Ahead of Halloween, we shared some fairly frightening statistics about membership growth.
Around a third of membership organisations have experienced membership decline. More than half are struggling with acquisition and retention. Almost half report falling engagement.
Those figures matter, but on their own they only tell us that growth is becoming harder.
They do not tell us where the problem sits.
And that matters, because the answer is not always “do more marketing”.
Before You Spend More on Paid Media, Know What You’re Trying to Fix
When membership numbers flatten or fall, it is tempting to jump straight to activity.
More campaigns. More content. More email. More ads.
But paid media works best when it is solving a clearly defined problem.
Perhaps your organisation needs to reach professionals earlier in their careers. Perhaps you have strong website traffic but poor conversion. Perhaps people are searching for the support you provide, but competitors are more visible.
Those are different problems, and they need different paid media strategies.
Google Ads can help capture people already showing intent, while LinkedIn Ads can help membership organisations reach clearly defined professional audiences.
Start with the growth problem, not the advertising channel.
Retention Changes the Acquisition Target
Here is one of the numbers that often gets missed.
Imagine an organisation with 2,000 members and a retention rate of 85%.
That means around 300 members need to be replaced during the year simply to maintain the same membership base.
If the organisation wants to grow by another 100 members, the real acquisition target is not 100.
It is closer to 400.
That changes the conversation around paid media.
It is no longer simply about how many leads or clicks a campaign can generate. It is about how much it costs to acquire a member, how likely they are to convert and, ultimately, how long they stay.
If you lose 300 members before adding 100, your acquisition target is not 100. It is 400.
Paid Media Success Isn’t Measured in Clicks
One of the advantages of paid media is that it gives marketers plenty of data.
The danger is focusing on the easiest numbers to report.
A low cost per click can look fantastic until you discover those clicks rarely turn into members.
A more expensive campaign may actually be much more valuable if it attracts people who are more likely to join.
That is why we focus on meaningful tracking rather than vanity metrics. You need to understand the journey from campaign to enquiry, application and membership.
This is becoming even more important as advertising platforms use more AI and automation.
Google recently introduced new reporting for AI Max for Search that gives advertisers a clearer view of the path from the search term that triggered an ad, to the assets shown, to the landing page the user reached.
It is a useful development because modern paid search is becoming increasingly automated. The technology can make more decisions, but marketers still need visibility into what is happening, the quality of the traffic being generated and whether that traffic is actually turning into members.
In other words, automation does not remove the need for strategy. It makes good measurement even more important.
If you want to dig deeper into how PPC can support membership acquisition, read our guide to using PPC to reach more members effectively.
Organic Marketing Still Matters. Paid Media Gives You More Control.
SEO, content and email all still have important roles to play.
SEO and AI visibility can help potential members discover you when they are actively researching support. Email can nurture relationships once someone has shown interest.
But organic marketing cannot guarantee that the people you most want to reach will find you.
Paid media gives membership organisations another option: deliberately putting the right proposition in front of the right audience.
That does not mean every organisation should simply spend more.
It means knowing where the opportunity sits, choosing the right channel and measuring what happens after the click.
There Are More Scary Numbers Where Those Came From
These are only a few of the issues behind the membership growth statistics we have been looking at.
In our webinar, Seven Scary Membership Stats You Don’t Want to See — and What to Do About Them, we dig into the wider picture: acquisition, retention, engagement, member value, paid media and the metrics that actually tell you whether your marketing is working.
We also look at what membership organisations can do when the numbers start moving in the wrong direction.
If you want the rest of the scary stats — and, more importantly, what to do about them — watch the webinar.
Want Your Paid Media to Deliver More Than Clicks?
Copper Bay Digital is the paid media agency for memberships. We help membership organisations use paid search and paid social to reach the right audiences, improve acquisition and understand what happens after the click.
