As Executive Director of a few associations, I spend a fair amount of time editing marketing copy: brochures, emails, web pages–all designed to be attractive or interesting to my members. Here’s the problem: I’m not one of my members. I’m an association guy. So what appeals to me may not be appealing to my members. Of course we all know this, so we work hard to really know our membership and what they like/want, and we also engage them to help us directly in creating these materials.
But today I saw a brief survey by a marketing guy about what people think bout paid advertising on google searches. Lots of people don’t like it, apparently, and trust is one of the big reasons (I wrote about that on GetMeJamieNotter). Also interesting, however, was the difference in attitude between people who work in marketing and people who don’t. In short, the marketing people think the paid links are more valuable.
While I suppose that’s not surprising, it is an important issue. We just can’t help but like the things we create. And that’s something that deserves our attention as we manage associations. We might like our messages, web sites, emails, flyers, etc. but we are biased. So I constantly remind myself to figure out where to collect actual data related to the impact of the messages we create. It’s not really about whether I like them or even if some of my members like them. The question is, are they producing results.
