A Higher Standard: How Marketing for Membership Sites Should Be Different

Membership sites are a different kind of animal in the world of online products. It’s tempting to walk the beaten paths and apply what we all know about marketing and selling online from eCommerce and SaaS products, but we will all fall short when we do that. With membership sites, you’re selling access. It’s as much about providing an experience as it is a product to buy. Because of that, membership sites come with a very unique set of challenges when asking people to hand over their credit card info and cross over the threshold into membership.

How Marketing for a Membership Site is Different from Other Online Products

For a lot of eCommerce products, people don’t need much to convince them to buy. As long as they are ready to spend some money, the perceived value is there and you’ve eliminated most of the risk from the transaction, most people will gladly become customers. They pay. They own the product. It’s done. For membership sites, you’re setting in front of people a “perpetual transaction” – pay to be a part of this until you don’t want to anymore. This is a very different sell than a “buy once to own” transaction. You’re asking people to join and be a part of a community with no defined end in sight. Because of that, you need to make a much stronger connection with them up front before they will be ready to say yes to that kind of invitation.

The Question on Everyone’s Mind When Considering a Membership Product

The first question that you have to answer for people is why is it in my best interest for me to enter into this as a long-term buyer/seller relationship? So in other words: Why should I become a member of this site that will teach me how play the drums, when I could just buy a training video off of Amazon? Why should I pay monthly for access to this library of licensed photography, when I could just buy what I need a la carte? Why should I pay to be a member of this business training site when I could just buy a handful of ebooks? Your answer to that question for your business may be very obvious to you (better content, the community, better chance of achieving your goal, more cost effective, etc.), but it is imperative that you make sure it is just as obvious to the people coming to your site as well.

The Member Validation Formula

Answering that question is extremely important, but it is never going to turn a visitor into a member on its own. All that does is simply moves the cursor off of the back button. It convinces people to stick around and hear you out. You now have two much more important qualifiers that your audience is looking for and need to have proven to them if you’re going to have a shot at them coming on board. We call this your member validation formula, and it works like this:

Authority in Your Product Specialty (you actually know what you’re doing)

You have to show people more than just that you have the solution to their problem or need – whether you are the only one with the solution or not. If a physician says to me that she has the perfect medication to cure my seasonal allergies, I’m interested because that sounds like something I need, but I’m nowhere near ready to hand over my money for it. First I need to be assured of some things about this physician. Has she successfully helped people with this problem before? Is she even licensed to practice medicine? What does she know about treating seasonal allergies that other allergists don’t? What I’m really asking is should I trust this person to help me? Not only that, but people want to be associated with the best and brightest, you need to prove that you’re worthy of that. Here are some examples of ways to prove your authority:

• Teach them something valuable for free
• Identifying the unique problem that your product solves for your customers goes a long way already. You are proving that you understand what your audience is dealing with. That shows experience that not many people have.
• Use testimonials and social proof. These can change people’s perspective of you very quickly.
• Determine what unique perspective or belief you have about your industry/product specialty and plant your flag with it.
• Speak definitively, use a line in the sand method. “Other companies believe that this is the route to solve this problem, but this is what I know and believe.“

What can you do to change people’s perspective of you so that they begin seeing your business as an authority and worthy of their trust?

Prove To Them That They Belong

The second part of the validation formula, to make that next level connection with someone, is for your audience to be able to identify themselves as being a good fit for your membership. Right now, I would never apply to join an exclusive country club. There are the obvious reasons of not even coming close to affording it, but also because I wouldn’t belong. I don’t really want to devote a lot of my free time to fine dining and golf and I’d prefer to just casually hang out with people like me in jeans and a t-shirt. The other members have different values, want different things, and look at the world in a different way than I do. That’s not a bad thing, but I want to spend my time and energy in communities that I can relate to and feel comfortable in (at least most of the time). The same goes for your target members as well. They see their time as a very valuable thing that is not to be wasted.

Help Your Audience Qualify Themselves as a Good Fit for Your Community

There are two sides to this:

• You have to communicate the culture of your business well so that your target members can identify themselves as someone who will fit in with the values and personality of your site
• You have to communicate who you intended your ideal member to be. That way your target members are reassured, “this was created for people like me and so I’m more likely to get something good from it“.

The Dollar Shave Club, a membership site that mails mens hygiene products every month, does a masterful job at qualifying their audience. When you first come across DSC, whether from their viral YouTube commercial or by landing directly on their site, it does not take long to get a sense of what the culture of their company is like and whether you fit into that culture or not. They are witty and funny. The title of their commercial (their flagstone marketing piece) has a censored F-word in it. They lift up and honor all things manly. They simply come across as a group of guys that, if you fit the bill of their target member, would be genuinely fun to hang out with. It’s a perfect fit for their product, and it’s a perfect fit for their members. This is in no way an easy feat for any business, but you can simplify your approach to these two steps:

• Define exactly who your target member is
• Speak to them in the most natural and self-identifiable way possible

The more you practice this, the more natural and consistent it will become and your audience (the right audience) will be able to make a much stronger connection with you.

Today’s Takeaways

• Membership sites have unique set of challenges in marketing because of the “perpetual transaction”
• MUST answer the question: why should I get into an indefinite customer relationship with you?
• In every part of your marketing and your sales process, prove out the member validation formula to your audience
• Prove your authority by teaching your audience valuable things for free and by planting your flag for a unique belief that makes your business different from your competitors
• Define the culture and personality of your business so that your audience can determine whether they belong or not
• It’s OK if everyone doesn’t belong! In fact, that makes your business more unique and successful

Interested in learning more?

I send out a couple articles a month to a group of membership site owners on how to get more signups and keep members hanging around longer. Join the group for free and start getting those emails.

Michael Steele is a partner at The Bright Agency and uses his background in design and marketing to help membership sites bring on more members and keep them around longer.