Acquisition is the process by which prospective members are identified as leads, introduced to the features of membership and specified sales content, nurtured through an educational process on the value and benefits of membership, and then closed on the membership sale by being asked to join the association.
Prospecting/Lead Generation – The methods we have used to identify prospective members have varied over the years. The most common method has been through referral by supervisors or colleagues as prospects came to work in the industry. While this remains a reliable source of new members, it has proven insufficient to meet our membership growth goals. Cold marketing emails have proven entirely ineffective and only serve to sour prospects on the possibility of membership altogether. Therefore, we must dedicate ourselves to identifying and attracting prospective members using inbound marketing techniques.
Inbound marketing is a process of offering content and features that will attract, engage, and delight prospective members and make them want to join the organization. This process can also be envisioned as a flywheel, which we will call The Growth Flywheel, where these actions convert strangers into prospects, prospects into customers or members, and then members into promoters of NAIFA.
The Growth Flywheel is powered by identifying and attracting financial services professionals who are not yet members and engaging them through a sales funnel to delight them with the features and benefits that NAIFA has to offer. As part of this effort, we will begin building a national database of prospective members, which will be divided into two groups. The first group, whom we will designate as “qualified prospects,” are warm leads that we have had some degree of success in engaging through The Growth Flywheel. They will be maintained through our customer relationship management (CRM) program, allowing us to carefully cultivate their development into members.
The second group will be those who have not been as receptive to our efforts to engage and delight them. They will be considered “unqualified prospects” and maintained in a separate system where they can be revisited with new or different approaches, as time and resources allow.
Value Proposition – It is fundamental to offer a clear explanation of the benefit of NAIFA membership to prospects and members so they understand plainly that their professional livelihood depends on what we do, and failing to belong is as reckless as choosing not to avail themselves of the very products they offer their clients. We proudly promote that “together, we can take on anything;” however, we cannot take on everything. It is tempting to continuously add more content in hopes of adding more value, but we have to be careful not to confuse and overwhelm them with features and benefits that offer little actual value. How many times have you considered a product that you did not have the time to understand, setting it aside to come back to it at some point…some point that never came? We will focus our attention on what matters.
First, we will return to our brand promise – Advocate. Educate. Differentiate! Everything we do and offer will advance one of these three promises. Second, we will build these three elements into three distinct marketing campaigns, telling our story to members and prospects, and emphasizing the value of membership. Lastly, we will begin to clearly distinguish between “features” and “benefits” of membership. Membership features are the services we provide at NAIFA available to anyone in the industry, whereas benefits only provide value to our members. Features are important, because not only do we have a duty to our future members that do not yet understand our value proposition, but also as a means of creating awareness, engaging, and delighting them to convert them into loyal members. However, we must also make it clear that the members’ benefits are well worth the investment.
We should also spend a moment speaking about the issue of the value of membership. Much is made of this in every sector as costs go up, as they inevitably do, causing us to reevaluate the membership decision. It was Roy E. Disney, Walt’s brilliant nephew credited with saving the company in the 1980s, who said “Where value is clear, the decision is easy.” The truth is that NAIFA membership has tremendous value, and candidly, much more than our dues reflect. We can and must do a better job of articulating where the money goes, how it advances the interests of our members, and what the return on that investment is to our members. By more clearly and directly answering these questions, we are confident that we can prove the valuation of our membership.
Member Personas – We are only as effective as our ability to understand and meet the needs of our members, doing so in a manner and method they appreciate. Increased utilization of AI and other tools will continue to help us do this for each member, but we must also be able to generalize categories of members with similar preference sets so that we can communicate and deliver the value they want in the form and function of which they wish to receive it.
Member or buyer personas are semi fictional representations of a target customer’s needs, preferences, and behaviors. We will identify several such personas, utilizing the data we know about our members. Enhanced by wide-ranging volunteer feedback and member interviews, we will begin to build sales funnels and channels specific to each of these personas.
Campaigns – One of the primary ways we can generate leads and prospects to fuel The Growth Flywheel is through three membership marketing campaigns enacted over the year. These campaigns will rely upon advertising, social media, staff, chapters, volunteers, and members getting the word out in every way possible, highlighting the message of that campaign to attract, engage, and delight prospective members.
The first campaign will begin in January and will culminate at the Congressional Conference in May and will be known as the Advocate Campaign. This campaign will focus on the key wins that NAIFA has achieved through its advocacy efforts, as well as the essential battles that need to be fought in the year to come to protect financial service professionals and their clients from adverse laws and policies.
Immediately following the Congressional Conference, we will begin the second membership campaign, to be known as the Differentiate Campaign, which will emphasize the ways that NAIFA members are distinguished from the field of nearly 1.5 million financial service professionals in the United States, making them more successful and putting more money in their pockets. This campaign will conclude at the end of August and will also include a competition among the chapters with prizes and recognition for the winners.
The last campaign of the year will begin in September and finish off the year as part of the Educate Campaign that will highlight the educational features and benefits that we have to offer prospective members, including certifications and other elements that make NAIFA members the best and brightest. During this campaign, we will closely track and report the progress of chapters toward making their goals.
Sales Programs – The number one reason that someone fails to join an organization is because they are not asked. All our programs are designed with solely that purpose in mind – to make sure prospective members are asked and encouraged to join their professional association
Individual & Chapter Sales – The majority of NAIFA members today belong for the same reason that most all our members in history joined – they started in the industry and someone gave them a membership application, told them to join, and they did. This approach has changed with the times, and it is more common today that someone expresses value to a prospect and recommends they should join, but the concept is the same.
In the association world, when we meet and discuss membership with other industry professionals, we say, “People don’t join organizations, they join people.” The single fastest way to get a prospect to join is if someone they know, like, and trust explains the value and asks them to do it. All plans and technology aside, this will always be our absolute best strategy for acquisition. Our challenge and opportunity are to better engage our members, chapters, volunteers, and staff to make it easier and more common for them to do this and continue to accelerate the process. We will accomplish this by making it more straightforward for members to do this, with turnkey solutions and easy-to-remember messaging, while consistently tracking our results.
Agency Presentations – If individual sales are one-to-one pitches, then Agency Presentations are one-to many sales efforts. As with any sales environment, they work best when done in person, but in the absence of that opportunity, virtual presentations can also work. Ideally, the leader of the group is supportive of the sales effort and will offer words of encouragement to their subordinates to act on the opportunity. Part of our strategy will be to collect more information from our members on these opportunities and/or work to create them. NAIFA has a carefully curated, turnkey presentation and will be conducting training on how to deliver it.
Group Memberships – Group memberships can either be a one-to-many or one-to-even more type of operation. NAIFA currently has three mechanisms for group memberships. The first is the 100% Agency Program, which provides some discount in membership rate and marketing/promotion benefits in exchange for an agency or organization committing to having all their licensed professionals acquire and retain membership. The second is the Financial Security Champion Program, which operates within similar standards as the 100% Agency Program, but recognizes that in some larger organizations, the above standard may not be achievable or practical. Lastly, other group memberships may package additional benefits. These programs are immensely valuable because they enable us to bring in memberships and revenue in bulk.
Influencer Networks – Influencer networks are our opportunity to go from one-to-viral in our marketing channel. Much like social media influencers have become central to the marketing strategies of major corporations, we are working to partner with luminaries of the financial services industry to cross promote NAIFA to their networks, and their services to our members. While still in its infancy, this effort could be particularly helpful in increasing awareness and engagement with new audiences of potential members.
Agency Presentation
100% Agency Program
Financial Security Champion Program
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National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
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