Partner With a Membership Organization to Help Market Your Business

By Kate Perrin, CEO PRofessional Solutions, LLC

This is PRofessional Solutions’ 25^th anniversary and while I credit its longevity to providing excellent PR temp services, equally important has been leveraging the reach of our marketing time and dollars through organizations like PRSA-NCC who spread our message to our target audience.

Fish Where You Know the Fish Swim

Small business owners must find ways to get noticed and demonstrate competence.  Membership organizations provide many ways to do that.  Our target audience is communicators and those who employ them, so where better to focus than on PR professional societies?

Each business needs to identify the best ways to highlight itself, but we’ve identified three roles you can play that membership organizations appreciate and will put your firm in the spotlight:

Be a Supporter – Become a sponsor either of the organization or of one of its events.  Donate to auctions that support its programs or causes.  Contribute to its large events.  This gets your firm’s name visible to leadership, members and participants.  And be sure to attend yourself.

Participate! – Make yourself or key members of your organization available to write for the membership organization’s newsletter, website or blog.  Participate in its mentorship programs.

Demonstrate Knowledge and Expertise – This can mean serving as speaker, panelist or moderator for the organization’s programs, but also consider opportunities that highlight the accomplishments of others.  Nominate worthy members for the organization’s highest professional recognition.  Or, work with the organization to create events or scholarships which may be linked to your business’ support that will build future industry talent or highlight outstanding industry achievers.

These roles have real value to the organization of which you’re a sponsor and its member at the same time they are valuable marketing approaches for your firm.