For association executives
Sponsored research increases non-dues revenue without adding overhead.
You are a steward for your members, the target market of your sponsors. You already work with your sponsors to connect with your members. Sponsored research provides you with a new product, a new resource, and access to a new sponsor budget without needing any new employees, without retiring any product or project, and without having to add research to your list of responsibilities.
The revenue
The money is often new money.
Sponsors usually pay for research from the budget assigned to sales support, competitive positioning, product development, and message development, rather than from the budget already assigned to association sponsorships. Expect the total amount the sponsor spends with you to increase.
You offer a package rather than a survey.
Research is sold together with what you already publish, which includes website postings, webinars, signage, white papers, promotional placements, journal articles, and newsletter articles. You price the package as one amount. The research results are the foundation of a new message.
You pay Association Insights a wholesale price for the research. You keep the revenue for the entire package.
Association Insights performs the research at a wholesale price to the association, and manages the entire research process for your benefit. Association Insights, whether white labeled using your brand or not, acts entirely in the best interests of the association, its members and its sponsors.
Projects can be repeated, and they can be run in phases.
A study repeated each year produces a renewable revenue line and a series of measurements that can be used for trending and for index development. Projects run in phases keep the sponsor and the association closely engaged throughout the year, and give the sponsor a chance to see how the association supports their goals and objectives.
Research is custom produced to order, so your inventory no longer sets the limit.
You have only so many advertising positions and event sponsorships to sell. Research is so diverse, it significantly increases how much a single sponsor has to choose from. The packages you create can be as wide-ranging as your sponsors needs.
The risk, and the work
You add nothing and you retire nothing.
Earning this revenue requires no acquisition, no new employees, and no retirement of an existing product or service.
Staff effort is minimal.
Your staff create the package, sell the package, and ultimately approve the research. A sales leader will need to assemble new packages and work with Association Insights to develop pricing. A business developer and/or an administrator will need to devote some time to independently assure the sponsor's needs are being met. Association Insights assures that staff time commitment will be minimal.
You do none of the research work.
Association Insights designs the methodology, builds the instruments, fields the study, audits the data, verifies accuracy, analyzes the results, interprets the findings, provides scientific evidence, and presents them. Association Insights works with your team and the sponsor to assure research findings are properly delivered for use in the sponsored package. You are not required to produce any analysis or interpretation of your own.
The research can be published as your own research department.
Association Insights works as your research department. We can use your association brand name or our company brand.
You approve research before it is fielded.
No research is conducted that you have not reviewed and accepted.
The sponsor relationship, and your own authority
You supply market intelligence and thought leadership rather than advertising positions alone.
Your relationship with your sponsors changes. The association becomes an important strategic partner, not just a source of promotional impressions. The sponsor that has bought the same positions for several years has a strong reason to reconsider what you offer.
A sponsor without your research buys it somewhere else.
The sponsor needs market information, and buys it from a panel company or a research agency, or tries reaching your members directly through advertising platforms. The sponsor spends that budget with you when you offer the service and the access to verified, engaged respondents that only you have.
You publish the findings through your own channels.
Members and the wider market identify your association with current market data whichever party owns that data. The channels owned by the association become more important.
You can negotiate the right to use part of the information yourself.
Information reserved for the association supports member communications and answers questions members ask. Sponsors get recognition and are elevated as thought leaders.
Your own decisions improve.
Staff creates continuing education topics, program topics, and journal topics with the benefit of more current data about the field.
Ask what a study of your own field would involve.
The Dashboarding page contains twelve sample dashboards. Each one is an abbreviated illustration of what a sponsor and an association receive from the research at the end of a project. Or, contact us and ask for a walkthrough and discuss what a study of your own field would involve.