To me, marketing is like detective work. It takes a lot of trial, error, and data to answer your burning questions, but once you put together pieces of the puzzle, it becomes an extremely effective tool.

The year 2015 was a good one for a number of reasons – not the least of which here at AMC is that we launched our blog and began developing and publishing our own unique content on our own website. With more than 220 staff members, there is a lot of leaders within our walls, and we are now better able to share their expertise more consistently with the association community.

In the vast majority of cases, especially in the association industry, the answer is no. While we may not always hit our goals, the overwhelming likelihood is that we haven’t completely (and absolutely) failed.

Creating value is often about embracing change. It’s about exploring options in relation to an organization’s overarching business goals. Here are a concrete example and a number of considerations about how change permeates all of what we do in associations.

Several AMC staff members attended the Association Forum of Chicagoland Holiday Showcase this past Tuesday, and we asked them to share their biggest takeaways from the event.

Content marketing—let’s start with this one. HubSpot defines content marketing like this:

“a marketing program that centers on creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience—usually online—the goal of which is to attract new customers.”

At the Annual 2015 Fall Summit of the Nursing Organizations Alliance (also known as NOA or The Alliance), Joan Kram, FACHE, CAE was elected to serve on the NOA Coordinating Team for a three year term.

As we have done with our Management Team, we have plans to develop questions for our young professionals to answer on a quarterly basis. Here’s our first question, as well as answers from 10 AMC young professionals.

It's that time of year again – time to eat some turkey and pumpkin pie while watching the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions play in their annual Thanksgiving Day games. But Thanksgiving is also a time where we should do as the holiday’s name instructs – give thanks – to our friends and family, to people who have helped us, and for those of us in the association community, to our volunteers and members.

From our previous discussions on membership forms and a new customer’s first experience with our organizations, we learned that less is more. The form and online experience both need to be as inviting and user friendly as possible. However, cumbersome forms and processes are larger than just membership forms; it impacts conference and event registration forms as well.

I attended the 2015 ASAE Annual Meeting in Detroit and there was one topic that really grabbed me, probably because I heard it over and over again; that topic was “Grit!”

On a quarterly basis, we will ask our more than 20 executive level leaders (our Management Team) to provide their insights on a pressing question for the association industry. Here's our first question and answers from a subset of our leadership.

In the age of e-learning, webinars, and podcasts, there still are occasions when an in-person experience is irreplaceable. I had one such experience recently in Vancouver at the Call To Action Conference (CTA Conf), which focuses on conversion rate optimization (CRO).

We didn’t realize the magnitude of the AMC Challenge we posed in our September 15th post: Send us your ideas of how to turn your membership application into a delightful experience for a new member’s first encounter with your organization. When the inbox remained a hollow chamber for almost two months, we decided to take up the challenge internally.

Rebranding has been a hot topic in the association community for years, and 2015 is no exception. Associations regularly have been seeking to better understand tips and tricks for effectively rebranding their organizations. Here at AMC, our client, the Awards and Personalization Association recently went through the process and we thought we’d share our experiences with you.

Mysteries have their place—in movies, books, and plays. The amount of traffic directed to a website from an e-blast or a Facebook post should not be a mystery.

Have you been in a conversation with someone when they say “Chipotle is bae” or texted with a friend who replies “The Bears are so bad this year…SMH”? If your answer is no, chances are you’re not a millennial, the next boom of people now in the workforce.

A number of AMC staff members recently sat in on the Association Trends webinar titled Meeting Membership Recruitment Benchmarks: Strategies to Turbo-Charge Your Recruitment. We asked four of our participants for their biggest takeaway, which are each included here.

An impressive FIVE Association Management Center staff members were named to the association industry’s 2015 Forty Under 40 list, sponsored by Association Forum of Chicagoland and USAE News.

When an association recently transformed its brand and name, it decided to also update its forms, including its membership application.  The membership manager, thrilled at the prospect of collecting loads of great data at a time when fresh members are most enthusiastic to provide it, packed the form with so many items it would be good for only one thing for the new member -- a good snooze. Sound familiar?

"If you build it, they will come." If associations build an innovative, meaningful, networking-rich event that their audience members can take key messages from and implement in their place of work, they will be successful.

Join us, in conjunction with our partners the Association Forum of Chicagoland, MB Financial Bank, and the governance section of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), for an exciting educational session on November 18.

As we worked through our website redesign, I took a look at our site’s Google Analytics to get a wide ranging understanding of our site’s traffic.

For the 3rd consecutive year, an AMC staff member was honored with the John C. Thiel Distinguished Service Award from the Association Forum of Chicagoland. The award is presented for exceptional, long-term, volunteer service to the Association Forum, primarily through committee service or similar contributions.

Three AMC staff members have earned the Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE).

If you are planning exit interviews for volunteer leaders ending their board service, consider one or more of the following ideas to help ease the transition, gather feedback, and identify engagement opportunities going forward.

It’s an exciting time for AMC—we’ve launched our redesigned website!

For the fourth time since 2010, AMC has been named one of the Best Places to Work in Illinois.

The American Academy of Home Care Medicine (AAHCM) has selected AMC to provide full-service management. The management arrangement begins September 1.