How to Build a Successful Membership Business – A Guide for Creators

Before you do anything else, you need to identify and define your target audience. These are the people who are looking to solve the problem that you can solve with your membership business. Given that there's nothing new under the sun, chances are good that whatever your idea is, it's been done by someone else. Maybe even a few times.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, it just means that you need to be intentional with who it is you're seeking to reach and help and how you can do it in a way that your competitors can't.

After you've defined your target audience, you'll need to validate your idea. This means finding out whether or not there's demand for what it is you're offering. An easy way to do this is to look at other companies that are offering products similar to yours. Here are some competitor analysis tools that will make this process easy.

Additionally, you can check Google search or use SEO tools to see if your niche, products, and services have a decent search volume. The higher the search volume, the more people that are searching for what you have to offer. This means it's likely that you have a viable membership business idea.

Okay, so you've identified your target audience and have done the research to know that you have a viable offer. Next, you'll need to price your membership offering. There are literally countless ways to price a membership business, but most membership businesses use membership tiers where price point determines what members have access to.

Pricing any product is tricky. If you charge too much, nobody will want to buy. But if you charge too little, potential members might not think that what you're offering is valuable and they won't buy then, either. When you're in the pricing stage, there's no harm in testing. In fact, we encourage it. It's also important to know and understand what potential members look for when considering whether or not they want to buy from you.

• Members pay for ROI. If your membership has a higher perceived return on investment, members are going to be willing to pay more for it.
• Members pay for solutions. If you're offering high-quality content and information that is convenient and useful, people will be willing to pay to access it.

After you've set pricing for your membership business, you get to start building your site. And that means choosing the right membership business platform. Many successful membership businesses are run by creators just like you on the WordPress platform. There are tons of plugins that will do everything you need to run an awesome membership site. Here's a very small sampling of some of the best:

• Memberpress (starting at $179/year)
• WooCommerce Memberships (starting at $199/year)
• Simple Membership (free)

The downside of WordPress and plugins is that you might find yourself lacking the technical skill to build the membership site of your dreams. If you'd rather have a ready-built system, those are out there, too. Website builder Wix has a members-only feature that's available on all of its plans (yes, even the free plan). Wild Apricot is another website builder, this one created specifically for membership sites. If you're selling courses, there are tons of online learning management systems (LMS) to choose from. Sites like Kajabi, Thinkific, and Teachable are just a few of your options.

If you're not concerned about incorporating your membership site into your own domain and site, there are sites like Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, Podia, and others that you can use to build your membership site quickly and easily.

Depending on the platform you choose to build your membership business site, you'll have different design choices available to you. Many of the options we've already mentioned have excellent design tools you can use to create an on-brand membership site that your subscribers will love. But even the easiest design tools won't matter if you don't know how to design an awesome site. Here are three key things you'll need to consider to ensure that your site is not only beautiful but functional.

Branding

The branding of your membership site should match the rest of your business. We strongly recommend hosting your membership site on your domain if at all possible and keeping the colors, fonts, and style uniform across the entire site.

Menus and Navigation

The main menu and navigation on your website should be clear and easy to understand. Your most important pages should be clearly visible on the main menu (generally along the top of the page). If links must be nested in navigation menus, don't make people go too deep to find them—nested menus shouldn't really be more than two deep. And, offer a site search option so people can just enter what they're looking for and go.

Sign-up Page

This page is important. It's what gets people to actually sign up for your membership business. That makes it a sales page. And that's all it should do: sell. Limit the page to a single call-to-action and don't put anything on the page that will distract visitors or draw them away from the page. You want them to hit this page with intent and have that intent grow the longer they're there.

After you've built out your membership site you get to fill it with content! You'll want to be sure to include content that is useful and relevant to your members and lay it out in a way that's accessible and that makes sense to the way people will be using it. There are several different types of content that you can offer up to your members, from exclusive articles and white papers to resources like calculators and tools available just for them.

When planning content for your membership site consider the type of content you can (and want to) create, how you'll come up with new content offerings, and how often you're going to add new content for members.

Once you've filled your membership site with some valuable content, you're ready to promote your site and get paying members. There are two strategies you'll need to employ when it comes to building a membership business: getting new members and keeping existing members. The content you share and the value you offer is vital to keeping your existing members. To bring in new members, you'll turn to marketing and advertising tactics including:

Social Media Advertising

Advertising on the social media platforms that your potential members use is a great way to build awareness of your membership site. Many platforms have their own advertising platforms that allow you to target exactly the right people you're trying to bring in. Plus, they're cost-effective.

We also encourage you to use organic social media content (in addition to paid ads) to promote your work to your existing audience.

SEO

To bring in new members for your membership site, you'll probably want to create freely available content, too. This is the content that will be indexed by search engines and will bring in potential members searching for exactly the topics you cover. Once they land on your site, they'll be able to see that some of your content is locked behind a paywall. If the content you're giving away is high-quality and useful, potential members will assume that the content people pay you for is stellar (and it should be).

Email

Never underestimate the power of email marketing. It has a ridiculous ROI (between 3500%–4400%, depending on the studies you read) and is a great way to keep existing subscribers engaged while promoting your membership site to subscribers who haven't yet joined.