association comments-o-matic » Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Acronym

comments-o-matic — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:50:08 +0000

Quick clicks: Snowy day edition…

This is a bit of a catch-up edition of Quick Clicks, so it’s a little longer than usual. But if you’re in the DC area (or elsewhere) and snowed in, what better time to catch up on your reading? First,……

Reply at Association Inc

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Comments-o-matic is brought to you by Scott Oser Associates. Upcoming: more marketing education from Scott Oser and Kevin Whorton.

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Acronym

comments-o-matic — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:30:08 +0000

Free for a day…

Some of you may have seen that access to the Wall Street Journal online—which normally requires a paid subscription—was free yesterday. At right, see a screenshot I grabbed yesterday. The free day was subsidized by a sponsorship from Acura, which……

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Ellen

comments-o-matic — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:50:04 +0000

Great post and comments! I’ve been watching various discussions of what’s happening in the newspaper business for quite awhile.

I cut my professional writing teeth on the local weekly back (waaayyyyy back!) in high school. The local paper was just that: local. It left national reporting to the big-city papers and regional reporting to the mid-size market papers. Now even the local papers think they need to cover national events.

But every newspaper is local, isn’t it? Even the big-city rags?

Now that we’re travelling full-time, moving from state to state and region to region, I’ve discovered what I believe to be missing from newspapers, and why they likely fail: they forget they’re local.

I want to know what’s going on — beforehand, so I can plan, and afterwards, so I can see if I missed something. I want to know about the upcoming festival, the latest on the local political scene. I want to know about the area I’m in. So I buy the local newspaper. And so far, of the places we’ve been, I’ve found more helpful information there than I ever could on the town’s Web site or via the CVB site or other online feeds.

Where newspapers go wrong is when they shift their focus from what they do best — which is focus on their immediate territory (whether that territory is the city of Temecula, CA, or inside the beltway) — and start to spend newspaper space on stuff others do better.

And that’s the lesson I think associations need to take from what’s happening with newspapers: know your territory. Cover it better than anybody else. Think of the long-term residents who want to see their name in the paper, and give new residents and visitors the information they want.

And as for micro-pricing? Absolutely a good idea. Just as I can buy one day’s newspaper without subscribing for a full year, I should be able to just purchase some of an association’s offerings. I’ve become a virtual member for every association in which I’m a member. Some of these memberships will fall away as I’m finding the dues just to receive their magazines (about the only benefit a remote member gets) just isn’t worth it. Offer me a special rate for that magazine alone and I’ll subscribe. But don’t force me into a membership I don’t want and won’t get anything more out of.

Micro-pricing isn’t about the pricing — it’s about the flexibility someone gets from it. It’s about some revenue versus zero revenue. It’s about keeping people connected in some way to your organization, rather than letting them disconnect and disappear.

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by David Gammel

comments-o-matic — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:50:07 +0000

I heard a quote years ago (sorry can’t remember who said it!) that an association is not a single business; it is a collection of small businesses operating under one roof.

The unique spin associations put on it is having a consensus-based governance model slapped on top of a small conglomerate with a highly focused market. That brings lots of challenges but also offers tremendous opportunity, as you rightly point out.

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Mark Athitakis

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:05 +0000

I’m on much firmer footing talking about the newspaper world than the association world, but I feel like I can comfortably say a few things from my perspective.

It’s true that the changes effecting newspapers and associations are similiar—in both cases the explosion of free information on the internet has made it easier for people to make end-runs around organizations that were once the sole repositories of relevant material. But the similarities pretty much stop there. I mean, newspaper owners would sell firstborns to have what many (most?) associations have—distinct, passionate, and identifiable audiences whose concerns and interests are largely knowable. Newspapers don’t have that close understanding—even if they emphasize reporting nobody else has, there’s no guarantee that people will care about it, because the readership’s interests are so broad and diffuse. (Consider the Post’s ambitious but ultimately failed “Loudoun Extra” online effort.) So to a certain extent newspapers either have to be passive about revenue (”We need advertising to pick up”) or it needs to coax its readers into a brand-new mindset that has a bit of passive-aggressiveness built into it. (”If you like our content so damn much, maybe you could kick a few pennies our way every so often?”)

But the association model has enough revenue streams in it that (most) don’t have to wring their hands about revenue (though I’m sure everybody hopes sponsorships pick up), and association content and services are niche-focused enough that there needn’t be a timidity about charging for it—unlike the New York Times, you can correctly argue that you’re the only source for important and relevant information and experiences that improve your success in your chosen field.

I understand that every organization has to do a bit of jiujitsu to change the culture of members—that they need to be coaxed to some degree to understand the value of what you provide. Giving away some of your work for free plays a very important role in that understanding. But sometimes things are valuable because they have a substantive dollar value to them—or as you put it, you charge “a hell of a lot” for them. Every association will have to figure out what costs its members can bear. But newspapers have to go from free to some kind of paid model, which is a different cultural shift than the one assocations are considering. Nickel-and-diming members runs the risk of making people think you’ve now diminished yourself into a purveyor of five-and-dime products.

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Mark Athitakis

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:05 +0000

Eeep! I meant to say that “the association model has enough revenue streams in it that (most) don’t have to wring their hands about *advertising* revenue.”

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Maddie Grant

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:05 +0000

Ha – Kevin I knew you wouldn’t disappoint. I was waiting for someone to say “hold on a minute” and push back against the comparison. I personally have not weighed in on this debate yet, though in my post I did find some great other blog posts that seemed to reflect some of the same ideas as Bruce’s. I’m still percolating it all. I do think that associations can greatly benefit from “thinking outside the association box” (cliched as that phrase is) and looking to different kinds of businesses/companies/industries to find new ways of doing things better. I also think that the whole concept of the long tail (the “micro”) is crucial to the future of associations, which are crazily niche by definition – but I’m not convinced that selling lots of things for $0.99 is the answer. I think the trend towards “unbundling” is more nuanced than that (or should be) and maybe more to do with “individualizing” the member experience somehow…

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Kevin

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:05 +0000

@Mark – Excellent comment, thanks for leaving it. Great point that one of the primary differences between newspapers and assns is that newspapers don’t really have an audience — what I mean is, the audience is so broad and non-specific that it may as well as not be an audience. It’s “whoever lives in this city.”

Similarly …

@Maddie: The thing about the “long tail” is that it’s only a “long tail” if it’s actually, well, a “long tail” attached to something else. Associations are “crazily niche” as you say; our audience might be described as part of a “long tail” for something else — say, you represent widget manufacturers, which in Amazon’s universe is a tiny segment of a longer tail of sales. But for the widget association, their audience is not a tiny segment, it’s the entire universe.

Personally, I *love* niche; I even love creating and exploiting even further niches in the little universe I work in. But the notion expressed in some of these posts, that assns are somehow missing the boat by not taking what they’re currently doing and “micropricing” it, is ludicrous to me. It’s missing the whole point of the niche! Which is that niches enable you to dive down deep, create valuable things that Amazon (for example) can’t offer, and charge what those things are really worth, which ain’t “micro.”

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on What People Are Missing in the Association/Newspaper Comparison by Joe Rominiecki

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:05 +0000

I suppose it’s my turn to respond here, as I think I’m partly responsible (at fault?) for getting this micropricing conversation going.

I appreciate Mark’s response here, too, as makes some great points about the newspaper equation vs. that of associations. To be completely honest, I’m pretty skeptical about micropricing or pay walls working for newspapers, at least as designed right now.

And I don’t disagree about charging premium prices for highly valuable association products – an in-depth research report, for example. I think that model works if you want to rely less on the membership model, and you’d need highly priced products to generate sustainable revenue in that case, anyway.

But micropricing, for associations at least, wouldn’t be a replacement for any current model. It would be supplemental. It’d be a way to add some extra revenue to your coffers, reach out to some of your long tail, and possibly bring them closer to your core niche. I only see it working for certain types of products, mainly in the “unbundling” sense that Maddie mentions, the ones that you otherwise reserve, as a whole, for members only.

Let it be said that I’m a journalist by training, not a business expert, so there’s probably a lot I’m missing in my thoughts about this, and I appreciate the challenge, Kevin. It’s helped me toss the idea around in my mind some more. I still think micropricing is worth experimenting with in some cases, though.

Reply at Association Inc

Comment on Thoughts on Non-Profit vs. For-Profit Tax Status by Splash: A Blog from MemberClicks » Blog Archive » Friday Top Five: Merry Christmas!

comments-o-matic — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:04 +0000

[...] I’m loving the conversation about non-profit vs. for-profit, especially Kevin Holland’s post from earlier this week. It’s true that there are many for-profit associations out there, and [...]

Reply at Association Inc