How to...turn your members into advocates

Associations are always looking for new ways to engage a wider audience - to attract more delegates to their events, and, ultimately, to grow their membership base.

It can be a hard slog, soaking up valuable time and resource. But what if existing members were more like advocates – actively encouraging new people to attend events or become members?

This doesn’t have to be a pipedream.

As the founder of BCMA, the association for influencer marketing, I believe we can draw some analogies from influencers that have become ambassadors for brands. 

I recently interviewed Simon Goldie, head of advocacy at the Finance & Leasing Association, who stressed the importance of getting members to champion the association message.

But before you set up your own advocacy programme, you should consider the following bits of best practice:

1.      Understand your members:

Know exactly what your members value the most, their preferences and motivations, and ensure you have a proper segmentation process in place. What might be relevant for one member might not be relevant to another.

2.      Provide real value that members can convey:

Ensure your brand proposition is short and succinct. At a previous association I ran, we came up with the tagline CEO (Community, Education and Opportunity), which enabled all the team to pitch the same message. Often associations have a core benefit, make sure that this is given prominence. Offer exclusive benefits, rewards, or incentives for active and loyal members.

3.      Build trust and credibility:

Really get to know your active members and some of the most likely advocates. Be transparent in all your communications actions and decisions.

4.      Foster community and engagement:

Create opportunities for members to connect, collaborate, and communicate with each other. Set up forums or monthly meet ups on or offline.  Create ambassador roles for key individuals that are keen to promote your association and make sure these are representative of the membership mix!

5.      Recognise advocates:

Always share member stories, welcome new members, and offer recognition badges. I remember as a former CEO of a trade associations we created regional ambassadors, and we created badges for them with their own logo. Also, you can use badges that help spread the word and create a conversation starter.

6.      Empower advocacy:

Give your ambassadors collateral, infographics, PowerPoints. When I was CEO of the British Promotional Association we created a whole suite of products, to encourage members to disseminate our industry research and we personalised it for them. This included videos, which had a huge response, more than we could have imagined.

7.   Listen and adapt:

Make sure you listen to your ambassadors and understand the feedback from members.  Even a complaint can be turned around if you respond quickly to it. So always be flexible and agile in your approach. I used to call members on a regular basis to understand the heartbeat of the sector. 

8.      Measure and optimise:

It’s imperative to have goals in place so that you measure the performance on a regular basis. NPS – net promoter score is a good metric. You could even have referral codes so that you can attribute to individual ambassadors as well.

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