The Boss Blog

One of the greatest challenges for member-based organizations is membership retention, especially during uncertain times. The long-term success of any membership site depends on member retention. Now, more than ever, as the nation faces an usual crisis that we have never encountered before, remaining calm and making every effort to continue business as usual is very critical. Nationwide measures have been taken to deal with this crisis. Schools have closed. Sports have been suspended. Multitude of events have been cancelled. People have been ordered to stay home. Both in our personal lives and in the business world, there’s a general sense of uncertainty. The French symbolist writer, Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam said “Uncertainty is a quality to be cherished, therefore – if not for it, who would dare to undertake anything?” Times like these provide an opportunity to think creatively and endeavor to keep the wheels turning. For a membership organization, this means to implement strategies for retaining members. Whether you operate a chamber of commerce or a trade association, here are a few tips and strategies that will help your organization improve membership retention during these times.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Reward and Incentivise Your Current User Base

You may already have rewards and incentives for potential new members. This is great as it motivates prospects to sign up for a membership. However, you should keep in mind that when it comes time to renew membership, those members might be discouraged by the idea of not being able to enjoy the same incentives as before. Maybe they had a discounted price, and now they have to pay full-price for the membership. Also, the long-time members might feel some unfairness between their loyalty to you and the benefits that new members are enjoying. Be mindful of this, and focus on rewarding / incentivizing your current, loyal members as much as you reward new ones. You can offer your user base additional services with their membership or renewal. This is where bundling your membership with other great items such as a magazine subscription or an exclusive instructional video series can prove to be very helpful. Our flagship membership management software, MemberBoss has a fantastic bundling function already built-in. Get creative and bring more value to your members with rewards and incentives that are very hard to pass up.

Have an Onboarding Process

Once a prospect signs up for a new membership, you should begin developing a solid relationship with them through an onboarding process that allows you to assess the new member’s interests, needs, and goals. The first year of membership is crucial to keeping that member around for years to come. By identifying what their interests, needs and goals are you will be able to personalize and guide the new member in a way for them to gain the most value from your organization. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through a drip campaign, which is also built-in to our membership management software, MemberBoss. With a simple series of emails you’ll be able to not only engage your new member right away, but you’ll also gain some insights that will help keep your new members around for years to come. Also, do not fail to show them that your organization appreciates their business.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Survey Current Members

It’s very easy to assume that you know exactly what your members need, want, and expect from their membership. This can lead to a disparity between what your members acquire from their membership and the value your organization perceives to be offering. Sending out surveys to your current member list helps to mitigate this disparity. Send surveys to current members to find out what their preferences are, what they wish would improve, what sort of things would increase their engagement, etc. Send different surveys for different types of members. New members will show you if they see value in being part of your organization. Loyal members will show you what works and what doesn’t. Also, send out surveys to past members who have cancelled their subscription to find out more about what led to them opting out. Once you’ve received their feedback, you can adjust accordingly. Everything you find out will allow you to keep doing what works and to fix problems that lower membership retention.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Prevent Membership Cancellations

In times like these, it is very easy for a member to want to cancel their membership. Difficult times have a funny way of making people re-evaluate everything, from their priorities to where they spend their money, and rightfully so. You can expect this to happen, but instead of staying still, go on the offensive by preventing cancellations. Offering the option to pause membership is a great way to keep someone from completely leaving, especially if their decision is a knee-jerk reaction to what is happening in their surroundings. Not only does it show that you are not completely oblivious to what they are going through, but it also leaves the door open for when things come back to normal and business as usual resumes. You can also offer shorter time-frame membership for potential new members. Doing so would allow those who are on the fence because of the unfavorable climate to sign up for membership at a lower risk.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Take Advantage of a Membership Management Software

It goes without saying that using a great Membership Management Software helps increase member engagement. During these times, take full advantage of a Membership Management Software like MemberBoss. Not only does it allow you to manage your members (among other things), but it also helps with communicating with your members. With the email marketing feature you can start a series of branded, engaging emails that will keep your organization in the mind of your members. You can also take advantage of the blog feature to write relevant articles for your members to read while they’re at home. This cloud-based platform makes it easy to keep your members feeling a personal connection to your organization.

One thing about uncertain times like these is that they do not last forever, but this doesn’t mean that losing members should be ok. Stay ahead of the curve and implement the above strategies in your organization. If you’d like to learn more about MemberBoss, feel free to Book A Demo. Oh, and of course, don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more riveting tips and tricks for your organization!

We realize that the COVID-19 outbreak has redefined "business as usual" for many of us and adapting to this new reality can be difficult. With that in mind, we would like you to know that we are still here and operating remotely to help in any way we can. As the pandemic has affected staffing levels we request that if you have a support question or issue, please email support@contensive.com and we will make sure the issue gets to the right person.

We also recognize that your staffing levels may have been compromised and as such we are implementing the following changes as of today, March 24th:

1. We are reducing our rate on content management services by 25% to $30.00 per hour. Please email over clear instructions and any associated files or graphics to info@contensive.com. We will attempt to complete all tasks within 24-hours.

2. We are offering a 20% reduction in development costs. If there is a need for a specific function that will help your business weather this storm, we want to make it as easy as possible to accommodate you. Please contact sales@contensive.com with your request details and we will respond within 24-hours.

3. Online Educational Webinars, will be held biweekly to help walk through any issue.

Our goal is to make sure our employees and customers stay safe, healthy and prepared to resume business as usual as soon as possible.

Lets Get Through This Together!

#LetsGetThroughThisTogether

Businesses on page 2 of the search engine results might as well not exist.

It sounds harsh but it’s simply the reality that we all need to accept.

You know the drill—you want pizza so you get on your phone and do a search. Google presents its top 3 local options in the “Snack Pack” and 10 other organic results. You pick one make a call or pop in the pizza joint.

If you’re the local pizza joint, you want and need to appear on the first page for those target keywords. So how do you get them there?

You’ll need to do a local SEO audit to find out. Here’s how to get it done.

Step 1: Audit Keywords

What keywords are you targeting? Step one of your audit should be to determine what you’re currently ranking for and identify any opportunities you might be missing.

For example, if you’re ranking well for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Attorney’ but are nowhere to be found for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Lawyer’, you’ve identified an area to improve.

Start by making a list of services, products, or a page you’d like to drive traffic to. Once you do this you’ll be able to use tools like Keyword Finder to quickly put together a list of high volume local target keywords.

With this list in hand, you can proceed through the rest of your local SEO audit and determine how well these keywords are optimized every step of the way.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Ahrefs
• Keyword Finder

Step 2: Audit Your Competition’s Local SEO

Your local SEO audit should include a snooping session to determine your competitor’s SEO status and tactics early on. If you’re located in a highly competitive area where the other top businesses are doing everything right, you need to document what you’re up against.

You don’t need to do a full diagnostic on each competitor, but take a look at the following, and compare that data against yours:

• GMB ranking for top keywords
• Organic rankings for top keywords
• Review quantity and quality
• Number of links
• Site Speed
• Social Stats

In most cases, you should be able to take a look through these items and develop a hypothesis on why your competitor is successful in local SERPs.

Step 3: Audit Google My Business Listing

The 2017 edition of Moz’ Local Search Ranking Factors Survey ranks Google My Business (GMB) as the biggest driver of local SEO success. If you want to appear in Google’s ‘snack pack’, your GMB listing should be robust, and well-optimized with your core target keywords.

Here are some things to look for:

• Do you have a GMB listing? If so, is it claimed and verified?
• Is all business information present and correct?
• Do you have multiple reviews and a high cumulative rating? Are you responding to reviews?
• Do you have appropriate business categories listed?
• Do you have images of the business?
• Have you created any GMB posts?
• Are you participating in the Questions & Answers section?

These are the core elements that make up a strong GMB listing.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Manager access to your GMB listing

Step 4: Audit Reviews for Quality and Quantity

Reviews pack a ton of clout in both the local ranking and reputation building arenas. Search engines regard them as an authentic measure of a local business’s popularity and viability. Potential customers trust reviews as an accurate gauge for that business’s quality level.

Getting an abundance of positive, glowing and wordy reviews across multiple review platforms like GMB, Facebook, Yelp, and vertical-specific sites like Houzz, Tripadvisor, and Healthgrades helps you win on many levels.

Local SEO Guide notes that Google does pick up on the keywords people use in their reviews:

“At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for, and a mention of a city you are working to rank in, in reviews has a high correlation with high ranking Google My Business results.”

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Get and manage reviews with Customer Voice (contact us for more info)

Step 5: Audit Links for Quality and Quantity

Links remain the bread and butter of Google’s ranking algorithm.

Darren Shaw of WhiteSpark notes that,

“Google is still leaning heavily on links as a primary measure of a business’ authority and prominence, and the local search practitioners that invest time and resources to secure quality links for their clients are reaping the ranking rewards.”

A diverse array of quality links is crucial for any local business’s link portfolio. This means that you’ll need to evaluate your links, looking for links with:

• Local content
• Industry or vertical topic clusters
• High domain authority

Link quality will win over quantity, and quality + quantity will help you dominate the search rankings in your market. On the flip side, if you see a high volume of spammy, off-topic links, you’ll want to make a note of it as a red flag that may be damaging your ability to rank well for your target keywords.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Ahrefs
• Open Site Explorer

Step 6: Audit Schema-Markup for Local

Schema markup is code that goes on a website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. Schema tells the search engines what your data means, not just what it says.

This is a key way to tell search engines exactly what a given website is about, which will help them serve it up on SERPs for the correct search queries.

One way to check to ensure that your site is using schema markup is to enter your URL in Google’s Structured Data Testing ToolYou’ll be able to check to see if all the correct info about your business has been included.

To add Schema markup, if it’s a WordPress website, then “All In One Schema Rich Snippets” is a great plugin. For other websites, this is a good tool to create the code.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Google Structured Data Testing Tool
• Schema Markup Generator

Step 7: Audit Local SEO Citations

How frequently is your business mentioned online? Auditing your citations will determine how many online mentions exist of the name, address, and phone number for your business.

It’s important to look into both your structured and unstructured citations. For structured citations, you’ll audit your business listings across the web, looking at social platforms and directories like Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, Superpages, and MapQuest. You’ll also need to check to see if their correct business info is listed on the main data aggregators: Axiom, Neustar/Localeze, Factual, and Infogroup.

Next, you’ll need to check your unstructured citations. An unstructured citation can be found on random websites, blogs, event listings, job posting sites, government records or social media mentions. These are unstructured because they could be as simple as a company mention. Usually, these citations don’t include a business’s NAP data.

Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder is a great free tool to find and analyze both your structured and unstructured citations.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder
• Moz Check Listings

Step 8: Audit SEO on Main Pages

An audit of the main website pages is probably the most important piece of your entire audit. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming if you have the proper tools though. Screaming Frog is one of many excellent tools that’ll deliver a comprehensive look at your on-page SEO.

With your list of target keywords in hand, you’ll want to run through each page on your spreadsheet looking at the keywords on each page. Specifically, you’ll be looking at:

• Page title
• Title tags
• Sub-headings
• Word count
• Meta description

Even with just this information, you’ll be well-equipped to analyze how well your pages are optimized for local SEO. Plus, you’ll be able to determine improvements and content gaps that might be missing.

Once you’ve evaluated and recorded the weaknesses in your local SEO, you can make use of a host of top-tier SEO plugins to help you do your work.

Step 9: Audit Image SEO

There are two main components two image optimization for local SEO: keyword usage and how it affects page load speed. You can use ScreamingFrog’s free SEO tool to evaluate both.

Auditing image keyword optimization boils down to evaluating each image’s filename and alt text. Since Google can’t yet tell what visual content an image contains yet, site crawlers rely on things like the filename and alt text to determine what’s being displayed. These are places you should optimize with relevant target keywords.

You can get some big improvements in page load speed when images are optimized to reduce their file size without significantly impacting their visual quality. Using ScreamingFrog, you can take an inventory of all the images on your site and highlight the images that are slowing things down. (There are also image size optimization plugins that resize images automatically going forward.)

Step 10: Check Website Speed

Having a site that loads rapidly is crucial in today’s online business environment.

Edwin Toonen of Yoast notes that,

“Google’s latest research shows that the chance of a bounce increases 32% when the page load time goes from 1s to 3s. 1s to 5s increases the chance to 90% and if your site takes up to 10s to load, the chance of a bounce increases to 123%. That’s incredible. For search engines, better results and performance is a sign of a healthy site that pleases customers and therefore should be rewarded with a higher ranking.”

Google PageSpeed Insights Tool performs a near-instant audit of a given URL for both mobile and desktop searches. This will give you a quick way to tell if improvements are needed, and a list of actions to take to improve your website speed.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Google PageSpeed Insights Tool
• Pingdom’s Website Speed Test

Step 11: Audit Site Engagement

What visitors do when they discover your business online affects your rankings. In fact, David Mihm argues that,

“Engagement is simply a much more accurate signal of the quality of local businesses than the traditional ranking factors of links, directory citations, and even reviews.”

Metrics like organic search click-through rate (CTR), dwell time, bounce rate, and conversion rate are all ranking factors. You can simply use Google Analytics to examine your engagement metrics and compare them to industry benchmarks.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Industry Benchmarks

Step 12: Audit Social Engagement

The truth is that we’re not sure to what extent social signals are baked into Google’s ranking algorithm. However, there’s no doubt that a strong social media presence can significantly boost local SEO efforts.

According to Ron Dod of Search Engine Journal, the bigger and more engaged your audience is, the more they’ll boost rankings:

“The bigger your brand is and the more consumers trust you, the more likely you are to receive a larger share of clicks in Google. Social media can be a great and efficient way to help you build your brand and get in front of people who wouldn’t have otherwise found you.”

Therefore, evaluating your social platforms is an essential part of your local SEO audit:

• Number of people that like your Facebook page + Facebook shares
• Number of Twitter followers + tweets mentioning your brand name
• Number of LinkedIn company followers and Linkedin Shares

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

• Track dark social (contact us for more info)
• Find all social media profiles
• Find your most shared content

Final Thoughts

Performing a comprehensive local SEO audit using the 12 steps I’ve outlined is going to dredge up issues. Finding and fixing any SEO optimization issues you discover along the way is also crucial, as is recording your progress to ensure you’re not missing any vital pieces to the local SEO puzzle.