5 Business Trends That Will Influence Membership Expectations

The blogosphere has been full of posts about predictions and trends for business in 2012. You work for an association, so why should you care? These trends will affect the experiences your members have with companies and brands, and their expectations for all organizations, including yours, will be influenced by those experiences.

Amidst the many pronouncements about the future, 15 Marketing and Business Trends That Matter, by Rohit Bhargava, is one that deserves attention. It’s not an impromptu “let’s-jump-on-the-trends-bandwagon-to-get-traffic” post. Bhargava collected trends throughout 2011 and began writing this report in November. He’s the senior vice president of Global Strategy & Marketing at Ogilvy and an adjunct professor of global marketing at Georgetown University, so he’s no slouch.

The trends he highlights illustrate emerging customer behavior and experiences, not technology and tools. Bhargava says, “Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends.” Being an Ogilvy guy, he writes from a brand perspective, but we can imagine the implications of these trends on the member experience.

“Many of these trends were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design,” he says. Are associations culturally prepared to give staff and members the time and space to be creative together?

It was hard to choose only five trends because several of them relate to the association experience. Here are my picks.

1. Corporate Humanism: Companies find their humanity.

Sound familiar? It does if you’ve read Humanize by Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter. Bloggers talk incessantly about organizational culture because so much depends on it. More associations will listen to and engage in conversation, encouraging their staff to personally interact online with members, rather than broadcasting as a faceless institution.

They’ll, frankly, get over themselves and slowly let go of controlling ways: being flexible and trusting about how, where and when employees work; and getting rid of those whose egos and weaknesses prevent the association from becoming more social and human.

2. Social Loneliness: Despite online friends, loneliness grows.

In a personal post about social media relationships that was spurred by the suicide of one of his online friends, Jay Baer wrote: “Fundamentally, technology and our use of it isn’t – as we’ve all hoped – bringing us closer together. In fact, it may be driving us farther apart, as we know more and more people, but know less and less about each of them.”

Bhargava has the same concern but is optimistic that: “Social loneliness will lead to opportunities for companies who can create solutions to help people connect online and offline.” Sounds like a job for associations! Associations will offer more satisfying online and face-to-face membership experiences that provide a sense of community and opportunities to develop deeper relationships.

3. Charitable Engagement: Fundraising combined with engagement to inspire loyalty.

We compete with charities for our members’ attention and time. If charities find new ways to increase donor and volunteer engagement, associations better step up their game. They’ll start by understanding the volunteering motivations and preferences of members, creating opportunities that appeal to them, better marketing these new volunteering opportunities and leveraging the social influence of members.
 
4. Real Time Logistics: Real time info improves customer experience.

This trend can be summed up in three words: listen and respond. Bhargava describes it as “getting better at using the stream of real time commentary offered by consumers to generate insights….” The key here for associations is to listen to what your members, prospects and attendees are saying online. Use what you learn to improve their membership or conference experience.

5. ChangeSourcing: People collaborate to achieve real change.

Sounds like every association’s mission, doesn’t it? ChangeSourcing takes crowdsourcing to the next level, giving all members, not only leadership, the opportunity to make a difference. It can only happen if association leadership is willing to invite new and different voices and perspectives to a bigger virtual table, and experiment with new ways of listening and participation.

Check out the remaining ten trends at Bhargava’s blog. Which of them do you think will make an impact on associations in the near future?
 

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who is still reading and enjoying posts about trends, predictions and resolutions for 2012.