Strengthen Your Association's Market Position.

Associations face increasing competition from for-profit companies and dot-coms, which are launching some of the most aggressive attacks on associations. Building your association's market share in this environment requires innovative use of technology to remain competitive.

The Self Storage Association (SSA), Springfield, Virginia, for example, leveraged technology and strategic relationships to create an industry-specific buyers' guide called Self Storage LINK, which offers facility owners (members and nonmembers) one-stop shopping. Executive Director Michael Kidd, with help from Franklin Marketing Solutions, Covington, Kentucky, developed a plan to preempt the competition using new technology from RecTech Corporation. The multimedia CD-ROM does not require a browser.

SSA wanted an electronic, industry-specific buyers' guide that would allow the association to

* establish SSA as an industry information highway;

* facilitate e-commerce while positioning SSA as innovative and forward thinking; and

* provide a powerful tool to reach the entire industry, enabling SSA to more easily recruit new members.

Access to the buyers' guide online was implemented fairly recently, but SSA will monitor activity to determine if the goals are being met. "We will look at continued participation, growth in ad revenue, and how much communication is taking place," Kidd says. "We'll also want to know how long each visitor stays--we're looking at this product as a way to increase hang time."

SSA's buyers' guide is accessible on the its Web site (www.selfstorage.org). Through the formation of strategic alliances, the guide is also available via SelfStorage.com, owned by Argus Storage Realty, Denver, which specializes in buying and selling self-storage facilities, and SelfStorage.net, owned by Cendant Corporation, New York City, which gets about 4 million hits a month.

An aggressive marketing program that combines new technology and strategic relationships can help an association strengthen its marketing position. To win the marketing battle, an association must have a strategically driven, integrated marketing program that preempts the competition, generating additional revenue and securing a bright future for its members.

Submitted by Joe Soldano, president of Franklin Marketing Solutions, Covington, Kentucky Soldano will be presenting at ASAE's Management and Technology Conference and Exposition, December 10-12 in Washington, D.C.