Jodie Clarke from The Empowered Educator joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership. While Jodie’s membership is only just a year old she has already surpassed her member goals and even managed to retire her partner from his job, which has had an enormous impact on her family’s life.
In this episode Jodie’s talking all about how she succeeded with her membership, from nurturing her wait list to her webinar strategy that’s bringing in 5 to 10 new members at a time on autopilot.
And Jodie also talks about moving from a closed door model to an evergreen model and why she’s chosen to do that, and so much more as well!
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It’s an exciting time for us here at The Membership Guys as we unveil a fresh new update for our brand, and also announce that Member Site Academy is now Membership Academy!
While on the surface it may not seem like a major change, there’s a lot more involved than meets the eye…
In this episode I give a bit of backstory about why these changes mean so much, and walk you through the process we used to update our brand identity.
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Chris Marr from the Content Marketing Academy joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership. Chris launched his membership in 2015 after running a six month in person masterclass and it’s now a major focus of his business. Here, he talks about the importance of customer experience in creating a community culture, using free in-person workshops as a way to attract new members and how he has recently launched a very low cost price tier to help those who can’t afford his full membership fee yet.
They also talk marketing challenges, how Chris is successfully using Slack for his members community and how the membership has enabled Chris to create the lifestyle that he wants, as he’s undergone the transition from flying solo to being a father of four and family man.
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Membership site owners wear a lot of hats and juggle a lot of tasks on a day to day basis.
With so many moving parts, and so many plates to keep spinning, anything that we can do to streamline our workload and become a little more efficient is a big win.
In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I talk about 4 specific things we do within our business to make us far more productive in running our membership
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Melissa West joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership. Melissa has had her membership for nearly eight years now and here she shares how she went from burnout to setting up her membership with her husband Tim, how the membership has evolved over the years, and the importance of community and relationships in her long term success.
Melissa also talks about how she uses YouTube to attract new members and some of the things that she does to ensure her membership community continues to thrive, including how she’s built a team of committed volunteers that help her with her membership on a day-to-day basis, and a counterintuitive content strategy that she has introduced that is working really well for increasing engagement and retention.
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Content marketing is one of the best ways to build your audience and demonstrate your expertise…
It’s brings people into your funnel and helps you direct them towards your membership.
And there’s some awesome free content out there…
But then there’s also some content that’s very middle of the road…
All a bit generic and broad…
Because it’s not tailored to the group people who it’s created for.
Membership owners go to great lengths to make their content as accessible to as many people as possible…
But that isn’t always a good thing…
In fact, the broader your content, the less compelling, relevant and effective it will be to each individual reader.
So sadly, by trying to cater to everyone, you end up catering to no one.
And this doesn’t just apply to your content…
It could be your call to action for your lead magnet that’s letting you down…
We see lots of memberships with great content asking people to sign up to their email list with a really generic opt-in…
Or even worse, they’re just asking people to subscribe with no incentive…
How boring is that? No one’s excited to just sign up to a newsletter!
So how can we make content more interesting and relevant so it prompts people to sign up to your email list or membership?
The answer is simple…
Use segmentation!
Let’s explore this further…
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Louise Brogan from Social Bee Academy joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership. Louise has run the Social Bee Academy for around 18 months now and shares what’s been working for her when it comes to attracting new members, including how connecting one to one with people via in person workshops as well as online via Facebook and LinkedIn messenger have been great ways to grow her site.
Louise also talks about the challenges and highlights of her membership journey so far, including why she has moved from a closed model to always being open, and how seeing the results from her members makes everything worthwhile. And you’ll also hear why Louise plans to focus even more on her membership this year and really make the membership a priority in her business!
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When it comes to running a membership, most people focus their attention on the content, community, or managing the business itself.
It makes sense, of course…
After all, that’s what people sign up for…
And that’s how you make money…
The thing is, you can have the best content in the world and a super slick platform to host your community…
But if your member experience isn’t up to scratch then people just aren’t going to engage.
They’ll stop logging in, consuming your content and participating in your community…
Which ultimately means they’ll be less likely to stick around long term…
And that’s the last thing you want to happen…
So, what can you do to ensure you’re delivering a fantastic member experience?
What it comes down to is making your members feel extra special and valued…
Here are six simple ways to do that…
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In this Behind the Membership episode Callie talks with Mike Collins from The Green Room who, over the five years and thousands of members that they’ve had, have crafted an amazing community of people, connected by their Irish ancestry, all over the world.
Listen in to hear all about the special touches The Green Room provides to really make their members feel connected and part of something, including how Mike manages to travel around the world creating living history for his members. And of course you’ll hear about some of their challenges along the way too, like finding the right team members and learning how to attract members on a consistent basis.
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As we get ready for Season 3 of the Behind the Membership podcast we thought a great way to prepare for another awesome season would be to take a look back at some of the biggest lessons and key takeaways that emerged from Season 2.
Long time listeners will know that our guests come from a very wide range of different niches and styles of memberships. Some have been up and running for just a few months, others have been around for years. We cover a lot of territory!
However there are several underlying threads throughout the stories of all of our guests that I want to share with you here…
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Attracting the right people to your membership is essential for the growth of your business.
Not all members are created equal – the best ones will consume your content, positively engage with your community and actually use what they’re paying for.
These are the members who will stick around for the long term.
But how do you tailor your marketing to ensure you’re attracting more of the right type of member?
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One great thing about memberships is that they’re abstract…
You can think up a whole bunch of content, features, courses and so on….
But, it’s this same attribute that makes memberships so great that also makes them challenging to market…
Because if you hone in on one or two things that your membership offers, you could ultimately end up selling yourself short.
On the other hand, listing every single thing can be a bit of overkill.
The fact that a membership can contain all sorts of different, awesome content is great for how much value your members get…
But it’s terrible for enabling you to adequately communicate that value in a way that’s not just going to bore people to death…
So what’s the solution?
The ‘Splinter’ strategy.
Read on to find out how this strategy works for memberships and different ways you can start testing it within your own business….
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It’s easy to get carried away in those early days of planning and building a membership site.
So many people get overexcited by their idea and a little too swept up in the process that they skip the first few fundamental steps.
Most importantly: idea validation and research.
And then when they launch their membership and it doesn’t quite go to plan, they’re left scratching their heads wondering where it all went wrong.
In this episode, I highlight the 7 most important things that you need to validate BEFORE moving forward with your membership idea.
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We’re celebrating a huge milestone for The Membership Guys Podcast as we hit our 200th episode!
To mark the occasion, we thought we’d do something a little special…
So both Callie and I opened the floor up to you, and invited our members and wider audience to ask us absolutely anything you wanted – about anything!
We’ve picked the best questions and answered them together in this special 200th episode. Enjoy!
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Membership websites are a value exchange.
As long as you keep delivering value to your members – in the form of content, resources and ongoing investment in your product – they’ll keep giving value to you in the form of their continued subscription payments.
So what content can you actually include in your membership in order to ensure you keep up your side of the bargain?
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When publishing content online – whether freely or inside a membership – there’s always the chance that someone will copy or steal your hard work.
In truth the only way to guarantee that this won’t happen is to not publish anything online.
However this doesn’t mean you should just roll over if it happens to you.
In this episode I give my top tips for dealing with people stealing and copying your content, with specific examples of the process we use in our own business.
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