Association Strategy & Marketing

mdg serves its association clients by helping them advance a broad range of objectives. Our approach embraces a shift from a series of siloed offerings to a more holistic audience engagement strategy. Leveraging in-depth knowledge of industries and audiences, we develop and execute communication and marketing plans to increase membership, promote professional certifications and development opportunities, spark engagement, build participation in ancillary events and support sales, sponsorship and revenue objectives.

our services

Campaign audit  •  Component and chapter relations  •  Grassroots and VIP campaigns  •  Membership acquisition and renewal campaign management •  Strategic consulting and tactical planning  •  Transformation consulting  •  Volunteer and leadership development  •  Member benefit development and engagement strategies

client testimonial

mdg is completely integrated into our staff and serves as an integral arm for NASSP, far exceeding typical marketing and communication functions. mdg has greatly impacted the organization, helping us achieve the goals of our strategic plan and move toward a more progressive culture. mdg has a seat at every major conversation for our organization.

JoAnn Bartoletti, Executive Director National Association of Secondary School Principals

case study

NASSP

Since 2014, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), a 100+ year-old organization, was facing significant challenges, including a severe decline in membership, decreased relevancy among its target audience (namely younger school leaders) and an increasing sense of apathy for its programs and offerings. To address these challenges, the association’s executive leadership team implemented a two-year strategic plan with aggressive goals for brand awareness, membership growth and stakeholder engagement. Leadership quickly realized that, in order to meet these goals, they would need additional bandwidth and more specialized marketing and communications talent. As such, mdg was engaged to serve as NASSP’s marketing and communications department.

NASSP’s marketing and communications vehicles historically lacked consistent branding, compelling messaging and the focus necessary to break through clutter and compel desired actions. mdg immediately updated the branding for NASSP and its student programs, shaped key messages for all communications, and modernized graphics based on the increase in digital usage. mdg also implemented a robust content strategy and redesigned NASSP website.

Personas and corresponding journey maps were created and combined with in-depth research that led to a restructuring of fees and benefits for NASSP’s National Honor Society programs. This resulted in a 5 percent membership increase in chapters and exceeded first year retention goals by 14 percent. mdg also rebranded the organization’s annual conference and expanded campaign reach beyond existing members, consistently growing attendance year-over-year. In 2020, mdg helped create a virtual experience that exceeded attendance goals by 230 percent.

let’s create afuture together

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