Convincing Your Organisation to Create a Website for Your Association

You know it: creating a website for your association has become a necessity in 2019. Yet your organisation's leadership is reluctant to embrace the initiative.
In your day-to-day role as communications manager, you need a better tool for a wide range of reasons. Some committee members even go so far as to point out a lack of visibility around their activities.

Are you looking for the keys to convince your leadership? Are you trying to convince yourself that a website is actually useful? Are you wondering how to go about creating one?
HTTP 5000, our inbound marketing agency in Lyon, offers you exclusive content to help you create a professional website.

In this article, we will answer three questions:
• Why do you need to create a website for your association?
• How do you identify your target audiences so you can speak to them effectively?
• How do you make your website the best it can possibly be?

Why do you need to create a website for your association?

This is a question that might seem outdated at first glance. Nevertheless, it is worth asking.

There are several answers:
1. In 2019, a website is indispensable. The 1980s are long gone: you need to establish a presence online to build credibility and increase your visibility;
2. Creating a website for your association makes you available 24/7, including bank holidays. Ideally, the entire world will be able to find you anywhere, at any time;
3. There are several types of website: showcase site, e-commerce, exchange platform, institutional site, web app, and so on. Your leadership may be more attracted to one type than another. However, do not forget to refer back to your target audience's actual needs;
4. You will be able to control what people know about you. You use the words you want, in the tone you want. Yes, you can provide all the explanations you consider essential;
5. 74% of French people use the internet every day, and 95% of 18–24-year-olds. The next generation will find you online — or you will cease to exist;
6. In your case, creating a website will allow you to attract new members, and even gather donations to bring your association's projects to fruition;
6. A website does not cost that much. On this point, our agency — HTTP 5000 — is very competitively positioned.

Building a successful website: identifying and addressing your target audience.

A word of caution: do not assume your association will be of interest to everyone. At this stage, and even if the comparison may not please many people, you need to view your offering much like a business offering.

Identifying your target audience

Your association exists for a reason — one or several missions. This reason for being is set out in its articles of association.
Use this mission or these missions to identify and address your target audience.

Answer the following questions.

1. What type of audience does your association speak to?
2. Describe the characteristics of your target audience (if it addresses the general public: age, gender, educational level, profession, income, marital status, place of residence, etc.);
3. How does your target audience live? (location, leisure activities, habits, type of housing, layout, etc.)
4. What is your target audience looking for? Why do they contact you?
5. Use publicly available data to establish the number of people who might have a vague interest in your proposals, then compare this with your core target audience.
6. Draw up a summary of your target audience in order to have as much detail as possible about them.

The next step will be to address your target audience effectively. To do this, you will need to use the data you compiled when defining your target audience.

Addressing a persona

Create an imaginary character who perfectly matches your target audience. Give them a first name, a social and professional life in keeping with everything you have understood about them so far. Go as far as possible in defining this personality.
In marketing, we call this concept a "persona".

From this point on, and whenever you wish to communicate with your target audience, you will use your persona. This persona will be your thinking tool.

NB: you can perfectly well define several personas. This is by no means a flaw — quite the contrary. Having several personas will allow you to communicate most effectively with the different segments of your target audience.

In practical terms, every decision you make when building the association's website must appeal to your persona.
Whether it concerns the graphic design, colours, logo, tone of the content, or the communication channels used: everything must be consistent. A 16-year-old will be far more accustomed to watching a one-and-a-half-minute captioned, silent video than a 75-year-old woman, even if both have equally good reasons to join your association.

How do you make your website the best it can possibly be?

Before creating your website, you will need to position yourself within your association's ecosystem.
You will also need to spend a little time defining your target audience's actual needs. In other words, you will need to align your website creation project with the real needs of the potential member.

Be aware of this reality: all associations can find themselves in competition with others. Their goals may be similar, or not.
You will therefore need to list your commonalities as well as your differences. To do this, you will look at the website created by competing associations (which in itself proves the need to create your own).

Your objective is not to be better than this ecosystem: it is simply to be different. Your aim is to have your own identity and to highlight the expertise, activities, and so on, that are uniquely yours.

Do not hesitate to list the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, and build around those weaknesses to widen the gap.

When you work on creating your association's website, you will need to follow a set of essential rules that we will address in forthcoming articles:
• What menu items are typically needed?;
• Best practices for a homepage;
• What are the best practices for organic search (SEO)?;
• Techniques that work for obtaining donations;
• Etc.

In summary:
• Creating your association's website will make you more visible;
• Define your target audience;
• Create your persona and use it as often as possible;
• Study the association ecosystem in order to position yourself in the best niche.

We will be back very soon with our next article, which will cover the recipe for creating an ideal navigation menu.