make better decisions this year for future meetings. After we gather everyone’s input, participants will be able to vote on which trends they see as most likely. I hope you’ll join up.
Are You the Establishment?
21 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
We all hear so much about associations’ difficulty in attracting younger members. They don’t want to hang with the old folks. They have different demands on their time. They’re not at the point in their careers when association membership typically occurs. They’re inventing their own version of community online. The economic downturn means that companies will not subsidize membership for junior staff, and promotions and raises are slower in coming.
All true, or at least partially true. All remediable.
Young professionals sections, career development opportunities, active social networking, entry-level and even job hunter membership rates can go a long way to overcoming the recruitment obstacles of simple demographics. All tactics employed by smart associations, many of which still have trouble attracting the next generation.
So what’s really holding them back?
I was reading something that mentioned “the establishment.” It’s very difficult these days to know what that means, who that is. Bill Clinton called Obama “the establishment candidate” (when Hilary was running against him) and just to prove how nebulous the term is, the New Republic called Mitt Romney the same thing and Jon Stewart said the same of Mrs. Clinton. Vanity Fair ranks the New Establishment of 100 technology power brokers every year while the New York Times says that the establishment is vanishing. But for the sake of argument, let’s say “the establishment” is whoever is currently in charge.
Is that you? Think about it. Aren’t associations in charge of making sure that the status quo stays the status quo? You have to protect and serve the members you have. They are the establishment in your industry or your profession. They don’t really want anything to change. They know it will but, as much as possible, their own interests focus on staying right where they are doing exactly what they’re doing. And then something like the recession comes along that forces change and makes everyone extremely uncomfortable.
Granted it’s not a comfortable situation but maybe part of the problem is that we are so unused to change and how to deal with it. We spend far too much time and energy protecting the current state of affairs. If we expended half that in leading members toward the inevitable changes, we would serve them better in knowing how to deal with unforeseen changes. And, I’ll argue, that in the process, we’d attract younger members. If associations were positioned less as “the establishment,” against which youth always rebels, and more as the agents and partners of change, they would be the dynamic, progressive forces that young people long to be part of.
We’ve all heard Mahatma Ghandi’s dictum, “Be the change.” I’ve already blogged about it once. Young people understand on some level that they are the force of change. If you’re not comfortable with that, they won’t be comfortable with you.
Trend to Mobile
18 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
According to a new study of media platforms, marketers are using one of three techniques to pay for their use of social media.
- They’re diverting money from the traditional media budget.
- They’re shifting funds from other marketing communications budgets.
- They’re creating an incremental budget.
The study by the Association of National Advertisers, B2B Magazine and the marketing services firm mktg shows that social media and viral video have seen the largest jumps in usage over last year. There are some interesting differences between B2B and B2C marketers that apply to B2B and B2C associations as well.
- B2B marketers have not embraced mobile to the extent that B2C has.
- B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn to Facebook.
- Webinars are found to be effective by a very high percentage of B2B marketers.
Mobile and viral video are set to take off among B2B marketers, the study says. Associations would do well to jump on that trend. Those with lots of members who do not use computers during the day are finding it difficult to communicate with members in a world where print is dying and push vehicles like email may never be read. These days everyone has a cell phone, however, and mobile could be the next huge wave in member communications platforms.
The Open Source Association
8 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Associations Now asked me to contribute an essay, Visions for the Future of Associations, for its January cover story about what associations will be in 2030. Crystal ball gazing is fun and, by 2030, I will be in my 80s so no one will be able to point out whether I was right or wrong.
I think the future of associations is open-source. Members will create the experience they want. As Erick Peterson, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and head of the Seven Revolutions Initiative, says “Information should be not only available to all, but also modifiable by all.”
This means that associations will be:
- Able to delegate more of the management of innovation to outside sources
- Characterized by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations
- Less vertical
- Organized into multiple administrative models to meet the needs of a diverse array of challenges and opportunities
- More flexible and better able to rapidly redeploy resources when and how members need them
An open-source association would expand its current volunteer infrastructure to the full industry or professional ecosystem—vendors, customers, suppliers, labor force, etc. With better, Web-based tools and a secure environment in which to work, they will form a third party platform with no stake in the outcome.
This will necessitate a huge cultural shift that I think is already under way. To use open source, you have to be open. The products and services developed by the open-source community need to be vetted by the larger membership so that everyone can reap the benefits. But you can’t control the process. You have to be open to the possibilities.
An open-source association brings a lot of smart people together and gives them a problem worth solving. The association expands in ways we’ve not seen before.
Read the full article: Visions for the Future of Associations
Kindleization
7 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Full disclosure to start: I print every one of these links out and read them on paper as I prepare a blog post. I just don’t like reading on the screen. The screen is for work; paper is for reading. As we continue in the inexorable march toward e-readers rather than print, I will be like those people in airports looking for a pay phone.
However, some of the new digital mash ups that they say will be the future of magazine publishing are very exciting. Sports Illustrated obviously used a very talented print designer, a content strategist and a fantastic user experience expert to come up with its ideas of what the future digital edition will look like.
Wired, naturally, also has some way cool ideas of the future of magazine design and interactivity.
What publishers want from e-readers is control of their relationship with readers and advertisers and the revenue streams that they have traditionally enjoyed. They want to go back to getting paid for what they do rather than giving it away online for nothing. Device makers like Apple and Amazon want to go the iPod route, where they broker the deal with publishers for content and sell it themselves.
What readers want is what they want. I subscribe to the Economist and the New York Times. I don’t want to have to buy two devices to get what I want. There will be the inevitable fall-out that always happens with new hardware but the initial messy battle for position makes consumers want to scream “You’re not the boss of me.”
First huge problem for device makers and publishers: I can get what you’re going to try to sell me for nothing on your website or someone else’s. Unless Sports Illustrated takes down a lot of the content on its own website and everyone else’s, why would I pay for it? You can’t boss me around. If I want the Kentucky-Louisville basketball score (Go, Big Blue!) I will find it the day of the game a lot of places.
Second huge problem: I don’t want another hunk of plastic to lug around. There will be mobile applications, of course, but that’s another rant for another day. The market for these things doesn’t exist and between the Kindle and the QUE and whatever else they’re hawking at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, I’m willing to wait till the dust settles before I cough up several hundred dollars.
Maybe it won’t come to a battle of devices. Hearst is working with Skiff ( formerly FirstPaper) to create a digital newsstand where you will be able to get whatever you want on the device of your choice. Time Inc. is working with Hulu to do much the same.
This sounds promising but it will take a long time for the millions of people who subscribe and buy print publications to fall in love with and buy another hunk of plastic.
Associations Left Behind?
Where does this leave associations? Unless you’re the AARP which has 225 staffers on its communications team, you will probably default to your website. You stop publishing your print periodical and put it all on your site.
First huge problem for associations: Same as for for-profit publishers: you lose the revenue streams. Digital ad dollars are tiny and won’t pay for the analog work that goes into creating the high quality content your members expect. You will have to password-protect all the content so you can still charge your members a subscription as part of the membership fee. This deprives you of the SEO benefits of all that good content and puts a barrier up in front of it that many members just won’t want to deal with.
Second huge problem: You’re not staffed for this. Even if you’re publishing a fantastic print magazine, your staff’s skills are not transferable. You’ll still need to create content but you’ll also need the user experience person and the content strategist and a whole lot of other people that you just don’t have.
Third really huge problem: If your industry trade publication is already a major competitive force, they will become even stronger and you will be less able to compete. If they can afford to do this and you can’t, you really will be left in the dust.
One sort of opportunity: Digimags are posting pretty good numbers and are recognized by BPA as legitimate circulation. Problem is and always has been that they appeal most successfully to people with a preference for electronic sources. They have not been able to convert print lovers into screen lovers. Essentially, it’s the print magazine online which does not make the best use of either medium. They save trees but they have not reinvented the print industry as e-readers may do.
One really big opportunity: Association publishers need to get in on the Time-Hulu action or something like it. Does there need to be a digital newsstand just for association publications? Should ASAE or SNAP do it?
Help from, You Guessed It, Associations
There is some guidance out there from the major publishing associations.
- The Magazine Publishers Associations is turning its annual Magazines 24/7 into a themed event about the e-reading revolution.
- The Newspaper Association of America offers a library of digital media resources which includes a “planbook” for reinventing print newspapers for digital platforms.
- American Business Media restructured its Business Information Network to include data about B2B digital spending.
Isn’t reinvention fun?
Your Association’s Future Is Hiding Under Your Nose
16 Nov 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
My idea of a fun weekend is cuddling up with a membership database—not really but that’s what I did this weekend. We’re in the process of redesigning several of our association publications and were stuck looking at competing magazines and websites and not finding any new ideas—which was almost as sad as spending your weekend doing database analysis.
It was very illuminating. It always is. So why don’t we do more of it? We do membership surveys and readership surveys and all that information is great context but there’s nothing like the basic pie chart to show you where your problems—and your solutions—lie.
I figured out why one of our magazines has so much trouble selling ads: almost half the readers don’t buy anything. They’re either students or “affiliates”, i.e., manufacturers and retailers. These are worthwhile membership categories but unless they’re paying the association a whole lot of money in the case of affiliates, or increase the member lifetime value in the case of students, half drags down the bottom line. Such members are along for the ride. They don’t volunteer. They don’t have anything to contribute. They may pester the core membership at conferences asking for jobs, asking for business, generally using your coat tails and not paying enough for the privilege.
- How many affiliate members is too many?
- How many student members is too many?
I also discovered that the high margin members, the leading companies in the industry, are under-represented. Less than three-fourths of the largest companies are members and some of those that are only have one name on the database—probably a receptionist who lays the magazine on a coffee table somewhere.
- Are you going for lots of members or ones that matter?
- Are your membership tactics focused on acquisition or on penetration?
I found that a significant chunk of the members don’t define themselves as the association’s target. A quarter of them call themselves “apples” when what we’re after is “oranges.” Things change, industries and professions evolve, new skills are acquired. If you are the Professional Orange Association but your members now actually do more “apple” type work, they might not find all that orange stuff relevant anymore.
- Are you evolving your membership categories and your programming quickly enough?
- If the members define themselves differently, should you too?
And I found a lot of typos. In the immortal words of my third-grade teacher, “Neatness counts.” How does your largest member feel when you can’t even spell her name right? How does your chairman of the board look when his company’s name is wrong? I know, it’s a pain to proof read thousands of names but what might it cost you if you don’t?
Focus on the Mission Not the Members
10 Nov 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
I’ve been thinking a lot about business models—not in concrete terms but as they play into what organizations in general are struggling with. We can’t reinvent healthcare because it would cost businesses more money. We can’t reinvent climate legislation because it would put a lot of companies out of business. In other words, the business models that exist worked when they were put in place but even if they are no longer appropriate to our needs, dismantling them in favor of something else—something untried—is terrifying and disruptive.
There are several very large companies that own the energy industry. They’re not evil companies (not all of them anyway); they’re not all against legislation to rectify climate change. But they can’t just vote themselves out of existence.
A couple of months ago, I interviewed Paul Anderson for one of our magazines. He’s a former C-level executive with several huge companies in the energy, automotive and metals industries. He cited the example of a new technology that was being developed while he was CEO of BHP Billiton in Australia. It would have displaced conventional blast furnaces.
“But we had blast furnaces,” he said. “In essence, it would have made everything we had obsolete.” Instead, they entered into a joint venture with another company. “We put it into a market other than our own and obsoleted the blast furnaces over there.”
Associations too are struggling with revamping outdated business models, models built on print publications, live meetings, controlled messaging. Just as people develop an unlimited appetite for content—anytime, anywhere, round-the-clock—the business model that pays the people who create that content falls apart.
That’s part of association’s we-can’t-do-this-because mentality. It doesn’t fit in the business model; there’s no way to pay for it and we don’t have the time or the resources to just go for it.
Kevin Holland, division VP for business operations and membership at the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, writes in Associations Now that associations look alike and provide similar services—meetings, publications, etc.—because that’s the way they’re built now. He worries that they will substitute webinars for meetings, blogs for newsletters and call it reinvention.
So how do you build a new house while you’re still living in the old one? How do you rip out the foundation without having the whole structure come down on your head? How do you “obsolete” someone else’s business rather than your own?
This is going to sound like heresy but focus on your mission instead of your members. Focus on what you’re trying to accomplish together rather than who’s doing it.
“Our growth is based on what we do not on who we do it for,” says Stephen Lieber CAE, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information Management Society. “No one asks the question ‘what have you done for me lately,’ instead it’s ‘what have we done to improve the delivery of healthcare through technology.’ The focus is on the end result not on the individuals or companies working to achieve that result.”
HIMSS has grown from $9 million in revenues to $42 million in the last nine years but only increased membership from 17,000 to 23,000. Mission-based programs are the difference; dues are only 10% to 12% of overall revenues.
IEEE is taking over production of IBM’s online Journal of Research and Development. The association is one of the largest publishers of engineering, computing and technology information, so leveraging their publishing infrastructure gives them a new business model that helps accomplish their mission of “advancing innovation and technological excellence for the benefit of humanity.”
According Naveen Maddali, the association’s online services product manager “IEEE has a vision of becoming a leading resource of technology and innovation, and growing our portfolio of content will lead that. The IBM journals directly fit into this plan. Additionally, the high quality content in these journals represents a nice revenue opportunity for both IEEE and IBM.”
What are you trying to accomplish? If you could start from scratch, what would you do to accomplish that goal? Forget what you do now. What would make the most sense in this brave, new reinventable world? Are you the one who’s going to be made obsolete?
