Assessing Your Products and Services
By Caroline Fuchs
Originally Published in ASAE Marketing Fast Facts, August 2001
Looking for new or improved products and services that meet members’ needs and increase participation and purchases? Who’s not? Unfortunately, many organizations review and introduce products based on happenstance and availability instead of strategic assessment and product development. Although wonderful ideas often come from left field, a more strategic approach will produce improved and diversified products and more effective marketing efforts.
You can create a development system for new products and services by assessing your organization’s current services and then using those findings to develop new ideas--topics and delivery methods--for future offerings.
Assess your programs
Assessment is best approached from many directions to receive a comprehensive picture and fodder for new service ideas. When you review programs and search for new ideas, strengthen your knowledge base by incorporating elements from each of the following assessment activities:
Build a products and services matrix. Juxtapose your services against the audiences they serve and observe any holes in the program mix. Throw in statistics that quantify participation and evaluate success. You’ll see opportunities for improvement in program design, delivery, and marketing communication.
Understand and use available marketing channels. Are you using marketing channels consistently and effectively? Go to the source, and speak directly with colleagues responsible for the member mailing list, the Web site, advertising, exhibits, media relations, or member outreach. Extend your conversations to include local chapters and state affiliates, and you’ll uncover promising communication options. List these promotional opportunities, then apply them to your marketing strategies for individual programs and services.
For example, if your members actively participate in chapter and regional activities, you’ll need a strategy to build recognition and advocacy at the regional level. Speaking to appropriate outside contacts might lead to tactics such as using national liaisons as program champions at the chapter level or providing information-starved chapter newsletters with articles on a topic closely aligned with your product or service. Don’t be shy about sending camera-ready ads to accompany an article.
Audit your marketing materials and communication. Take a hard look at what you deliver to members. Is it inspiring? Does it speak to their needs? Do they even notice? Now is the time to be critical; decide what needs improvement, then decide how to perfect the message and the medium relative to your resources.
Evaluate successes and failures. Measure participation levels, satisfaction, revenue, and marketing effectiveness.
- Did you decide how to measure success before program launch?
- Was the room filled to capacity?
- Was member satisfaction high?
A questioning eye will lead to effective solutions. Tools such as surveys, promotional tracking codes, cost-benefit analyses, and participant interviews will help to measure effectiveness.
Ask your program partners. Whether they provide member affinity programs or deliver your online education, your partners have multiple clients and, probably, a for-profit approach. Their perspectives are invaluable as you pursue program and communication improvements and new service ideas. Discover what marketing approaches have been successful with other clients, what strategies they would like to test, and the returns they would like to see. Then apply the results to your association’s situation.
Ask your members, participants, and prospective customers. Stay in touch with the end-users across every phase of product and service development. Meaningful interpretation of members’ and customers’ comments will allow you to design a winning program, reach new audiences with a standard program, or time the sunset of a tired topic or approach. Employing a variety of methods--member committee interaction, focus groups and online surveys, and qualitative participant interviews--will help you to open communication.
A national health-related educational association recently integrated member interviews into its membership marketing planning process. Staff found that colleagues in the industry often provided prospective members with their first introduction to the association. Based on this information, the organization began searching for strategies to incorporate word-of-mouth or viral marketing into its marketing mix.
Benchmark against other organizations. Knowing your competition is just the beginning. Find groups that share attributes (membership size, budget, staff numbers) with your organization, and look for best practices. How? Web sites yield program information that will help you to determine what other organizations are doing. And don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Your colleagues in other associations are usually happy to let you know what works--and what doesn’t. Take this comparative data and match it against your offerings; you’ll be surprised at what it shows and the ideas it can generate.
For example, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASLHA) successfully undertook a benchmarking study that showed comparable organizations obtaining higher participation levels in member benefit programs. One variable was the use of outbound telemarketing. Based on the successful experiences of other organizations, ASLHA has decided to experiment with new promotional channels and is investigating telemarketing as a way to promote products and services.
Generate new ideas
Assessment techniques yield information about possible topics or services for you to use in new product development. As you work through the assessment process, allow time and space for new program ideas.
Include a column in the products and services matrix that identifies under-served audiences and product diversification opportunities (e.g., reconfiguring a conference seminar for online delivery). Record ideas for future consideration.
Benchmarking is particularly effective in bringing new ideas forward. What’s happening in the larger world that you can adapt and deliver to your members?
Don’t miss the opportunity for a new perspective. All interviews should include questions about new services.
- What else should we be offering?
- Is there an audience that needs, requires, or is asking for additional services?
- What topics spark conversation?
Your program evaluation process should make you aware of alternative methods of program delivery, communication, and topic selection. Solutions for one program might generate innovation in another area; noting alternative solutions will fuel your product development activities.
Improvement follows assessment and appropriate action. An inventory, coupled with an understanding of what exists, will help you to improve, enhance, and innovate. Use all possible methods to seek out information and opinions. Summarize your work, and apply it to introduce marketing improvements and product innovation.