If you’re in the online business world, the chances are you may have considered a membership or still be considering. If you are still unsure if an online membership is right for your business, here I explore memberships from all angles.
You’ll probably already know that there are memberships in all manner of categories. Just in the business category, examples of membership topics available include:
- Strategy
- Email marketing
- Marketing
- SEO
- Website
- Accounting
- Legal
- Social media
- PR
and the list could go on and on. There are even special interest and hobbyist memberships, including learning to sew, playing an instrument, online fitness memberships, learning a language, DIY nail art, and even super specific memberships like teaching you how to do a handstand.
Pretty much anything could be made into a membership if you were willing to be creative and had the willpower to see it through.
My own experience of various memberships does tell me that to lead one is not for the faint-hearted.
If you lack commitment, consistency, creativity, or get bored easily then maybe look for a different form of recurring revenue. If you tend to overdeliver and are a prime candidate for burning yourself out, I’d also steer clear.
The benefits to the members can be vast, it’s hugely beneficial to learn over time, within a community, sharing a common goal. However, some are better than others so if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.
What are the secrets to running a successful membership and what are the pitfalls you want to avoid?
Firstly, we should acknowledge the elephant in the room of memberships, there will be churn in your membership, people will come, and they will go.
When they go they might not tell you why (or the real reason why), this will make you question yourself, you’ll worry you’re not providing enough, and you’ll get scared they’re all going to leave; it’s a real mindset and confidence war against yourself. You might see this as a setback, but often it’s not.
With any challenging situations, it’s helpful to have a plan, in this case a ‘churn preparation plan’ and set yourself up to accept this will happen; it will be a lot easier to deal with. Who knows it might be nothing to do with you and everything to do with the things you have no control of.
The Martin Lewis Effect
Sometimes there are outside factors that influence people’s decision-making. It can be difficult to pinpoint sometimes but just know that it might be completely out of your control.
Who knows, Martin Lewis might have just run a 30-minute programme on cleansing all recurring payments and they’ve remembered they haven’t actually logged on in 3 months because they lost the password.
It might be nothing to do with your content, or you, it might just be the Martin Lewis effect.
Customer Feedback is Your Friend
Of course, there are times when it might be something to do with the content, or you, or another member they’ve taken a dislike to, or the vibe, or your online platform, or feeling it’s not value for money.
In this case, customer feedback is your friend. I consider it a gift, although it doesn’t always feel like it at first.
There are a ton of different reasons and it’s good to at least know what they might be, you won’t need to address every piece of feedback; by getting good quality feedback, you’ll be able to use what you’ll find useful, and leave behind what is not relevant at this time.
A one-person-owned membership can be difficult to give feedback to if there are reasons that might be difficult to swallow.
Most people will tiptoe around the real issues they’ve found, you might get subtle (or not so subtle) hints but the majority will probably not want to hurt your feelings (there are exceptions to this of course!).
Outsourcing Customer Engagement
This is where it’s useful to outsource your customer engagement work. If you embed the feedback process into your membership, this sends an immediate signal that you care and have taken their views seriously and taken steps to make it easier for them to give you feedback.
This is not to be underestimated, it shows you as a professional who is self-aware and eager to listen and improve.
Questions to Ask Yourself When Deciding if you Should Start a Membership
- Your customers will join your membership because they want to move forward with something, what is the journey you will take them on and what timescale does it take for them to get from A to B? Some ideas might be better off as a course.
- What continual value will you be providing?
- Is the idea suitable for a membership?
- Is the idea validated? Will anyone pay for it?
- Does the value v’s price make this an easy yes for the customer?
- Is your working personality suitable for a membership? You need to be comfortable showing up even when you don’t feel like it.
- Do you feel you can offer exceptional service and expertise in your field?
- How will you retain them in your membership?
Important Factors in Memberships
There are some important factors to consider before setting up a membership.
- You don’t have to have a finished product before you open the doors to your membership. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint. Many memberships open with a limited amount of content to founding members, with a promise to add more content and value consistently, along with a commitment that the founder price will not increase as the membership value does.
- There is nothing worse than being inside a stale membership with no new content and seeing the owner continuously put all their effort into gaining new members (I have been on the receiving end, it’s not pretty!). Focus on the members you have, not the ones you don’t.
- Ensure your membership is user-friendly with the tech. Not everyone has the same level of technical knowledge, so choose a platform that is easy to use. You don’t want their biggest challenge to be logging in!
- Your admin processes from start to finish should be slick and professional. Enlist help if you need to get this right and if it’s not 100% at the start, just make a commitment to improving it. Your membership should be an admin burden for your members, which leads me to my next point, but it’s important so it needs it’s own bullet point:
- THE PROCESS TO CANCEL SHOULDN’T BE HARD – they shouldn’t need to have a conversation or jump through hoops to cancel with you. It might be completely personal reasons and they could potentially come back – but if you make this part difficult it’ll most certainly put them off rejoining. Plus making it deliberately difficult is not a way to do business in my opinion. The decision to leave should be difficult, but THE PROCESS shouldn’t be.
The Good, Bad & The Ugly
With any new business move, it makes sense to acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly. This will test your commitment to the idea without seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses or just focusing on the good parts.
The Good
- Recurring revenue – an obvious one, it’s good to pay the bills but the other reasons will probably make your heart sing more.
- Can build a strong, supportive, collaborative, community working towards common goals.
- Member success; you’ll love seeing how your members grow and achieve under your guidance – their success is your success.
- Learn a lot about your business and your industry, and see things from a different perspective.
- Learn a lot about your ideal customer.
- Can really show your true values and personality, so they get to know you on a deeper level.
- Your members will inspire you and give you ideas as much as you can do for them.
- Can be a lot of fun (Always re-evaluate when the fun stops).
The Bad
- Time-consuming
- Continuously need to evolve and adapt to feedback and market trends
- Dealing with churn
- Requires serious commitment to maintain relevance and deliver exceptional service
- Initial setup takes work and needs automation to avoid an admin nightmare
- You have to show up and serve, regardless of what else is going on in your life.
- Some members won’t implement or access your content no matter how much you encourage them.
The Ugly
- Mindset and confidence challenges
- Can be energy-sapping
- Need to be mindful of burnout
- Difficult or entitled members, the ones who expect everything to revolve around them or the mood hoovers can be difficult to deal with and affect the feel of the community.
Will You Be Introducing a Membership Into Your Business?
If you’ve got this far and you’ve not been put off completely but the harsh reality of introducing a membership into your business, then this might just be for you.
Many people initially get seduced by the benefits, and then are disappointed when it doesn’t work out that way or ends up being a lot more work than first thought.
By taking the rough with the smooth you really could build the next amazing community and help more people than you ever could before.