In last week’s column, I talked about the term “Ikea effect,” which I got from the seminar on association marketing and member engagement conducted by my organization, the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE) and presented by Arianna Rehak, director at AssociationSuccess.org, a US-based digital publication and online community for association professionals.
This time, I wish to introduce you to the term “member personas,” which Arianna also brought up during her presentation. “Member personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal members. They help you understand your current and prospective members better, and make it easier for you to tailor to the specific needs, behaviors and concerns of different groups,” she said.
If bankers are familiar with the “KYC” (know your customer) principle, the equivalent for associations would be “KYM” (know your members). So, essentially, member personas is the latest phrase for an age-old marketing principle: know your target market and deliver what’s relevant and delightful to them.
By understanding your members’ roles and responsibilities, motivations and drivers, you can create meaningful dialogue and appropriate service offerings that advance their profession or trade, as well as provide solutions to pressing problems and challenges: a wish list that members expect to benefit from in joining an association.
According to Arianna, member personas are created through research, surveys and interviews with members. Here are some ways to build it up:
- Interview members, either in person or on the phone;
- Look at your contact database to uncover trends;
- When creating forms, use form fields that capture important persona information;
- Peruse their social-media profiles;
- Take into consideration your personal experiences with members; and
- Aim for two to three personas at a time.
More specifically, in conducting a survey or research, she mentioned that you may wish to consider the following factors:
- Background: Job? Career path? Family?
- Demographics: Male? Female? Age? Location?
- Identifiers: Communication preferences? Demeanor? Social-media channels?
- Goals: Primary or secondary goal?
- Challenges: Primary or secondary challenge?
What can your association do: to help members achieve their goals and help them overcome their challenges? How might the association communicate with its members based on their identified traits?
Having all these information will provide your association a clearer and more targeted approach to your service programming. You can now specifically define your membership (trade association, professional society or hybrid) and segmentize accordingly. You can also develop a member-scoring tool to group your members. It is known that highly engaged members are likely to be potential buyers of value-added member benefits.
Once you have all these member information, it may be prudent for you to document them in either Word or Excel spreadsheet, and create an infographic to have a sense of the types of members that comprise the personas you have collected. Finally, you can put your personas to work by delivering more relevant and useful content to your members. So act now and develop your member personas!
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The column contributor, Octavio “Bobby” Peralta, is concurrently the secretary-general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) and CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives. PCAAE enjoys the support of ADFIAP, the Tourism Promotions Board, and the Philippine International Convention Center. E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.