As the driver of association membership, you’re well aware that retaining current members is preferable to recruiting new members plus regaining ones you’ve lost during the past membership drive timeframe. It’s very related to how businesses think about retaining current clients: according to Gartner, it costs 5x as much to acquire a new customer as it takes to keep an existing one satisfied.

“They weren’t a better team, but they played a better game.”

After the Packers’ bitter loss to the Falcons during yesterday’s division championship game, this was the sentiment that (begrudgingly) floated to the forefront of my thoughts. The Falcons weren’t an arguably better team, but yesterday, they absolutely played the game of football more successfully.

You may have heard the term inbound recruiting in HR circles in the past few years. But do you have a good understanding of what it is, why it’s trending, and how it could change the way you do your job as a recruiter? Today, I’ll dive in and give some grounding to this new term and how inbound marketing for recruiters changes the way you recruit for hard-to-fill, high-volume open positions.

A strategic role like a VP or Chief Officer of Marketing has a big impact on your business. Depending on the size of your business, a director of marketing may have just as large an impact. Hiring for this role means a long and often difficult recruiting process, with the chance that the person hired may not be a good fit or will not have the leadership qualifications promised during the interview process. Outsourcing the responsibilities of a CMO to an agency or firm may be the right choice for your marketing investment due to a few key differentiators.

Identify, connect, explore, advise. We use a variation on Hubspot’s inbound sales method, but the main points are the same: by educational and consultative in your sales process. The idea (and, in practice, the reality) is that prospects have already done a majority of their research about you and your products before they are ready to talk to a salesperson. As a result, salespeople must adapt to today's buyers. 

It's not common to find marketing agencies specializing in construction, but luckily, you've come to the right place to learn more. In the past, I've talked about how industrial commercial construction company marketing is complex, so construction companies, especially those in specialized industries, need specialized marketing. Today's post focuses on lead nurturing, part of the conversion-to-closing process. Need a refresher? We've created this handy infographic about the inbound process and how it works for B2B construction companies.

Lead nurturing is the next step in the process after you've attracted someone to your site and converted them into a first-time lead: they've filled out a form and given you permission to communicate more with them, but they're not quite ready to purchase. Lead nurturing is what happens between conversion to a lead and closing a sale.

So, to start off… what the hell is membership engagement? I know a lot of you might have been thinking that.  Well, that’s ok because there isn’t a clear cut answer.  Membership Engagement isn’t just the newest buzzword that people like to sling around - it’s a real thing, but it will mean something different to each association. 

We have all been through presentations with lousy speakers where we have sat patiently checking our phones, feeling like time was standing still, wondering what’s for dinner and then left feeling cheated of our time.  I don’t know about you, but I have been through enough of them where, if the time spent was combined, I could have probably hiked to Colorado and back (and enjoyed it significantly more; granted, I do like hiking).

Without members, associations would disappear; but it is important for the integrity of your association that your members are qualified and meet set standards.  So, setting up a way to measure the qualification of your potential association members is important. 

We have all sat through a boring presentation.  Maybe it’s a topic that we are already familiar with, maybe the topic is too far over our heads, or maybe the person giving the presentation just has your sleep number dialed in and is slowly lulling you into a coma.