Non-dues revenue (NDR) programs are essential to the success of an association. Offering programs that contribute to furthering your mission, meeting member needs and positioning your organization as a subject expert to your target audience can increase awareness in the marketplace, drive membership numbers and satisfaction, and add to your bottom-line. Benchmarking studies are an excellent source of non-dues revenue and can meet all of the other objectives listed above making them a highly efficient endeavor with a high return on investment.
Benchmarking studies can provide information and data that your members, and prospective members, cannot access elsewhere. Associations are particularly well positioned to provide valuable data points for comparison of industry key performance indicators with their readily accessible pool of potential survey participants (i.e. – your members). Your members can, and should, help you determine what kind of benchmarking studies you should undertake. Ask your members:
- What keeps you up at night?
- What problems do wish you could fix?
- What information is hard for you to get?
- What information is important to you?
Your benchmarking study research can begin with a simple survey or an analysis of the one-on-one interactions that take place between you and your members. You can also conduct focus groups, or assemble a task force to examine the results of these questions to best determine what kind of study will be the most relevant to your audience.
Once you’ve determined what kind of study you’re going to undertake, you need to decide how to market and monetize it. Because the study results often present information on key performance indicators that can’t be accessed elsewhere, simply communicating the availability of the data is enough, in many cases, to drive interest and revenue. You could publish an executive summary of the study’s findings as a means of enticing prospects to purchase the full report. Many associations provide results free of charge to members who participate in the benchmarking survey and use this as a selling point when recruiting new members as well as a means of increasing survey participation.
What if undertaking a benchmarking study isn’t in your association’s budget? Your association can recruit a survey sponsor to cover some, or all, of the upfront costs, of developing your benchmarking platform. Not only will the sponsor gain brand awareness with the many survey participants and report purchasers, they’ll also benefit from the positive association achieved by having their company’s name linked with such a valued product.
Benchmarking studies deliver value in many ways not only to your members, but also to your organization. By creating and offering surveys and data analytics on topics of value to your target audience, you’re not only positioning your association as a subject expert, but also creating an opportunity to deliver value and drive non-dues revenue.
