Engage Generations X, Y, and Z
Shannon Neeser is a young Xer who relates more to Generation Y. She has a background in communications and business writing. Shannon works as a full-time content specialist and is an avid volunteer for nonprofits in her community.
Whatever else you want to say about Gen Y, you gotta give them credit for being educated. But, is that such a good thing? What do they have to show for their education? High Millennial unemployment rates and student loan debt ? This isn’t looking good. Can’t we all be CEOs? Gen Y grew up [...]
Succession planning is good for the health of your organization. It ensures you are prepared to fill vital roles in your organization should people leave unexpectedly or otherwise, and it engages and helps retain your best employees. Succession planning should be done openly and honestly. Keep channels of communication open to those involved so they [...]
Gen Y is a new type of consumer. Old marketing strategies won’t work on them. Your marketing plan needs to grab their attention. In this information age, these socially connected times, anyone can reach Millennials; and they know how to filter out the noise. To get Gen Y’s attention, you need to be bold. In Mad [...]
Membership is about the value, what the experience of belonging, offers. To recruit members, associations need to focus on the value when pricing and marketing their membership. Membership pricing This is not business as usual. Even if your association has been using cost-plus pricing for years, as interest in joining associations declines, pricing structures need [...]
When you’re interacting with prospective new members, you need to have a convincing pitch. I’m sure you’ve all heard some bad ones. I know I have. The last association I didn’t join didn’t have a pitch; I’m not even sure they had a purpose. If they did, they weren’t communicating it to me, and I certainly wasn’t buying. Naturally, a good pitch includes a [...]
Gen Y does not want to be sold to. But, that does not mean they don’t want to buy things. Quite the opposite, in fact. This generation spends $200 billion annually. Millennials not only want to buy things they feel good about, they want to talk about them, tell others to buy them too. You [...]
Did you hear about the guy who outsourced his job to China so he could spend time at his desk watching cat videos and keeping up with Facebook? There are a lot of things to say about this, but my first thought is, “Now there’s a guy who could be working from home.” If the work [...]
What do you suppose was the first thing I did when considering whether or not to join a professional organization? I asked current members for their thoughts on the value of membership. That’s what. Marketing Incorporated’s 2012 Marketing Benchmarking Report states that word of mouth and email are the two most preferred marketing channels for [...]
The other day in a conversation with a recent college graduate, I realized that she was probably going to take her degree and move halfway across the country. In fact, the only reason she’s still in town at all is an unpaid internship she found. She’s hoping she can take the experience she gains from [...]
Your association has probably been a resource for professionals to share useful and specific inside industry knowledge for years. You may still be that, but today, that isn’t enough to attract new members. That’s the past; you need to start focusing on the future. I have a smartphone; I’m connected to a worldwide community through Twitter and [...]
