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Suzanne Carawan

By: Suzanne Carawan on November 6th, 2014

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Be a Playmaker: Top Reasons to Learn the Digital Marketing Playbook

Content, Social & Digital Marketing

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

BE AN ORDER MAKER NOT AN ORDER TAKER:

According to this year's Inbound Marketing conference, HubSpot stated that only 20% of today's professionals have the requisite digital marketing skills needed to be successful in their jobs. That means that 80% don't have them and are looking to the 20% to help them out.

A few notes on this:

1) HubSpot did not say "digital marketing skills" to just mean a person relegated to a communications or marketing position. They meant digital marketing skills for everyone. That means U Mr. or Ms. Executive Director, Board Member, VP Events, Professional Development, Membership & Publications!

The big takeaway is that while you may not be responsible for executing a digital campaign, you better well understand what's possible.

2) Associations lack digital capacity today. How do we know this and can state this with such certainty? Well, because we answer support calls and field support tickets all day long from hundreds of associations and we can see the areas where gaps in education exist. We're aiming to try to help organizations build capacity through our November 19th Digital Training Workshop Day.

3) If you don't get digital, you aren't going to get consumers. We seem to want to skirt the issue and not take the time to really understand what today's consumers want and more importantly, how they make buying decisions. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your blast email is actually not the reason that people decide to take action so if you're wondering why you're seeing decreased open rates and engagement is harder to come by, well, it's probably because you're taking a whole lot of action on your side, but you aren't sending meaningful messages or presenting a value proposition that the email recipient actually cares about.

4) Finding a job, getting promoted and being able to bridge into 2015 requires digital. Why do I know this firsthand? Because HighRoad is hiring across a variety of roles and we are getting hundreds of resumes. What's the first thing we do regardless of job role? Look you up on Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If we can't find you, if you aren't actively involved and can prove that you're in the mix of today's online world, you're put into the digital pile on the left--meaning, you're not even a contender.

This is a hard hitting reality for many an association professional who sees any aspect of digital--email, social, mobile--as "not their job" or "what marcomm does". The problem with this is that digital isn't just a role anymore, it is a mindset. And if you don't know it, you don't get it. 



BECOMING A PLAYMAKER:

A playmaker is someone who understands their role, the environment, has heightened awareness of where their teammates are and their opponents and can capitalize on opportunities without fear. Very carpe diem type of attitude. It's critical that associations take today's playmakers and invest in them so that they understand digital so that they can continue to make the organization relevant (and add revenue). If your events person doesn't understand how to weave in digital to the overall pre-during-post event scenario then you're not going to have the impact and the ROI of your event dollar investment. Similarly, if you are launching a new professional educational component or private social network and you don't have any idea of how to drive traffic to your online LMS, then you're not going to get the activity that you seek.

We put together this month's Digital Training & Innovation Day to start to solve these problems. It's not just for the marcomm people (good for them, too), but it's probably even more critical to the association industry as a whole that non-marcomm people show up and learn so you're not labeled as "old school" and left behind. 

Therefore, here's our top reasons to attend this year's event: 

1. Stop doing panic-driven, frenetic, hamster-on-the-wheel, has-to-go-out-on-Thursday-because-that's-my-department's-time-slot digital communications based on the spray-and-pray method that someone will open-click-buy. Learn how email marketing (and the other stuff, but let's face it, all associations rely on email marketing as #1 communication vehicle for EVERYTHING) is supposed to work in 2014.

2. Immerse yourself in a safe environment where people admit that they're overwhelmed, under-resourced & need the help/support/sanity of a community that is evolving together and can share/celebrate the steps they're making to change their business processes and cultural mindset. 

3. Get real data on who's doing what and what is/isn't working so that you can make solid business cases and decisions that are based on hard data. We'll unveil our 2014 State of Digital Marketing in Associations report that you can take with you to help better plan for 2015 and beyond. 


BE THERE:

We're so hell bent on getting the education out to the association and non-profit world that we're investing the time and money to livestream it direct from ASAE headquarters to anyone who has an internet connection and a browser. Consider joining in for free on the Innovation Day and investing in the training workshop. We'd love to have you and consider you a fellow patriot in our drive towards enacting the digital revolution in assocations!

Register now