To be successful as an organization and grow your membership, it's critically important to understand as much as possible about your current members, target members, and competition. Market research is the process of collecting and analyzing data to help you refine your membership message and value proposition relative to your competition.

But, market research doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Here are three free ways to integrate market research into your non-profit marketing decisions.

Kim Karagosian, Senior Director of MarCom, gives five tips for how to improve your conference marketing strategy. She talks about branding, messaging, meeting history, and more in our latest vlog!

Inbound marketing is taking the world by storm. But for those of you who’ve never heard of this concept, you may be scratching your head. What is inbound marketing? How is it any different than “normal” marketing?

Membership growth is the lifeblood of any association.

New members mean:
• New interactions at meetings and events
• New perspectives to share and leaders to contribute to the organization
• Most importantly, increased revenue, and possibilities for future growth

Are we doing the right things?” and “Are we doing enough?” are two of the top questions that keep association professionals up at night. We can stop worrying (and start sleeping) because there are ways to get answers to those questions through member research.

When you think of your association’s content strategy do you draw a blank? You may think that sharing association, industry, and member news is enough of a strategy. However, providing members with valuable, useful content should be part of every association’s strategy for marketing, reputation management, and member acquisition and retention.

Almost all organizations have a brand — a logo or some type of imagery representing their identity… but how can you bring it to life?

I recently had the opportunity to represent AH at ASAE’s Marketing, Membership & Communications Conference in Washington, D.C.

Social media is an integral part of many of our lives. Whether in line at the grocery store, killing time on a train, or in the break room at work, we want to stay connected.

For better or worse, that's become the way of the world, which means that when planning on-site experiences for conferences and meetings, social media should be laced throughout your programming and events.

I want to share with you some practical advice for planning, publicizing, and executing a successful on-site social media strategy.

Do you use hashtags? It’s a simple yes or no answer. Some people love them, totally get them, and use them until their heart’s content. Some people hate them, don’t get their popularity, and post Facebook status’ dedicated to their hatred about them (I’ve seen them; they’re vicious)!