BRX Stories – Servicing Associations
Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s chat a little bit about serving associations and maybe share a specific use case or something.
Lee Kantor: Yeah. We’ve been serving associations, it’s just part of the DNA of how Business RadioX serves the local market. I mean, we’ve been working with a variety of associations for many years in a variety of ways. And when we first started out, sometimes we were doing this work and not charging. We were just happy to be included at the events. Now we charge a lot of times, most of the times when we’re working with associations.
Lee Kantor: And one of the kind of recent use case that we’ve had was we were contracted by an association, where the vision of the show was a regular roundtable with their leader and me as a co-host and interview corporate leaders and members every month. And so, that was kind of the vision that we would do this kind of a facilitated conversation around a theme, a topic that was important to them, and talk about how the corporates and the members and the leaders all work together to kind of provide value for the membership and their community and things like that.
Lee Kantor: So, we were doing that on a regular basis and it was starting out great. But what happens a lot of times when we’re doing these type of shows with leadership involved and multiple guests are, it’s difficult logistically to kind of make sure that everybody says they’re available on, you know, the third Tuesday of the month. But then, the third Tuesday of the month comes and there’s some crisis for one of the people or two of the people, and all of a sudden it just gets difficult to schedule and they can’t find a replacement and something will happen invariably. And then, all of a sudden you miss that month and then now you miss the second month. And then, this becomes a thing that you used to do and you stopped doing.
Lee Kantor: So, when this was happening, we were seeing that it was very difficult logistically to schedule. We pivoted to a show where we focused in on their members and we said, you know what? You can invite as many members as you want. We’re going to do this just to keep serving the current membership. And you can still do these roundtables. But let’s not just make the roundtables the only type of content that we’re providing for you. Let us, on your behalf, interview members and just make sure that we tell their stories.
Lee Kantor: So, what happened was this association assigned the inviting of the the members to the show to one of their communications people. And she would just every week invite ten members, of which five of them typically said yes. And then, they would just enter my calendar and I was doing the interviews.
Lee Kantor: So, we were doing this all virtually. It was all done on Zoom. And we were talking about the members, you know what makes this member’s business unique and special? What was their backstory? How did they get involved in this type of work? What’s a success story that they’ve had with their person? And then, always during the course of the interview, I always ask, why did you join this association? How has it helped you? And they always gave a testimonial.
Lee Kantor: So, part of our delivery back to the client was the interview, which they shared through their marketing and networking and the newsletters and things like that and we would carve out that testimonial. So, we were capturing for them just dozens and dozens of testimonials of happy members. And they’ve been able to use those testimonials in a variety of ways. One of the ways which is really cool is they do a conference on a regular basis, and they just have it playing in the background, all these testimonials from guest after guest.
Lee Kantor: And since we didn’t kind of put a limit on the amount of guests, I guess in the last six months, we’ve interviewed over 50 members. And that’s just kind of part of the service that we’re providing them. And then, something that they do, which I think is super creative from a member retention part, is the cohort of guests, they do a meet and greet every quarter for that quarter’s guest, where they all come on a Zoom with the head of the association, thanking them for being part of the show, connecting them together, making sure that everybody knows each other. They’ve kind of created an alumni group of guests of the show.
Lee Kantor: And then, in the last conference, I know an upcoming conference that they’re about to produce, they’re having the person who’s doing the booking of the show stand up and have a speaking opportunity to let all the members know of, hey, we do this show. We would love for you to become part of it. And if you’re interested, please go to this QR code, which we’re going to show on the screen, and sign up here. And then, what she does is she vets all the guests, and she just is really leveraging our methodology of multiple relationship building moments.
Lee Kantor: And so, they’re really serving the heck out of their members. They’re providing so much value. They’re getting a lot of opportunities where the members are actually referring other potential members to her, because she’s casting a wide net and wants to just meet more people, connect with more people so she can help more people.
Lee Kantor: So, the show has really exceeded expectations when it comes to value, providing that this association is doing. And it’s really great that they were open to pivoting, and they’re still getting those roundtables that they wanted, but they’re also getting a mechanism to really provide extra value to members, where a lot of associations are struggling when it comes to providing the value of members that keeps members sticky, and it helps the members refer new members to the association.
