Spreading the Word: How AMCI's Market Development Domain Is Changing the Story of Association Management

Jeanne Sheehy, CMO at Bostrom and Marketing Advisory Board Director

It started with a bold declaration. About four years ago, Board Chair Mark Engle stood before the AMC Institute community and issued a challenge that was equal parts audacious and inspiring: by 2050, AMCs should manage 50% of the associations in our target size range. Just like that, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal or BHAG was born.

It's the kind of goal that could have felt distant and abstract. Instead, it lit a fire.

Under the leadership of Market Development Domain Champion Jeanne Sheehy, AMCI got to work turning that vision into strategy, and strategy into action. What followed has been one of the most deliberate, data-driven, and ultimately beautiful storytelling efforts in the AMC industry's history.

Know Your Audience First

Before AMCI could tell the right story, it needed to know exactly who needed to hear it. The Market Development team commissioned focus groups, built audience personas, and mapped customer journeys to understand the perspectives and motivations of the two audiences that matter most: CEOs and Executive Directors of associations, and Board Volunteer Leaders.

These aren't interchangeable audiences. An Executive Director weighing the AMC model is asking operational, financial, and career-trajectory questions. A board volunteer leader is asking about mission focus, strategic continuity, and governance. Understanding each persona along with their pain points, their fears, their ambitions meant AMCI could craft messages that actually resonate rather than generic marketing that bounces off.

The research surfaced something important: too many association leaders simply didn't know what an AMC could do for them. The value of the model, the buying power, the scalability, the institutional continuity, the cross-association expertise was well understood inside our community but largely invisible to the 60,500 associations out there who might benefit from it. (To put that in perspective: 60,500 associations in a universe of 33.2 million U.S. businesses is less than half of one percent. Finding and reaching them requires precision, not volume.)

Bringing in the Right Partner

With the audience clearly defined, AMCI launched a competitive RFP process to find a marketing partner who could translate these insights into a compelling, sustained digital campaign. A special member-driven marketing task forceoversaw the search, and the result was a relationship that has proved transformational.

BeautifulBeast was selected three years ago, and the work they have done on behalf of the AMC community has been nothing short of remarkable. BeautifulBeast has brought creativity, discipline, and a genuine passion for the AMC model to every piece of content, every campaign, and every channel touchpoint.

The Numbers Tell the Story

The results of this partnership are now measurable and they are moving in the right direction. Since launching in 2023, the AMCI digital marketing initiative has generated more than 393,000 unique website users. Over the past 12 months, it reached more than 196,000 users, representing a +77.6% year-over-year increase, following a prior growth of +25.9%. Organic social now accounts for nearly 38% of total website traffic. In 2026 year-to-date, Google Ads are achieving a 12.71% click-through rate (CTR), well above industry benchmarks, while Meta Ads are delivering a 3.08% CTR.

Page engagements have rebounded strongly over the past year, reaching nearly 192,000 interactions. Most importantly, the initiative has generated more than 149,000 completed audience journeys, with each journey representing at least three meaningful touchpoints across our content. This is one of the strongest signals that the strategy is working: audiences are not just landing on our pages, they are actively progressing from awareness to deeper understanding and action.

These aren't vanity metrics. They represent board members and executive directors who now know what an AMC can do for them. Some of them are already in conversations with AMCI members.

Tools You Can Use Right Now

AMCI's market development investment doesn't just benefit the collective, it creates direct value for member firms. The AMCI Online Marketing Toolkit is a comprehensive, ready-to-deploy resource that gives AMCs of every size the messaging frameworks, templates, campaign guidance, and benchmarks they need to grow their own pipelines.

Whether you're a one-person business development operation or a growing firm with dedicated marketing staff, the toolkit provides website copy, email drip sequences, LinkedIn strategy, paid search playbooks, case study templates, and a step-by-step pain point journey framework all grounded in the research and creative strategy developed through the AMCI-BeautifulBeast partnership.

The toolkit built by BeautifulBeast and launch in April addresses 43 distinct association pain points across eight categories. When your outreach speaks the language of association problems — governance transitions, staff burnout, rising overhead, technology gaps — it resonates.

Hear It Live at AMCs Engaged

Want to go deeper? The Market Development team will be presenting the full story of this work including updated campaign performance, new tools, and what's on the horizon at the upcoming AMCs Engaged conference in Milwaukee. It's an opportunity to see the data, ask your questions, and take home strategies you can put to work immediately.

Your Dues at Work

For AMCI members, the Market Development domain represents something concrete: this is what your membership investment looks like in action. It's original research into your buyers. It's professionally produced campaigns running on your behalf. It's a toolkit built to lift the growth potential of small, medium, and large AMCs alike. It's a shared infrastructure for telling the AMC story better than any single firm could tell it alone.

The 50% goal may be on a 2050 timeline, but the work of getting there is happening right now, with every click, every landing page visit, every association leader who discovers for the first time that there is a better way to run their organization.

Questions about the Market Development domain or how to access the AMCI Online Marketing Toolkit? Contact Domain Champion Jeanne Sheehy or visit the members only section at amcinstitute.org.

Jeanne Sheehy, CMO at Bostrom and Marketing Advisory Board Director

To keep our momentum strong, the Chair, Board, and CEO will continue highlighting the Strategic Plan each month. These updates ensure members can see our progress toward 50 by 50, understand how each committee and task force is moving the work forward, and identify meaningful ways for members to engage. By grounding our communications in a shared vision and clear direction, we’re creating a consistent throughline that will guide our collective efforts throughout 2026.