Have you thought about creating a membership for your clients? Either in-person or online, a membership can be a great way to grow your business, build community within your client base, and create a recurring income.
However, setting up a membership is not for the faint of heart! It takes a level of dedication and commitment to nurturing your clients in providing a service that is worth their money as well as worth your time and effort. Striking that balance can be tricky. Let’s take a look at the structure, content, and possibility of building membership.
Why Build a Membership?
Establishing a membership is a solid financial strategy, with recurring income providing a stable revenue stream for your business. This can relieve some of the constant hustle of finding new clients, creating new offerings and marketing, and allows you instead to focus on your existing clients and building community and value for them. A recurring income also helps your business coast through any seasonal dips throughout the year.
A membership also benefits your clients, giving the best value for money and helping them establish a commitment to their wellness goals.
Choosing the Right Platform
When choosing the membership platform you want to host your content, there are a few important points to consider. Things to look for might be:
- Support – does the platform have good tech support to help you get set up and work through any hurdles?
- Ease of use – not just for you but also for the client experience on the front end of the site. Look for demos on set up and the user experience.
- Branding – can you use your own business branding on the membership platform? This might only be available at a higher subscription cost.
- Cost – is the price of the platform sustainable long-term for your business? Will you need third-party integrations (such as email marketing or a website), and what are the costs of these likely to be?
- Payment processing – which payment processor works with the membership, and is it suitable for your clients? Note the fees here also.
- Integrations – How does the membership platform integrate with your own website, if it needs to? This can be a really important part of your choice, as broken integration links are a major frustration for both clients and businesses.
- Limitations – does the platform have limits for your subscription level, such as how many subscribers you accumulate or the number of courses you can include? Consider if this makes it a viable long-term option for your business, as otherwise, you might find yourself wanting to switch to a new platform when you grow.
- Reviews and feedback – ask around to find real-life reviews and feedback on the platform from other users, if you can.
All of these considerations will help you to find the right platform that you can stick with and build your membership on for the long haul.
Creating the Membership
Once you choose the platform to host your membership, you have some practical decisions to make, such as:
- Setting a price – as a guideline, the price of membership should be lower than that of your other services, with some add-ons included to encourage sign-up and deliver that extra value for money. When clients pay for your service, they are committing to using your services, so while a high price point might not be attractive to everyone, a low price point can devalue what you offer. Find the balance that will work for your business.
- Content – in online memberships, you might have existing content that you can add to the content library. When you are ready to launch your membership, having some content in your library already adds value from the get-go.
- Commitment – a membership takes commitment to the production of content and nurturing the community of users. This can mean a heavy workload initially, so preparation and pre-planning will set you in good stead for success.
- Profit margin – figure out your baseline for making your membership pay the bills that it needs to. It should cover the cost of any software platforms you need to use and equipment you need to invest in and (at least eventually) cover the cost of your time. It might take a while to build the membership up, but knowing how much you want to earn from it from the outset sets the benchmark for your business sustainability and gives you a goal for success.
- Time off – burnout is a very real issue in the wellness industry, and planning for time off is good practice to prevent running yourself into the ground. If your membership is online and features some recorded content, you could use the drip content feature in your OfferingTree site to release pre-recorded content to your members. If your membership is focused on in-person only, you might need a different approach (such as a co-worker) to keep things running when you are taking time out.
Create Community in Your Membership
Community is valuable to every business, and membership is a crucial component of success. Building a sense of common ground and friendship between members is part of the process of getting to know your clients, their needs, and their struggles and supporting them. When we feel like we are part of a community, we engage more in it, we feel supported, we enjoy our experience, and this leads to referrals to friends and increased appreciation of the membership. Community is the value-add for both you and the client.
Back in the days of solely in-person connection, we would build this community with social evenings, fundraisers, coffee mornings, etc. In the digital age, social media channels are a great way to connect. Whether it’s a Facebook group, WhatsApp channel, or a Circle community, there are lots of ways to bring the members together.
With some work from you to help the members get to know one another, the community starts to build itself.
Marketing Your Membership
Adding a new element to your business is something you can introduce slowly to your client base to garner interest and build it into your marketing strategy. If you have special events coming up, members might get a great discount on them.
Perhaps there is some content that is only available in the membership. You could also draw attention to your membership via a lead magnet by offering a free initial trial/lower join rate or by running a challenge to attract new members.
If you are already running your membership, let us know how it is going in the comments below this post. You can also share a link to your website!
However you decide to run your membership, OfferingTree has the platform, the tech support, and the community to help you. Watch a demo to learn more about our software or try our software free for 7 days!
