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….

What is the ‘Splinter’ Strategy?

Which one would you pick?

One course for $100 or the same course and free access to an entire membership package at the same price?

For most people, it’s a no-brainer!

They would want to milk as much value from that $100 as they can, and the splinter strategy offers that option.

Basically, this strategy takes one piece of content from your membership and makes it available to buy as a standalone product…

The best part of this is that you get to sell this content in a way that makes joining your membership a preferable option to purchasing just that one product. 

Building on the magic of price anchoring, the splinter strategy positions two different pricing choices side by side in a way that drives people towards your preferred buying option.

So your potential buyers see two ways of getting their hands on a course…

One that costs $99 and one that costs $49…

And even though the choice is between a one-off payment and a recurring subscription, people are going to consider the immediate dollar cost…

How much it's going to cost them today… 

And in that sense $50 versus $100, it's obvious what people are going to go for.

So, even if your membership costs more than the course does, a well-stacked value proposition will still seem like the most sensible option…

Even better, this approach ultimately helps you communicate how much value your membership represents. 

It also gives room for more specific marketing…

Remember, one of the most challenging aspects of running memberships is that they're as abstract a product as they come…

They're pretty much a big box with with lots of stuff inside… 

By adopting the splinter strategy, you can really hone in and give context to one specific product offering…

So, you don’t need to worry about how to present all the other things your membership does…

Whether it’s in your sales copy, email, or any kind of promotional material.

The result: You don’t only have an easier way to drive membership sales…

You also have additional revenue from people who choose to just buy the course on its own.

And that's revenue that you otherwise wouldn't be earning.

How to utilize the ‘splinter’ strategy in your business

There’s a myriad of ways you can apply this strategy…

It’s all a matter of choice…

Here are some pointers to get those good ideas flowing…

1. Provide everything out there for public purchase 

Here, you could simply choose a few standalone offerings from your membership package, create separate sales pages for each of them…

And then link to them from your main website, promote them in your sales funnels and so on.

This means people coming to your site have the option to either join your membership….

Or buy these individual courses.

Everything is out there on the surface available to anybody. 

2. Offer the splinter products as a little ‘something behind the scenes’

Another way to go is to offer the splinter products to people who’ve been on your email list for a certain amount of time.

The aim here is to expose potential members on your mailing list to your membership offering…

That way, if they were never planning to opt for the entire package, they’d have the option of buying into a small slice of your product.

And of course, at the same time, you’d have the opportunity to try a different way of getting them into the membership by leveraging price anchoring. 

3. Offer different courses every month

This is a great way to go since it doesn’t only leverage price anchoring but also mixes in the element of scarcity.

What you could do is offer a different course from your membership each month, for one month only.

So you're introducing scarcity by highlighting the fact that this course is normally only available inside your membership.

4. Offer flash sales

This takes the previous option a notch higher…

That limited time factor is still very much at the forefront here…

But in this case, it involves tightening up the time frame.

Every couple of months, you could do a 48-hour flash sale, during which you make a course that is usually only available inside your membership available for purchase as a standalone product. 

It's a great option to use:

• Any time you release new content to your membership
• As a checkout abandonment strategy
• As a way to win back past members
• As a Facebook ad strategy for targeting people who have visited specific articles or pages on your website

Options like this is a really easy way of testing out the strategy without committing to selling standalone products long-term.

If you do a flash sale or a promotion to your email list and if it doesn't work then you know to refrain from doing it again…

Or you could try a different element from your membership later down the line.

But if it does work…

Then you can make it a bigger, more permanent part of your marketing. 

Altogether, there are no losers with the splinter strategy…

On the one hand, you gain members, profits and/or experience…

On the other, both members and non-members have access to the silos of value your membership offers… 

Sounds good, doesn't it? 

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