"Product," "Price," "Place," "Promotion" — the "Ps" of marketing are well-known to students of "Marketing 101." But what about the "B" of marketing?

Things and organizations that have it are the things you must have and the organizations you must join. They are the fast rising stars. They are where the smart money can be found. I’m talking about the "B" of marketing. By "B" I of course mean "buzz." The things that have "buzz" are where "it’s at," and if you are not there, you are hopelessly lost!

Some take pride in being hopelessly lost. But I’m not talking about the latest fashion or generational tastes in clothes or music. I’m talking about the buzz in the business world that marks the difference between winners and losers — the growing operations from those in decline.

We are all familiar with such organizations. They can be new or old, big or small — but there is something about them that causes people to take notice. They are not eccentric, but they do have an original perspective that causes people to raise their eyebrows and ask in wonder, "why has no one ever thought of that before?" They are organizations that come to people’s minds when talking about "excellence," "innovation," and "the places where interesting things are happening."

As an association manager, wouldn’t you want your organization to have this quality? How do organizations acquire it? Does it "just happen," or are there steps that can be taken to make it happen? Some managers have a natural instinct for creating a marketing "buzz." Others have to learn. If you find yourself more in the latter category than the former, then you may be interested in learning and mastering the following five prerequisites for creating a buzz.

1. Know Your Members and Your Market
This observation seems so obvious that you might wonder why it is even necessary to list it. But failure to monitor evolving membership patterns and needs is a surprisingly common problem.

This has become all the more true as the new global economy has force-fed economic and social change. Change has become broader in scope, faster, and more unpredictable. Three years ago association managers reported that they conducted comprehensive strategic planning for their associations every three to five years. Many associations are now following the example of companies such as IBM in undertaking strategic planning on an annual basis.

Certain sectors of the economy are subject to more rapid and volatile change than others. This is particularly true for healthcare, telecommunications, and any and all aspects of the information technology sector. For sectors such as these it is not enough to target where the industry is, because once they have been pinpointed they have already moved on to another location. To obtain usable information association managers must determine trajectories to identify where their industries are likely to be in a year’s time or more — knowing that this can mean the difference between relevance and obsolescence for their associations.

If you want your association to have "buzz," you must be ahead of the curve! One well-known company’s unofficial motto is: "If you are not on the cutting edge, you are taking up too much room!" This is an organization that has buzz; does yours?

2. Give People A Reason To Be Involved
People have less time to give volunteer organizations than they once did. Two career families are the norm, and e-mail and cell phones have stretched the work week to 24/7.

But other changes have affected the nature of volunteer work as well. Loyalty up and down the employer-employee chain has become a thing of the past. Labor statistics show that new entrants into the work force can expect to work for an average of eight different employers in their working lives. Even companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Kodak, and nations such as Japan that were once known as havens for lifetime employment opportunities have quietly closed the book on those days. In today’s economy job security does not come from where one is employed as much as the quality and relevancy of the skills set, experience, and knowledge base that one has.

Given this uncertain and rapidly changing work environment, along with the reality of time constraints — those associations that are likely to attract the most and the best volunteer efforts are those that can serve as sources of the cutting-edge skills, experience, and knowledge that both employers and employees are seeking.

Associations that have "buzz" are meaningful to peoples’ careers. Identify how specific people have used your organization’s products and services to advance their careers. If you have a hard time doing this, then maybe these products and services need to be rethought.

3. Create A Sense Of Excitement
A former presidential candidate once reflected on his failed campaign and identified his problem to be the message he was delivering. "I was offering the equivalent of ‘spinach’ and telling people that it was good for them. It was not a ‘fun’ thing to hear…."

Content is important, of course, but every marketer knows that the way the content is packaged and delivered is also important. Even if your organization is not new, finding new and creative ways to package and deliver your message can cause people to stop and take notice.

Periodically it is wise to take a fresh look at your message and the way you do things. Bring in outsiders. Brainstorm for new ideas. Accept and create challenges to the status quo. If enthusiasm for any aspect for your programs or organization is lagging, then perhaps you need to take a new look at the content, packaging, and delivery of all that you do.

It is said that one dissatisfied customer is the equivalent of 10 satisfied customers. Why should this be so? Presumably, because the dissatisfied people are more motivated in their disgruntlement! Your challenge is to create and motivate a cadre of satisfied members who are enthusiastic about their feelings for the organization and who don’t mind if everyone knows about it! You do this by involving as many of your members as possible in the creation process for developing new products and services, and then finding ways to acknowledge and reward those who best show their support.

4. Appeal to Sense of Belonging, If Not Exclusiveness
The more important a service is to a person’s well-being the more they solicit and rely on the opinions of others when choosing such a service or service-provider. Think about it. If you need a plumber you check in the "Yellow Pages." If you need open heart surgery, you turn to the people whose opinions you trust for advice. What have they heard? What do they recommend?

Consciously or not, people do rely on what others say and do when making their own decisions. Few people want to be the first to join or do something — but neither do they want to be the only ones who haven’t. So the key for an association marketer then is to create the equivalent to the McDonald’s message of "Billions and billions served!" In other words, the message is, if you are not part of this, then you are definitely left out!

On the other hand, the comedian Groucho Marx once cracked, "I don’t want to belong to any organization that would have someone like me as a member!" In this regard, another tactic for certain associations might be to establish a sense of exclusivity — "many are called but few are chosen!" This sort of message tantalizes and attracts people who might not otherwise be joiners.

Either way, the challenge is to create the sense that a person is missing something important if they do not belong to your organization. You can do this by keeping track of who belongs and why, and encouraging them to be active in giving testimonials as to why they have been pleased with their choice.

5. Make Marketing Everyone's Responsibility
The only marketing effort stronger than an organization that has a dedicated marketing team is one in which every volunteer and staff member is involved in the marketing effort. Many voices have more coverage and credibility than one — no matter how loud that one voice might be.

This means that you need to educate all your organization’s staff, volunteer leadership, and regular members as to the marketing goals and objectives of the organization. (Ideally, they should be given the opportunity to be involved at the very beginning in the design of the marketing program by participating in surveys or focus group discussions.) They need to be aware of how they are expected to play a role in this effort and why it is in everyone’s interest to participate. And, if they choose to become involved, they should be given the tools, training, and incentive to be effective. This is a big job, but the beauty of this approach is that once it is in place it is far more effective, less time-consuming, and less costly than a large, centrally-funded publicity campaign.

When all your stakeholders’ voices are mobilized and delivering a focused message, then you will have succeeded in creating an enviable market buzz indeed!

Mastering the Prerequisites
As is always the case, there are those who seem to have a natural instinct for doing these things, there are those who visibly have to work hard at it, and there are those who are proud in their dogged determination not even to try! In this third category people might point to the wisdom contained in the old adage, "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." But if this ever were true — and it is questionable whether it ever was — experience has shown repeatedly that today’s better mousetrap builder definitely must have a good marketing plan or they will lose the market to the one who does.

If your organization has been successfully hitting on all cylinders in all these areas, then congratulations — you are undoubtedly among the leaders of your market!

If you are less than confident about your performance in some or all of these areas, then you probably should dedicate some resources to determine how you can improve, because it is likely that if you don’t you are going to have competitors that will. Today’s marketplace is far too competitive to allow the complacent to survive.

Finally, if there are over-riding qualities an association manager needs to have in successfully creating and maintaining a marketing buzz for their association, one of them at least is to have a passionate desire to listen and to learn. As an association manager you are sitting on a vast reservoir of information just waiting to be turned into marketplace intelligence. And the second "must have" quality is the ability to mobilize and to lead. The winners in this period of heightened marketplace competition will not be the ones with the largest staffs or the biggest buildings, they will be those who have succeeded in mobilizing all the resources at their disposal in ever expanding circles from staff to volunteer leaders to rank-and-file members to stakeholders and strategic partners. The further out these circles go, the more you have been successful in creating a marketing buzz for your organization.

Navigator Series
in partnership with Executive Update Big Thinking for Senior-Level Association Professionals Co-sponsored by Gelman, Rosenberg, & Freedman and The Novick Group, Inc.

All Navigator Series programs will be held from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. at the Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC.

November 28, 2000
“Advanced Marketing Strategies for Bottom Line Results” Co-sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington Rick Whelan, president, Marketing General Inc. Steve Worth, senior partner, Plexus Consulting Group