Page 16 - Marketing Times v1

have a college or university ranked in the top 25 nationwide in entrepreneurship. We will have some very solid recommendations and an action plan for our lawmakers before 2015 gets underway.
TCMT: Your membership has increased almost four-fold from 6,000 members to more than 23,000! That has to be helping you deliver a uni ed voice in Lansing.
Rob: Oh yeah. We are now recognized as one of the top ve most in uential associations in Lansing for the past four years in a row.
That didn’t used to be the case. And maybe there has been a breakthrough in Michigan.
I think we’ve proven that veri able policies
that improve employment also improves tax revenue in the state. These employees are
now paying into the system when they weren’t before. So you don’t have to raise taxes to
raise revenue. If you create jobs – with small businesses – you increase revenues and reduce governmental costs.
TCMT: How do you get your message out about all of the positive work you’re doing? Rob: First, our bi-monthly magazine, Focus,
goes to our members. We use various tactics to get the word out depending on our messaging. We discovered Village Press quite a few years ago when we needed a custom publishing company to help us publish and produce Focus. We use them even more deeply now to create and execute successful member renewal plans, new member acquisition programs, and to secure funding for our Political Action Committee.
We have improved, dramatically, by utilizing business partners who excel at messaging, communication, and marketing execution. We need to move the needle in all of these areas, and Village Press provides the up-front research capabilities, as well as the back-end reporting, so we know what’s working and what is not. They really know how to do all of these things so that we can focus on our core mission. 
To learn more about the Small Business Association of Michigan, www.sbam.org.
16 Traverse City Marketing Times • Fall 2014
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