How to get non-members to buy content
Is your organization looking for strategies to grow membership with your continuing education (CE) program, guaranteeing CE success? Getting non-member learners to buy and absorb your learning content can prove challenging be problematic if association professionals are tunnel-visioned in serving only their core membership.
Read our blog to learn three key strategies to encourage your non-member learners to take more continuing education courses, become members of your association, and ensure CE success.
How to guarantee CE success at your organization
While many would see getting non-members to pay a higher price as simply a way to boost the profitability of a continuing education program, this is one of the best ways to acquire new members. Ultimately, attracting new members is the lifeblood of any association that hopes to be active in a decade.
According to a recent association trends study, the top member benefits from previous studies are even more important this year, with training, certifications and credentials, fueling industry growth, advocacy, and help with career advancement all up significantly from 2022.
Therefore, presenting the best quality and most relevant content to non-members can be your most effective marketing vehicle. Motivating non-members to buy your CE content can be broken down into 5 sections:
- Topic and speaker selection
- Creating non-member personas
- Content delivery
- Pricing and marketing
- Incentivizing member referrals
How to choose a topic and Subject Matter Expert (SME)
When you ensure your learning content is exceptional, you’ll make CE success more likely at your program. But how can you find the right topic for your next CE course?
Landing on a topic and choosing a speaker can sometimes be like the ‘chicken or the egg paradox’. Sometimes deciding that a speaker will draw a large audience and deliver exceptional content no matter the subject can be the right strategy. Other times, you may see that an emerging trend or topic is garnishing a spike of interest, and then you need to find SME’s that cover that topic. Both the topic and SME should be the starting places to attract new members to absorb your content.
Deciding what content to promote should be carefully considered and vetted by other industry experts. Many association education directors have systematic methods to select hot topics and speakers that will attract non-members to their programs. Here are three common ways:
- Evaluate the audience size at other virtual and in-person events
- Create a content committee with thought leaders from both inside and outside the association
- Survey new members on which topics and speakers they would like to see
How to create non-member personas
It’s been said that customer or buyer personas are ‘semi-fictional representations of your customers.’ By dividing your audience into sections, and assigning actual traits, interests, and behaviors to each audience, you can cater the right content, in the right format, to the right learners.
For associations that have a large population of baby boomers, who are starting to retire, it is important to separate these baby boomer member interests from Gen Z member interests. In addition to demographics like age, you’ll also need to segment your personas by the type of buyer. There is no magic number of personas you’ll need, but you should represent all your members and non-members that may purchase CE content from you.
Learn more tips to drive CE success at your association
While we have been discussing using continuing education programs to attract new members through your CE content, there are some people that are simply not a fit for the other 99% of content you offer. This is important to remember because there are several member recruitment activities and resources that can be wasted if this is not accounted for.
Ready to learn more strategies to drive CE success at your association? Read part two of our blog today!
