As summer winds down, many association executives are starting to look towards fall, and even to 2021, and are thinking about three things:
- I’m not spending Labor Day weekend with the in-laws again
- COVID-19 + My Renewal Rate = Downward Spiral
- I need new members to make up for membership loss
We can’t help you with your Labor Day plans, but we can give you some ideas on how to boost your new member marketing campaign. One of the better plans of action we’d recommend looking into is utilizing LinkedIn Ads for membership recruitment. Here’s why.
Low Cost to Entry
I’ve been in the association industry for a little over six years, and in that time I’ve received a small forest-worth of direct mail pieces promoting events, joining associations, etc. Some of these pieces were really good! I even ended up attending some of the events they promoted.
However, as we all know with direct mail, there are certainly some up-front fees to overcome right off the bat. Between graphic design, printing, and postage costs, there’s a decent amount of overhead associated with direct mail before your prospects even get your piece.
LinkedIn Ads (and digital marketing in general) have a much lower cost to entry. After the creative is ready, your advertising budget goes towards your campaign goals, not putting a stamp on an envelope. This means more of your budget is going to work for your campaign.
Plus, with retargeting properly set up, your association has the ability to stay in front of prospective members to ensure you’re top-of-mind while they make their event attendance, education and learning plans, and other professional decisions for the year ahead.
LinkedIn Ads ROI
If you haven’t dabbled in LinkedIn Ads Manager, I can tell you that it’s a veritable smorgasbord of data. The ability to measure key performance metrics like engagement, clicks, views, etc. make the LinkedIn platform incredibly helpful and effective for marketing campaigns. You know how much you’re spending, and you know what the return on your spend is in the form of your cost per conversion. There’s no guesswork based on correlation.
Moreover, the ability to target your ads by location, job title, lookalike audiences, etc. allows us to make sure your ads are only shown to audience segments that are most likely to join your association.
Users can also test different value propositions, creative, and offers to maximize ROI. In short, LinkedIn offers a platform that delivers top-flight prospects, at a low cost to entry, and the feedback required to make future campaigns more and more effective as time goes on.
In these tough times for the association industry, association executives need to be smarter than ever with their marketing budgets. LinkedIn is a promising option for those interested in affordable, measurable membership campaigns.
Interested in giving LinkedIn a try for membership recruitment, event promotion, or another initiative? We’d be happy to walk you through LinkedIn Ads and even do a little legwork for you. Get in touch to set up a call.