Continuing education opportunities comprise activities, courses, and programs that help your members further their knowledge and skills. By providing these key opportunities, you’ll not only support your members in achieving their goals but also show members the value of belonging to your organization, leading to a greater retention rate.
However, it’s not enough to just provide these to your members! You also have to use your membership marketing to promote continuing education opportunities, so members know that they’re available to them. This is where a strong promotional strategy on your website can help.
In this article, we’ll cover how you can promote continuing education opportunities on your association website to meet your mission and support your members. But first, let’s explore how you can provide quality continuing education opportunities that your members will love.
No matter what sector your association is in, the purpose of your organization is simple: to support your members in achieving their professional goals. The best way to meet this mission is by providing your members with continuing education opportunities. Consider these tips to start offering continuing opportunities to your members:
Your website is a powerful tool for marketing your continuing education opportunities to your members and showing the value of joining your organization to prospective members. Let’s take a closer look at how you can strategically use your association’s website to raise awareness of these key member benefits.
To effectively spotlight your continuing education opportunities on your website, start by creating a landing page that overviews your association’s member benefits. Here, your association can dive deep into the various perks of membership, including access to your unique continuing education opportunities that will propel members’ professional development.
Keep these best practices in mind as you design a compelling “Benefits of Membership” page on your website:
Prospective members will expect that associations will provide them with networking events, conferences, workshops, and other opportunities to support their skills development, but what makes these opportunities different at your organization?
Provide details about each of your continuing education opportunities, and explain how they will specifically support your members’ growth. Focus on highlighting how these opportunities set you apart from other associations in the industry.
If you offer multiple membership tiers, such as bronze, silver, and gold tiers, it will be helpful to explain the opportunities that are part of each package. For example, the bronze tier might offer members access to basic continuing education opportunities, like webinars and two workshops a year, while the silver tier offers more extensive pluses like live and virtual workshops and an exclusive networking event.
Finally, the gold tier would offer the most comprehensive package, with all the opportunities in the bronze and silver tiers included and advanced perks like personalized coaching, advanced certification courses, and priority access to your association’s educational conferences.
Using tiers like these can entice prospective members to invest in the highest membership tier and encourage existing members to upgrade their membership status to achieve the most bang for their buck.
Add more legitimacy to your association and its continuing education opportunities by using visuals. For example, if you’re describing your annual member conference, you might include pictures of members picking up their conference badges while checking in at your last conference, or of a notable speaker who taught a workshop at this event. You could also include video testimonials from loyal members explaining all of the perks they’ve received since joining your organization.
To build a new page on your association’s website with ease, you need to leverage a website builder designed specifically with associations in mind. Morweb’s guide to membership website builders recommends investing in a solution with drag-and-drop editing, form-building modules to smoothly facilitate event registration, and private intranet portals so you can share members-only content, further enhancing the benefit of being a part of your organization.
Along with your “Benefits of Membership” page, your blog is another great place on your website to bring attention to your continuing education opportunities. After all, the best association and nonprofit websites use their blogs strategically to support their goals and keep their community engaged. To take heed, you need to create quality content about your member benefits.
Here are our top recommendations to spotlight continuing education opportunities on your blog:
To make your blog posts user-friendly, you can leverage your website builder’s built-in blog templates. With templated designs, all your association has to do is paste your content; your website builder will ensure that your posts are automatically mobile-optimized, accessible, and follow a cohesive design that unites your entire blogroll.
Your association website is the central hub of your digital presence, so it’s critical that you generate content that shines a light on your continuing education opportunities. Be sure to refresh and update your content as needed so you are always presenting the most up-to-date information about these key member perks.
Murad Bushnaq is the Founder and CEO of Morweb. Since its inception in 2014, Murad has acted as Creative Director and Chief Technologist to help nonprofits spread their vision online through engaging design, intuitive software and strategic communication.
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