6 Marketing Strategies to Skyrocket your Membership site in 2024
July 20, 2020 9 min read
Marketing Landscape is an ever changing one and as a business manager, it is crucial to keep up with all the changing trends. On top of this, being a business person selling memberships and its related products online, the Math changes even more.
Membership Business Websites and the Subscription Model are in trend. These business models are growing at the rate of 15% annually, which is quite a hefty number. In this model, the members and subscribers are provided with exclusive content access. They are a part of a special community as members. To stand tall in this saturated market, effective membership marketing strategies must be implemented. “You have to be seen to be sold”, is a popular phrase, thus marketing will help you reach wider audiences and boost your site.
Let us understand why, as a membership site, it is crucial for you to keep up with marketing.
Importance of Membership Marketing
Here are a few of the reasons to drill the importance of membership marketing in your head.Increase in Visibility
Users across the net might be interested in your membership model, however, if they are not aware of your existence, it’s of no use. Marketing your model is going to increase your visibility across the Web and make others aware of your existence.Member Acquisition
With right marketing, you can target and re-target a group of people with personalized marketing techniques and convert them to paying members, thus increasing your revenue.Engagement and Member Retention
It is important to engage your existing audience across various membership plans. This helps in retention. Proper Engagement via marketing techniques reduces churn rates by engaging members with various features.Brand Authority
Consistent Marketing Efforts would help you in establishing your membership site as an authority in your niche. For that, people should talk about your brand as a synonym to your niche.
Let us now check out the marketing strategies that would help you drive in the most benefits.
5 Best Membership Marketing Strategies for your next Campaign
1. Content Marketing and Leverage the SEO Best Practices
Content is something that is talked about by everyone! The positions like Content Writer, Copywriter, Content Planner, Content Manager, have opened up heavily in the market. This is the most effective way to attract and retain members. Valuable, Relative, Creative content is something the users would observe and become your member based on it. What kind of Content Creation should a Membership Website involve in?Blogging:
Detailed Blogs are one of the ever-standing forms of content to exist. Write Blog Articles that address common user queries and questions in and around your niche. For instance, if you host a community of travelers on your membership site, post blogs like, best destinations for summer, your packing checklist for a beach vacation, explore the best vineyards in this area, and so on.
Video Content:
Video Content is dominating the content industry from bite side videos to long-form videos. Platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, Pinterest are heavily dependent on video content. Video tutorials, webinars, interviews, trends, quick tips and tricks can be shared among various platforms to increase your presence and engagement.
SEO Best Practices:
Learn how to optimise your content for Search Engine Optimization for it to be on top. Your free blogs must be optimised properly for new visitors to find your content and explore your website for gated, special access content.
Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush would help you stay on top of your SEO and Keyword strategy and help you with competitor analysis.
Look at HubSpot’s website. They offer various free content resources like templates, e-books, courses and a big bank of useful Blogs. This engages existing users as well as attracts new visitors on their site.
2. Social Media Marketing
People are on Social Media. Their average spend on various Social Media Platforms is 2 hours and 23 minutes per day. While they spend only 52 seconds on reading a Blog Post. If you’ve stayed on to read up to this fact, then I am sure this blog is going to be very helpful to you. So, the point is, leverage Social Media to market about your membership and its benefits.Platform Selection:
Choose the right platform based on your target audience. For a membership community of professionals, LinkedIn is the way to go. While if your membership is about art, culture, fitness, or online course for college goers, turn towards Instagram.
Consistent Posting:
You cannot post only when you need leads and then Ghost your audience. The followers would understand this and not be around for longer. A consistent posting schedule would engage your followers and keep them around for you to convert them at any time. Use diverse content like videos, carousels, blog posts, testimonials, and understand what works best for your chosen platform.
Look at Peloton, A membership website that sells individual products, courses, memberships, shares success stories, exclusive blogs and user-generated content on their platform.
3. Influencer Marketing
Look at the influencers you follow and trust. You want to buy a tech gadget, you would go to Marques Brownlee.
Similarly, you must collaborate with a niche expert influencer that aligns with your goals. Look out for micro influencers with a dedicated following. Influencer Marketing is similar to the traditional word of mouth advertising, just online and boundary less.
Identify Influencers:
Finding an influencer that aligns with your brand and values is crucial. Have a look at their followers demographic as well to understand whether their audience matches your target group or not.
Collaborations:
You can opt for various kinds of collaborations based on what you want to market through this channel. Host a giveaway, promote a pay-per-post specific product, or let them highlight benefits of being a member with you. Give them a brief, however, allow them their creative freedom.
Maintain Authenticity:
Make sure that the promotion feels genuine and trustworthy. You do not want to overs-tuff your brand, otherwise it will; throw away the visitors.
Example: Skillshare, an LMS based membership site collaborates with various influencers to promote their platform and drive traffic to increase memberships.4. Affiliates and Referrals for Promoting Memberships
This is another form of influencer marketing wherein an affiliate promotes your membership and receives a commission on successful conversion.With ARMember, you get an add-on to include affiliate marketing to your membership site. From your membership website itself, you can even manage your affiliates and track their sales and performance. Affiliates are to be offered a commission for every new member they bring in. You can also encourage your current members to refer their friends and family by offering them special discounts, free months, or exclusive content.
5. Email Marketing
Email Marketing techniques are not outdated, if you think so. It has been one of the most famous forms of marketing since before the digital boom. Never stop with this form of marketing as there is a group of people who still believe more on emails than any other strategies.
An email marketing can include a Welcome Series, Regular Updates, Special Newsletters, Notification Emails, Promotional and Discount Offer’s Email, or even Personalized Content. You can segment your email list based on member behaviour and interaction to send them relevant content.
Have you received mail from Netflix to recommend new shows based on your previous watch? Well, that’s email marketing at work. Use tools like MailChimp, Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, Mad Mimi and the like.
Apart from these Top 5 marketing strategies for membership sites, there are other methods for you to consider as well.
Other Marketing Techniques to Promote Membership Business
Guest Post and Guest Blogging
When you post as a guest on some other well-known Websites with a huge traffic volume, you get a new set of visitors. You need to find reputable blogs in your niche that are open to guest posting and promoting your site.Brand Partnerships
Partner with complementary brands for a win-win situation for both. For instance, if you are dealing with a Mindfulness Membership Website, look out for Yoga or Therapy memberships. You can cross promote your brand and receive an audience who are already interested in your niche. You can even offer discounts for people who came through the other brand.Paid Ads and PPC
Use google ads, social media ads, Meta business suite, and strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) to quickly increase your visibility. These ads must be well defined to target the right audience and get desired results.
Build a Loyal Community
A loyal community would always go a long way. Even if they are not your current members, they are most likely to be a member with you in future as you have kept them engaged and built a community. Online Forums, Exclusive Groups, Discord Community, Social Media Groups, can be explored.
Creating a community around your membership site fosters engagement and loyalty.
Look at Skool, a platform allowing you to create your own community or use the Social Community feature of ARMember to create a closed community.
Conclusion
The marketing strategies enlisted here will help you boost the growth of your membership site. You cannot stay away from new age digital marketing trends, thus, understand it and reap the most benefits. However, you must be consistent in your efforts towards marketing and fostering engagement with your audience. A satisfied member base would attract new members, thus in acquiring new members, do not forget to provide value to your members.
FAQs
1) What is Digital Marketing?
Digital or online marketing is a form of marketing wherein you use internet and digital media sources to reach your target audience. The topics discussed in this blog are various forms of digital marketing.2) What is Voice Search Optimization?
With tools like Siri and Alexa, people have stopped typing and started searching by giving voice commands. Voice searches are usually long commands and you need to research about that as well for optimizing your blog or content.3) How to promote memberships?
You can use techniques like sign-up bonus, host a free event, promote referrals, do giveaways, to engage users and retain them. These will be your USPs to promote memberships.
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Brian Denim
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