LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES - SECRET SAUCE FOR MEMBERSHIP MARKETING

We’ve all heard it before, and it makes perfect sense.

In fact, if we dusted off the latest copy of your club’s membership marketing plan chances are the number one (and possibly only) strategy for new member recruitment is the referral campaign – a specialized campaign that incentivizes existing members to refer their friends, neighbors and colleagues as prospective new members.

I’m not here to tell you different.

But if you’re like the majority of private clubs today, you might have an aging membership or any number of other factors that have rendered the referral well dry, and tapped out most of the viable member referred candidates for membership.

So you need to reach new people, but options are seemingly limited and also relatively tapped out. Traditional club marketing prescribes that you buy or rent a list and blast an email, or mail a letter or invitation, or if budget allows, a postcard or other piece of nice collateral.

But deep down you know that these methods are no longer effective for lead generation. You know this because like me, you too get hundreds of emails each day, and like me you probably sort your mail over the garbage can.

In the past few months, the most important places on the internet like Google and Facebook have been quietly perfecting something known as Lookalike Audience Targeting or Match Targeting.  

It’s a modern solution to an increasingly difficult problem – how to get the attention of the right people. Lookalikes are simply a better way to reach new people who are more likely to be interested in your club because they're similar to people you care about. Lookalike audiences can be based on a variety of sources (ex: people who visit your website or existing customers and members).

For private clubs, lookalike targeting is a total game changer in terms of membership lead generation. That’s because lookalikes are the modern equivalent of the traditional membership referral program.

Consider this – when deconstructed, a referral program is intended to leverage the people we know and like already (the “seed” audience) to help attract others of a similar demographic profile, with like interests, preferences, backgrounds, and behavioral attributes to the club.  Most call these people friends.  Marketers call them lookalikes.

I know what you’re thinking. You may want to buy a lookalike email list.

Nope. A lookalike isn’t actually an email list at all. Rather, it’s like an invisible audience that represents the overall composite profile and marketing characteristics of the entire seed audience, from which you can layer in additional targeting.  

Or in non-marketer speak, it’s like an invisible list of people who have a really high probability of meeting your ideal criteria that you can use for marketing purposes on that specific platform. It’s essentially a very specific and targeted audience that looks like your established members, plus or minus any other targeting attributes you want to include or exclude.

The lookalike audience can then be used to increase visibility on Google or Gmail, or tell stories, amplify content, and drive awareness on Facebook or Instagram using native dark posts (content that can only be seen in the newsfeeds of people who meet the lookalike audience targeting criteria).

The power rests in the fact that Facebook and Google sit on top of the largest collection of big data in the world - not just what people put in their online profiles, search for online, or who they like or follow.  

Facebook also tracks pretty much every website you visit, and has integrated and correlated all major third party consumer purchasing data from the big data providers into its database.

Combine that with smartphone GPS tracking and you’ve got a database like none other that has ever existed, chock full of ways to get in front of the right prospective members.

We’ve been blown away by the results so far. Lookalikes are generating 3 to 5 times the membership leads as compared to standard targeting, with nearly a 40 percent increase in qualification rate across all our clients using them, and overall campaign ROI has nearly doubled for those using lookalikes for at least 6 months.

With continued refinement and layering of additional targeting we expect these results to continue to improve, because as is generally the case with digital marketing, the more data you collect, the better the end resut.

Learn more:  Facebook Lookalikes  //  Google Match

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