How to Develop a Marketing Plan for Your Club

Date: Tuesday 27th November 2018

Let's Be Straight: You Need a Marketing Plan

Like anything, in order to build your association, club, or organisation, you need a plan. This simple fact applies to small, medium and large clubs in equal measure.

As the person entrusted with your organisation’s marketing, you want to stimulate member referrals, promote events and activities, retain and engage with your current membership, and revive interest amongst your inactive members. Winging it may seem like the easier option but if you strategically plan exactly what you want to achieve and how you are you going to achieve it, then you won't have any stress or any extra work.

Make Your Club Marketing Plan Achievable

Create a basic plan that you know you can achieve. Aiming high is always a great thing but you need results, not stress. Start simple and grow with it. You should update your membership marketing plan every year to keep it on pace with your general business strategy.

Before You Start

When developing your plan, you need to understand your audience and be clear about the reasons people might want to join your organisation. Once you have your target audience in mind, you can then devote time and energy to your activities relative that particular group. Even if you're targeting a large variety of people, understand the differences with those people, put them in groups and target the groups separately to get a better response.

It’s worth investing your own time to answer these questions:

Who is our target audience and what are their interests?
What do our members expect to get out of joining and participating on our association?
How is our organisation special and why should people join?
Who are our competitors?
How are we differentiating ourselves from the competition?
In what ways are we better or worse than alternates to us?
What is our philosophy/mission/vision?

Once you have answered these questions, you are in a good position to shape your plan.

Have Your Goals Firmly In Mind

Maybe your goal is to increase membership by 6% this year or to double referrals from existing members or to promote your vision with consistent updates on social media. The key is to choose specific goals, so you can measure your performance. Remember that you’re planning should incorporate budgets and requirements necessary to achieve your objectives.

The Organisation Marketing Plan

Now that you have defined who you are and what you are trying to achieve, you are in a position to draft your plan. Remember that the more straightforward and clear your plan, the easier it is to execute. Stick with a limited set of initiatives so you maintain focus. Avoid trying to do too much.

Build a budget-conscious and realistic approach to meet your goals. Document clear strategies and tactics for marketing initiatives like:

Club branding with logo and/or business cards
Association newsletter, or email campaigns (be sure to check out Member Jungle’s member management features with email & SMS)
Social network presence and updates
Online advertising
Event marketing (Member Jungle can help with event management and payment as well)
Presence on social networks

Putting it All Together

Once you’ve drafted your plan, spend some time socialising it with your fellow club members. You might seek an objective view to help you refine your plan. Always keep your target audience in mind as well as your club agenda. Share your membership marketing plan with your team then get started!

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