Fitness Australia, the peak national industry association’s new CEO Bill Moore says running any business can be complicated.

“We want to simplify that, so we’ve developed the Grow Your Fitness Business Toolbox to address this.

“Covering all aspects of business life, we feel the Toolbox will help people whether they’re just starting out or want to grow. They need the tools to do just that.”

The most exciting part? The Toolbox has a collection of business podcasts, videos, templates, tools, guides, articles, news and tips ready for you to access and use at any time.

We’re giving our members the tools and tips for their businesses be more effective plus improve profitability.

Fitness Australia registered fitness businesses now have access to resources on marketing, growth & development, as well as guidance on human resources, finance and management skills, through the Grow Your Fitness Business Toolbox initiative.

“A critical role for Fitness Australia to date has been of registration and standards development. Now we want to focus heavily on helping members to grow.

“Fitness Australia focusing on members and membership growth means supporting the industry as a whole and its key stakeholders. It’s also about understanding the complexities of running a business to ensure they comply with regulations and guidelines, as well as having access to the latest sales and marketing strategies.

“As the peak national body for fitness, the industry can and should look to us to lead the way to continuing education and standards, as well as supporting the fitness industry and everyone in it to build a healthier and fitter Australia,” says Bill.

This article was originally sourced from Fitness Australia and was written by Ortenzia Borre.

Since 2013 Catholic Community Services has trained all its care workers and coordinators in reablement, reports Jackie Keast in this series showcasing how leading aged care providers have embedded wellness approaches.

Even before the current policy push towards wellness and reablement, Catholic Community Services NSW/ACT (CCS) was actively working towards a holistic wellness model underpinned by a belief that older people can improve their health despite frailty.

The model was based on the World Health Organisation’s definition of health as “a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, and saw wellness defined as an active process of making choices towards a healthy and fulfilling life.

“We believed that our most valuable citizens should be afforded the opportunity to embrace wellness no matter what life stage,” community services general manager Janis Redford told Australian Ageing Agenda ahead of her presentation at the upcoming Active Ageing Conference 2016.

Ms Redford said consumers had told CCS that at different points in their lives they felt they weren’t given a voice in the management of their own health and wellness, and the organisation believed it could facilitate this.

CCS is on the beginning of a journey but has a clear vision and strategy, said Ms Redford, with many initiatives currently in development. Key to this is placing consumers at the centre of design and evaluation. “This gives us the best information and feedback to inform our development strategy,” said Ms Redford.

Developing the Approach

Among initiatives that led CCS towards its current approach was participation in the NSW Government’s Better Practice Project in 2013, a funded pilot to develop and implement a reablement program. It saw clients reduce their personal care hours as care workers took a “doing with”, rather than “doing for” approach.

Since then, the organisation has trained all its community workers and coordinators in reablement, which Ms Redford said has made significant difference in how personal care and social support is delivered.

“We are seeing that people are calling the shots on what they feel they can do and… completing those aspects as opposed to community workers completing the whole tasks,” said Ms Redford.

“We are also seeing that with task modification, and through prescriptions of aides and equipment, people continue to be further empowered to achieve more for themselves.”

In the year following, CCS developed a formal health and wellness framework, with six key focus areas: being active; healthy eating and drinking; staying connected; lifestyle; clinical care and healthy mind.

Ms Redford said the development of this framework was crucial to seeing out CCS’s vision, and forms the foundation of its program and services.

It has established a health and wellness unit with a dedicated manager to implement the framework, which it plans to expand further. There is also a dedicated steering committee to guide the process. “This has been important for keeping the health and wellness framework front of mind when there have been so many other distractions with sector reform,” said Ms Redford.

Keys to Success

Among the lessons CCS has learned along the way is that success requires long-term organisational investment. “We would like to have been further advanced in the implementation of our framework, however truly embedding changes and culture change takes time. The evidence of significant benefits to our customers makes this investment very worthwhile” said Ms Redford.

CCS recognised staff and organisational culture were key to embedding wellness successfully, said Ms Redford.

In particular, it saw staff training as crucial and ongoing, and is currently developing the second wave of reablement training to build on prior learning.

The Active Ageing Conference 2016, hosted by Australian Ageing Agenda, takes place on 4 August at Swissotel, Sydney

This article was originally sourced from Australian Ageing Agenda and was written by Jackie Keast.

After an extensive global search, Owen Sharp has been appointed the new CEO of the Movember Foundation, effective June 1. He will lead an international team of 100, reporting to the Foundation's Board of Directors.

Prior to joining the Movember Foundation in October 2015 as COO, Owen was the CEO of Prostate Cancer UK. He will succeed Adam Garone, who after 13 years at the helm is moving into a key ambassadorial role for the Foundation. As co-founder of the organization, Adam has built a global entity operating across 21 countries, having raised over $715 million for men's health programs.

Chairman of the Board, John Hughes, comments, "Adam has made a huge contribution to the Movember Foundation and men's health issues and we are excited to retain his marketing and advocacy skills to assist us in broadening the ambitions of Movember."

Commenting on Owen's appointment, Hughes says, "We are delighted that Owen has accepted the exciting and demanding role. Owen has a proven track record of strong leadership and brings with him a wealth of fundraising experience and a deep understanding of the charity sector as a whole, which will serve the organization well as we further evolve. Owen's familiarity with the Foundation's work and his established relationships with our employees and stakeholders means that he is ideally placed to build on all Movember has achieved across the globe."

Sharp says he's looking forward to taking up his new role.

"I am honored to have been appointed CEO of the Movember Foundation. It's an organization that has done more than any other to highlight the fact that men are dying too young, unnecessarily. This is a societal issue and one that needs to be faced up to and addressed. There is much more to do and I am incredibly proud to have the opportunity to lead the Foundation into the next phase of its evolution, ensuring that we meet our goal of changing the face of men's health forever."

About the Movember Foundation

The Movember Foundation is a global men's health charity.

The Foundation raises funds that deliver innovative, breakthrough research and support programs that enable men to live happier, healthier and longer lives.

Awareness and fundraising activities are run year-round by the Foundation, with the annual Movember campaign in November being globally recognized for its fun, disruptive approach to fundraising and getting men to take action for their health. During Movember, men are challenged to grow a moustache or make a commitment to get active and MOVE. Not only do these commitments raise vital funds but they also generate powerful and often life-changing conversations.

Committed to disrupting the status quo, millions have joined the movement, raising $715M and funding over 1,000 projects focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide prevention.

The Foundation's vision is to have an everlasting impact on men's health.

This article was originally sourced from PR Newswire and was written by Lisa Potter.

The right non-member price for association products boosts revenue, makes membership more appealing, and steers clear of antitrust concerns. It’s just a number, but it’s so much more.

“How much more should an association charge nonmembers for products than it does for members?”

This seems like such an innocuous question. And commonplace, too. Associations have to consider it every time they set prices for new products or set new prices for old ones. It comes up on ASAE’s Collaborate forum often. And yet it turns out trying to find a clear answer is a trip down the rabbit hole.

Pricing strategy in general is hard enough, and something in which associations aren’t known for their savvy. But pricing for a second audience just adds another layer of complexity: The member discount ought to be enough to make joining attractive, while the nonmember markup shouldn’t be so high as to feel like gouging.

ASAE benchmarking research from 2012 showed a median markup of 25 percent on association products and services for nonmembers compared to members (the average markup was 36 percent). Those numbers come from survey responses to a question about the average markup across all products at each respondent’s association, so the data is at best a very smoothed out view of different nonmember markups that, as can be seen in the discussion threads in

Collaborate, are all over the map.

But associations get a third complicating factor because of their status in convening market competitors and serving whole industries, which means selling a product or service also means granting access to it. And so the small matters of antitrust law and tax-exempt status are also of concern. Some products and services that are essential for doing business in an industry must be made available to nonmembers. That much is clear, but the question of a reasonable nonmember price remains.

Remarkably, though, in the place where one can usually take solace that a concrete answer will be found—the law—very little solid precedent exists, says Jerry Jacobs, partner and head of the Nonprofit Organizations Practice at the law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in Washington, DC, and general counsel to ASAE.

“This is an area where there’s been virtually no litigation and virtually no government pronouncements, forever,” Jacobs says. “If you have to look for precedents, you have to kind of 

scratch the dirt to find things.”

This is a bit of an oddity. Jacobs is also author of the Association Law Handbook, Fifth Edition, published by ASAE, which weighs in a hefty 728 pages. In other words, on most association matters, the law has plenty to say. The Handbook supplies one five-page chapter on setting nonmember prices, which Jacobs partly summarizes in an online article at ASAE, “How to Set Nonmember Fees for Association Services”.

There, Jacobs writes that, from what little guidance exists, fairness is the guiding principle. In the unusual case where a product or service is indeed essential for doing business and thus must be offered to nonmembers, setting a nonmember price based on the development costs and the value of volunteer time contributed in generating it seems reasonable. However, “that’s me saying what seems intuitively might be defensible, but no courts or federal agencies have ever said anything definitive about that,” Jacobs says.

The Federal Trade Commission, in an advisory opinion nearly half a century old, suggested that nonmember prices on essential products should not be so high as to compel membership. “I think FTC was looking at that for its implications or secondary ramifications,” Jacobs says. “If everybody in a profession or everybody in an industry were forced to join an association, would that give the association so much power that it could then force those professionals or businesses to toe the line on pricing or market share or whatever?”

As Jacobs sees it, though, that scenario is “quite rare,” and most association products and services don’t meet this threshold. “What services are there that associations provide to their members without which the members cannot do business? Not very many. Some people speak to standards, certification, and accreditation, which in some contexts, not all, are essential to do business in a field,” he says.

For products and services that are simply of very high quality but not truly essential to doing business in the market, then “probably ‘the sky’s the limit’ when it comes to price” for nonmembers, Jacobs writes. Of course, setting too high a price can turn nonmembers away outright, when ideally nonmember sales can be a source of both revenue and membership leads. Logically, the better the product, the more an association can charge nonmembers for it, to both maximize revenue and increase the appeal of joining to get the member rate. But the dilemma is that an association’s best products are also likely to be the ones that fall closest to meeting the “essential” threshold. And determining whether they do is something an association would be prudent to seek counsel on. “A little knowledge in this area is dangerous,” Jacobs says.

And, just for good measure, here’s one more tricky element of nonmember pricing: If you set the nonmember price on a great product or conference so high that it draws a lot of people to join just for that one member discount, you may likely see a lot of these “unitaskers” join for the discount one year and lapse the next, sending your membership numbers and renewal rates on a roller coaster ride.

So, with all of these concerns to factor in, how does your association set its nonmember prices? Do you follow a consistent policy or process to decide? What other considerations must be weighed? 

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Joe Rominiecki.

In the past month a transit-industry association lost a key member and its CEO. That leadership challenges offer a few warnings for associations in terms of PR, governance, and membership.

An executive’s relationship with the board can often go awry. Mission and vision are hard things to build consensus around, and there’s often going to be dissent, healthy or not.

But when the conflict goes widely public, something’s especially off.

That appears to be the case at the American Public Transportation Association, which has had a rocky past few weeks. APTA president and CEO Michael Melaniphy abruptly resigned late last month, shortly after New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it was pulling its membership (and approximately $400,000 in annual dues). MTA voiced it grievances in a seven-page letter critiquing APTA’s leadership, executive committee representation, and more.

What follows is not an attempt to armchair-quarterback APTA, MTA, or anybody else involved in the kerfuffle. I’m writing about it because one upside (of a sort) to incidents like these is the trail of quotes and documents they leave behind, and how they shed light on leadership challenges in a crisis, and how other associations might get ahead of them. So here are a few lessons learned.

1. Representation matters. So does a conversation about what “representation” means. The chief grievance in MTA’s letter was that it didn’t have a seat on APTA’s executive committee, indeed, that no “Legacy Systems” (i.e., older city-based transit systems) or commuter-rail systems did. The letter also expressed concern that while the board was improving on the diversity front, it was lacking geographical representation.

Apart from what’s designated in the bylaws, no constituency is owed a seat at the board table. And every constituency within an association will argue for its own importance. But the letter does highlight the point that representation is important enough that it ought to require regular attention in a bylaws review. Who gets to participate? Do those requirements help present the association as one that’s on top of its industry? Acting CEO Richard A. White acknowledged the issue, telling Politico that “we got a little out-of-balance over the last few years, and we didn’t [do] so intentionally.”

2. How’s your membership model looking? For many large trade associations with relatively few members, the hefty dues paid by one or two of them can play a crucial role in the organization’s sustainability. That’s partly a matter of finances, of course, even the largest associations don’t want to see $400,000 vaporize over a leadership dispute. But it also makes a public statement about how unified, or not, the association is. So it’s worth asking every so often: What would you do if your largest or most prominent member pulled their membership tomorrow, and made a noise about it?

Naturally, MTA had a few ideas about how APTA could be more effective and more efficient. And it felt unheard enough that it didn’t feel particularly interested in being polite about enumerating them: “Frankly, our membership fee of more than $400,000 annually is not commensurate with the level and quality of the services the MTA receives,” the letter reads. If you’re piling on the meetings and services but not paying attention to how much value members are getting out them, you risk falling afoul of those important members. APTA’s White says it’s assembled a task force to address matters of dues and meetings, which will help. So will making those discussions a routine part of the membership department’s conversations.

3. Expect to get both barrels about your overall mission now, too. Governance, finance, and membership issues are mainly of interest to people involved in the association and nonprofit journalists. But public squabbles about those small-ball issues are also invitations to your critics to point out perceived flaws in your operation. For instance, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently used the turmoil to fault APTA for pressing for unwanted and underused publicly funded transit systems. “APTA claims to be an educational organization, yet it hasn’t done much to educate Congress or the public about the long-term costs of rail transit and the need to almost completely and expensively rebuild those rail lines every 30 years or so,” Cato’s Randal O’Toole wrote. The validity of that argument is beside the point here. The question is: Are you anticipating the kinds of blowback that will come your way in these situations?

4. Use the change as an opportunity. APTA’s press release announcing Melaniphy’s resignation is largely thank-you-for-your-service boilerplate. But in a crisis, it’s not a small thing to announce that the door is open for a conversation about what needs fixing, which is a point board chair Valarie J. McCall made sure to include: “the change in leadership will spark and encourage all APTA stakeholders, from APTA members to coalition partners, to step forward with their thoughts and suggestions for improving the association at all levels,” the statement says. “She said APTA is welcoming constructive input to make the association as transparent and open as possible.”

What do you do as a leader to manage tense relationships and avoid having to go into damage-control mode? 

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Mark Athitakis.

New research by Heidrick & Struggles shows that Fortune 500 boards are more likely to favor experienced leaders over demographics when bringing on new directors. One demographic that’s been left out in the cold by this trend? Hispanics, who are sharply underrepresented on boards.

Roughly one in six Americans is Hispanic, but you’d never know it by looking at the average boardroom.

According to a new study by the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, just 4 percent of new directors brought onto the boards at Fortune 500 companies have been Hispanic, a sharp contrast to the 17 percent of the population that Hispanics account for. The statistic is also a decline from 2014, when 5 percent of new board members were Hispanic. In raw numbers, the total stands in even sharper contrast: Just 16 Hispanic board members were appointed this year, out of a total of 399 added across Fortune 500 companies.

In a news release, Bonnie Gwin, vice chairman and co-managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles’ Global CEO & Board Practice, addressed the long-term failure of the executive world to reverse this trend.

“The percentage of Hispanic directors appointed to boards has not improved over the past seven years,” Gwin said in a statement. “We live in a hyperconnected world, and global and domestic markets are changing at a rapid pace—the boardroom needs to reflect that level of change, too.”

The trend is just one highlighted in the latest edition of the Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor, which noted that the number of filled board positions added this year was the largest since the study was first launched seven years ago. A few other key highlights from the report:

While the number of newly filled board seats grew, the overall number of board seats fell to 4,698 in 2015, a drop of 300 seats from 2014. Of the seats that were filled, most went to people with top-level executive experience—54 percent were current and former CEOs, while 19 percent had CFO 

experience.

In most industries, companies prefer board members with backgrounds that match their industries, with industrial (61 percent) and consumer (54 percent) most strongly leaning toward board members with specific industry experience. There is, however, one major exception to this rule: the financial industry, where backgrounds tended to come from the consumer (28 percent), industrial (27 percent), financial (21 percent), and technology (14 percent) sectors.

On other diversity fronts, the results were somewhat better for other demographics. Women, who make up 50.8 percent of the U.S. population, made up 29.8 percent of new board members. While that number still highlights a shortfall, it has improved every year since Heidrick started its study. African-Americans (9.3 percent) and Asians (4.8 percent) were each within 25 percent of their proportional demographics in the U.S.

So what’s creating the demographic imbalance in the boardroom? According to Gwin, it’s the tendency for new board members to be current or former CEOs.

“The focus on board candidates who are sitting or retired CEOs slows the advancement of diversity in the boardroom, because the pool of current and former CEOs is not sufficiently diverse,” she stated in the news release.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now online and was written by Ernie Smith.

News of economic weakness shouldn’t unsettle associations, it should prompt them to think more about what’s worth investing in to weather the storm.

When economic times are tight, does it make more sense to take a risk or is it time to circle the wagons?

To be clear, times aren’t tight according to the broad economic indicators, yet. The U.S. GDP is still positive, but it’s slowing; the unemployment rate is low, but so is the labor force participation rate. And according to a recent report by McKinley Advisors, association leaders are generally upbeat, but a growing proportion is more concerned about what the near future holds for their organizations. As Associations Now reported last week, 13 percent of respondents said they experienced a worse year financially than they expected, and 13 percent said they were “very pessimistic” about their association in 2016.

Time to panic? Nah. But those are higher numbers on the doom-and-gloom side of the ledger than McKinley’s report has delivered in a few years, so it’s worth starting the conversation about how associations can lead through the next economic rough patch.

The immediate tension that arises in such situations boils down to investment. Looking into new markets or revenue opportunities can give associations a cushion in a downturn, but boards can stop short of investing in new ideas if the economic picture isn’t sunny. “Most boards are real risk averse,” says McKinley Advisors’ Jay Younger, FASAE. “And they don’t want to have events unravel on their watch.”

But Younger says there’s a potential missed opportunity for association to begin considering what strategies might or might not work in the next few years. “You don’t have to have iron-clad plans,” he says. “But what assumptions are we making about our business that we might want to question?” The upside for many associations is that they’re well positioned to do that questioning, given how well reserve portfolios have performed in recent years. And though you’re planning for bad times, the vision can still be optimistic. “You need to be thinking about not only the kind of more negative scenarios that might unfold, but also what can we do now that we’re in this strong position to really make something meaningful happen on behalf of our members or our mission,” Younger says.

There are some hints in the McKinley report that associations are already thinking this way. Five years ago, according to the study, the bulk of associations’ organizational priorities were on member acquisition and retention. Now, however, no one goal dominates, and associations have ambitions beyond those standbys: “Generating nondues revenue” (26 percent), “Developing new methods for member engagement” (25 percent), and “diversifying membership/attracting new audiences” (19 percent) are also part of the mix now. And two-thirds of respondents say that they will or are likely to expand programs and services.

But if associations seem to recognize that planting your head in the sand and doing nothing is a nonstarter as a business strategy, unconsidered investments aren’t a bright idea either. As a hint of how to think about managing that issue, a brief history less might be helpful. In 2009 and 2010, as the country was just pulling out of the Great Recession, ASAE conducted a series of surveys of association leaders about how they responded to the downturn. One thing the studies looked at were associations’ predictive power in terms of which programs would succeed and struggle.

For nuts-and-bolts association activities that leaders had long experience in, the predictions tended to work out well, for instance, the proportion of leaders who expected publication revenues to slacken matched the proportion who actually experienced that slackening. But those same leaders could be overly optimistic about new tools like online education and meetings, in 2009 60 percent of respondents said they’d expected a revenue boost from virtual get-togethers, but in 2010 only a third actually experienced it.

That’s not to say online education is a bad idea, six years later, it’s de rigueur at a lot of associations. But in difficult times, it can be tempting to overestimate the economic boost of a new idea. Associations can survive a downturn just fine, but not through one magic bullet. Planning ahead of economic worst-case scenarios (or even bad-case scenarios) is always wise, and it’s worth taking a chance on a new idea. But those moves should also be driven by a frank discussion about what your expertise is, and what counts as a realistic expectation for the success of your efforts.

What does your association do to plan ahead of financial trouble, and how do you discuss risk management in your planning? .

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Mark Athitakis.

A group of professional videogame teams, players, and other industry leaders formed the World Esports Association to help unite and standardize the sport.

The world of electronic sports (esports) and video gaming has grown into a $400 million industry with tons of devoted fans, and now there’s a new association to oversee it.

The Electronic Sports League, an organization that runs gaming tournaments, announced last week the formation of the World Esports Association to standardize competitions and function as the governing body.

“The formation of WESA is a critical milestone on our way to grow esports globally, and we’re incredibly excited to work with some of the world’s best professional teams,” ESL Managing Director Ralf Reichert said in a statement. “Their continuous support to the formation and structuring of the association only further cemented our belief that esports is well on its way to become the leading source of entertainment of gaming fans around the world.”

The group, a coalition of teams, players, and event sponsors—aims to coordinate tournament scheduling and player contracts, prevent use of performance-enhancing drugs and gambling, introduce revenue sharing for teams, and implement standardized regulations.

Teams that have already signed on include Fnatic, Natus Vincere, EnVyUs, Virtus.Pro, Gamers2, Faze, mousesports, and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

“We have to professionalize everything,” Interim WESA Commissioner Pietro Fringuelli told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a $400 million industry, but there’s not one law, one policy, or one regulation that applies to all. It’s grown so much and is attracting so much interest from lots of different parties (that) we feel it’s time to regulate it.”

Players will also have a voice in the body through the Player Council, which will be composed of elected players who can then advocate for topics such as league policies, rulesets, and player transfers.

“WESA offers many opportunities to the member teams and their players, but we’re most excited about the esports’s first official player representative finally becoming a reality,” Team Virtus.Pro player Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas said in the release. “For the first time in the history of esports, players will come together to organize themselves, and that will enable all of us to get a real say in decisions that directly influence us. With a Player Council sitting at the table with the rest of the decision makers, we’re going to continue to improve the tournament and league organization.”

This announcement comes as the esports industry continues to grow in popularity. For example, the number of spectators who view videogame tournaments online and in-person in large arenas is estimated to reach 1 billion this year, and Atlanta’s Turner Sports is building a 300-seat esports arena in its studio that will allow the network to broadcast tournaments online and on live TV.

This summer’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be the first professional esports competition that will be played under WESA regulations. Since the competition is being put on by ESL and WESA doesn’t yet include many other leagues and teams from around the world, there exists some skepticism that the new organization could further fragment the esports world, but WESA hopes to bring structure and a standardized umbrella governing body to the growing industry.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Alex Beall.

When it comes to selling online, there are two very dangerous traps that many modern day marketers fall into.

One is the ditch called, “Push, push, push” where all you do is push your product. This is the ditch filled with old-school marketers who think advertising is the only way to get people to buy.

The other is the ditch called, “Sit back and let the business come to me.” Many inbound marketers take this path, expecting their hard work to bring a flood of interested customers their way.

Then there is a path between the two ditches. This path combines the methods of both types of marketers, leading directly to more sales. The key to staying on this path (and the key to generating massive sales online) is to create balance in your message. That requires you to fine tune your marketing for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

What is the Customer Lifecycle?

The term ‘customer lifecycle’ is a buzzword used quite a bit in the marketing industry. Even though it’s used so often, it tends to shift meaning depending on who you’re talking to. This makes it hard to nail down what specifically the customer lifecycle is.

Wikipedia says it well:

“Customer lifecycle management is the measurement of multiple customer related metrics, which, when analyzed for a period of time, indicate performance of a business.”

This can, and does, encompass a variety of key points. For example, some people use the term ‘customer lifecycle’ to represent the time from when the customer buys through when they become brand advocates. Others use the term ‘customer lifecycle’ to talk about the various types of customers that buy throughout the lifetime of your product.

I think of the customer lifecycle as the time from when a person becomes aware of your product to the time she buys and beyond. Here are the five stages:

1. Awareness;
2. Consideration;
3. Selection;
4. Satisfaction;
5. Retention.

Let’s dig into each of these more closely and look at how you can dominate at every one of these stages using smarter online marketing strategies.

1. Awareness

Before a person can buy from you, she needs to know your product exists. This is common sense, which is why it makes up the crux of how companies market themselves.

Ads are shown on television, social media sites and in newspapers. Salesmen are hired to spread the word about the business at networking events and by knocking on doors. Websites are built to educate the public about what is being offered.

In this stage, a business must tell a customer why she needs what they’re selling. When the customer is becoming aware of a product for the first time, she still needs to be educated on:

• The problem the product solves for her;
• The reason it’s so important to resolve this;
• The benefits associated with the purchase.

When marketing to the customers who are not aware of a product, or are unsure of why they should pay attention to the product, education is vital. It’s up to you, the marketer, to describe how a purchase could make the customer’s life immensely better. Here are a few examples of how specifically you can dominate at this:

• Create a special landing page specifically for your target market to educate your potential customers on what you’re selling;
• Use your social media accounts to slowly raise awareness about what it is you sell by getting your fans to help you spread the message;
• Tap into business partnerships to get influencers to share why you’re such a great product with your shared audience.

This is the stage where you need to be offering information in a way that shows your customer why you matter. This is where you need to make your customer pay attention so she sees why what you’re selling matters to her specifically.

2. Consideration

Capturing the interest of the market and educating your potential customers about what you offer is only the first step. From there, the customer moves into consideration mode. She knows you’re not the only company that does what you do, so she’s bound to start doing her own research.

During the consideration stage, your customer is digging into the nitty gritty. She’s giving your company the run down internally comparing everything from price and package to attributes and amenities. She wants to find the best value for her dollar.

When a customer is pinning you against your competition, you need to stay top-of-mind and stand out from the crowd. The first step in doing this is by showing up.

Too many businesses teach a customer about why their product matters but then don’t nurture the interest through the consideration stage. The best way to do this is to set up a marketing funnel to check in with the customer regularly while she makes her decision. There are several areas where you can show up to keep your business name top of mind and make your company look more helpful.

• Offer something for free on your website (and get the potential customer’s contact information in return);
• Put together a drip campaign that your business partners can send out to their list to encourage the sale;
• Post at least once a day on whatever social media accounts your customer uses to stay top of mind.

The more you can show up during the consideration stage, the better. This is your time to provide the answers to all of your customer’s objections bringing them closer to selecting your company to buy from.

3. Selection

Once a person has selected your business to buy from, you’re not off the hook. You must get the customer to complete the sale. Often times, this is harder than it seems.

Converting interested buyers means making the buying process as seamless as possible. It’s also your opportunity to upsell.

The first part of the selection process is how you present your product. Using choice architecture to set up and compare products side by side can actually help you generate more money during this stage of the customer lifecycle. I know because Hotels.com did it and got me to happily pay 19% more than I had originally intended to pay.

To dominate at this stage, you need to do something similar. You need to pay attention to how the options are laid out and how laborious the buying process is.

Customers don’t want to have to jump through hoops to give you money. If you’re leaking potential customers from your website, and people are not following through selecting your company, you will need to take a closer look at conversion process.

• Are you asking the customer for too much information?
• How easy is it to find and buy from you?
• Are you presenting all of the customer’s choices in a way that is pleasing and makes the customer feel good about their purchase?

Fine tuning the conversion process is complex. Often times, having help of a third party or outside agency can make a world of difference. You’re married to your product. Having someone who can look at your buying process from the customer’s point of view can help you identify potential pitfalls and ultimately boost your overall sales.

4. Satisfaction

Once the product is purchased, the marketing is not complete. Even though you have received payment from your customer, you need to keep her happy so she does not make a return or bad mouth your business.

The satisfaction stage gets ignored quite often because it feels like the transaction is over. The companies that continue to reach out to the customer even after the purchase is made are the ones who continue to win business.

A few ideas for how to masterfully market to your current customer base include:

• Following up a few days after the purchase to make sure the customer is happy. She won’t always tell you.
• Continuing to check in with the customer to let her know about new deals or upcoming offers.

This might sound time consuming, and if you do it manually, it is. However, having an automated marketing funnel for post-purchase follow ups will take this important step off your plate and still help your business reach every single customer at the right time after they’ve bought from you.

5. Retention

You’ve almost done it! You’ve won the sale and you’ve kept your customer satisfied after the purchase. Now, you move into the loyalty phase. This is the phase where your customer decides whether or not she is loyal to your brand, no matter what.

Retaining a customer takes continued marketing. You must extend your post-purchase marketing funnel out to continue to sell the benefits of your business to your customer. This can be tricky because you don’t want to violate the person’s trust by abusing the contact information she’s given to you. Here’s how to do it appropriately:

• Offer a reward for being a loyal customer to your business.
• Encourage your customer to publicly talk about you by offering another reward for referring other people to your business.
• Promote customer-only sales and events to show how much you value those connections.

No matter what you do, keep connecting with your customers long after the purchase. Let them know you care and that you’re still around creating exceptional products or services that they can buy.

From Start to Finish

The time it takes your customer to move through each stage of the customer lifecycle varies. Some industries, each of these stages happens quite quickly. Other times, it goes slower. In either case, your marketing needs to be on point so that you can convert more interested buyers and keep your customers around for the long run.

Not sure where you’re hitting a sticky point in the customer lifecycle? Let’s talk. Schedule your free business consultation with one of our team members to pin point where you’re leaving money on the table and how you can fix that.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Goutham Bhadri.

Facebook was once a great way for personal brands to immediately start building an audience for their Pages. In the last few years algorithms have changed all of that, but a new feature aims to solve the organic growth problem.

Many brands and businesses post content, images and video on Facebook as a way to attract likes, comments, and shares. But many of these posts are no longer seen in the News Feeds. This can be a challenge for visibility, which Facebook Audience Optimization offers to fix with targeted posts.

The new feature can help your brand focus on the right audience based on your topic and related interests. With the addition of specific tags a post has more potential to reach your community and attract new Fans.

When you publish a new post on Facebook your brand can is place its content in front of the eyes of thousands of readers who will be more likely to be interested in your products or services. A simple addition of a few key terms is all that is needed.

How Facebook Audience Optimization Can Increase Visibility

Here are several ways the new Facebook feature can enhance your organic visibility:

Targeted marketing on Facebook: While a paid advertising campaign can allow for demographics and keywords, a specific group of tags can potentially attract the same Fans as along as it is not too broad and relates well to your content.

Attracts interested readers: Even if your brand is posting on a specific topic you can include tags for followers who are interested in anything related to that. This can even include the use of large brand names and even celebrities. Facebook provides the potential reach for every tag used.

News feed visibility: A post that includes targeted tags is more like to be seen in the New Feeds than one that is not. If your posts are no longer being seen by your Fans then this could bring your visibility back to their profiles. Tags that include terms that are not too broad in scope, but are more specific will have a better reach.

Increase in conversions: When your brand researches your target market for the right post tags then your readers will be more likely to make a purchase. Because you are honing in on a specific market they will have a greater interest in what you have to offer.

Creating a Facebook Audience Optimization strategy for your brand is simple to set up in your Page settings if your Fan base is under 5,000 Fans. Otherwise the feature is automatically available to all English speaking brand Pages. The next time your business publishes a post you will be able to focus on a targeted audience with the ability to attract more visibility and leads.

This article was originally sourced from Business 2 Community and was written by Personal Branding Blog.