So, you’ve created a membership site? That’s great! Creating a membership site is an effective way to generate recurring revenue from your website because members can pay a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for premium content, products, or services.
Growing a membership site can be difficult, though. So, if your new membership site doesn’t have as many members as you imagined and you’re not making as much money as you had hoped, then something needs to change.
Luckily, with just a few tips, you can easily attract new members to your site as well as turn your existing members into your biggest fans.
Here’s how to grow your membership site.
1. Promote Your Membership Site
First, if people don’t know that your membership site exists, then you’re not going to get many new members. So, you need to promote your membership site—and promote it a lot!
Don’t worry though, you don’t need a big marketing budget in order to promote your membership site to a ton of users online. There are a number of easy and affordable ways to promote your membership site online.
One of the most popular and effective ways to promote your membership site is by posting about it on social media. Plus, it’s free!
And almost everyone is on social media. In fact, according to Hootsuite, 84% of people with access to the internet use social media. Because your potential site members are on social media, you need to be there too.
Start creating posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to promote your membership site. Here’s how Succulents and Sunshine promote its paid course on social media:
Remember to use relevant hashtags to widen your reach and make it easier for your target audience to find you online. For example, Succulents and Sunshine often uses hashtags like #Succulents, #SucculentGarden, and #SucculentPlant so that succulent lovers can discover their posts.
You can also promote your membership site by:
- Creating valuable blog posts
- Adding a popup to your site
- Emailing your subscribers
- Running an online giveaway
- Answering questions in online forums like Reddit and Quora
The more you promote your membership site online, the more members you can attract.
2. Display Social Proof
If you’re struggling to convert website visitors into paying members, you need to add social proof to your website. Social proof is a social and psychological phenomenon where people look to the actions of others in order to determine what their own actions should be in a particular situation.
So, if a website visitor is unsure about subscribing to your membership site, but then they see that other people are joining, it encourages them to become a member too.
There are a number of ways you can show social proof on your website, like:
- Adding reviews and testimonials from members
- Displaying the number of members your site has
- Using trust seals such as accepted payment badges
- Sharing your industry certifications or accreditations
- Showing the number of shares with social sharing buttons
You can also show real-time stats to your website visitors with a tool like TrustPulse. When a visitor is on your site, with TrustPulse, you can display social proof notifications on the screen every time someone signs up for your membership site.
By showing social proof on your website, you can skyrocket your conversions.
3. Reward Your Loyal Members
Aside from attracting new people to your membership site, you also have to keep your existing members interested and engaged. One way to do that is by rewarding them.
By rewarding your existing members, you can increase loyalty and keep them around for a long time. Plus, rewarding your loyal members can make it easier to upsell them. For instance, if you reward members that are subscribed to your lowest membership tier, those happy members will be more likely to upgrade to a higher tier later on, giving you a boost in revenue.
So, how do you reward your loyal members?
You can offer coupons, run members-only giveaways, send your members personalized messages on their birthdays, or gift them some branded merch like t-shirts.
You can also reward your members with achievement or activity badges when they interact with your site. With a plugin like BadgeOS, you can easily add achievement badges to your website.
When your members feel valued and appreciated, they’ll continue to be loyal to your membership site and even become brand ambassadors for you.
4. Create an Affiliate Program
Speaking of turning your members into brand ambassadors, you can also reward your existing members and attract new people to your site by creating an affiliate program.
With an affiliate program, your members can promote your membership site, products, or services. Whenever you make a sale through one of your member’s referral links, the member/affiliate gets a small commission. This is a great way to turn your members into brand ambassadors and generate more sales.
If you’re worried that creating an affiliate program sounds complicated, don’t worry. There are many easy-to-use affiliate WordPress plugins on the market.
Some membership plugins even offer built-in affiliate programs. For example, if you use MemberPress to create a membership site, they have a built-in affiliate program with their Pro edition called Affiliate Royale. This makes it incredibly easy to set up an affiliate program, set the commission, track your affiliate links, and more.
5. Gather Feedback from Your Members
You can also grow your membership site by gathering feedback from your existing members. Your members know exactly what they want from your site, so you should be getting their feedback and putting it to good use.
For instance, when collecting feedback from your members, you could discover that your members want a members-only forum on your site where they can chat with other members. By gathering their feedback, listening to it, and putting it into action, it will make your members feel appreciated and you can make improvements to your membership site that will make them happy. Happier members will lead to increased brand loyalty.
You can easily collect feedback from your members by adding a customer feedback form to your website.
Be sure to include questions on your customer survey form like:
- What features could you not live without?
- What features could you live without?
- What features would you like to see?
Getting feedback from your members will help you build a membership site that they love and rave about to all of their friends and family.
Growing your membership site takes time, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. With these tips for how to grow your membership site, you can create a successful membership site that generates recurring revenue. With steady, recurring revenue, you can turn your hobby into a fully-fledged business.
The post How to Grow Your Membership Site (5 Tips) appeared first on Torque.
