Is it Time to Develop a Membership Program? - Enlightened Marketing

Judi writes: I would LOVE to know how to develop membership sites.

Smart lady! Let me start you out right. A membership SITE can be a lot of work. But, if you do it properly, a membership PROGRAM can help you ?

• Build your brand (what you?re known for)
• Attract clients and
• Stabilize peaks and valleys in your revenues

At least that?s what ours have done for us. Let me share with you how we do it:

1. Membership programs build your brand.

Like a signature product, your membership program contains a big, clear promise: ?if you, the audience, have this issue or challenge, my program will deliver you these benefits and this outcome.?

That promise teaches your audience what your brand stands for. Members who experience the benefits of your program begin to know and trust you. Actually, even those who DON?T purchase will associate the promised benefits with you. Over time you get known as a business that delivers certain solutions to your clients.

Our very first membership program, Attracting Perfect Clients, has been a huge boost to our brand and getting known for, well, helping solopreneurs attract perfect clients.

2. Membership programs attract clients.

Sure, this isn?t the main reason you want a membership program. If you?re like most solopreneurs or small businesses, you want a way to serve more people, help those who may not be ready to invest in one-on-one services and generate passive revenue.

An unexpected side benefit, though, is that you get known as an expert in that area (see #1 above), and prospective clients seek you. What has happened for me is that people go through the whole program, love it, and contact me for personalized help. These clients are invariably a better fit than those who are strangers to your brand.

3. Membership programs stabilize peaks and valleys in your revenues.

Although you can set up your program to sell for a one-time payment, as we have done with a few of our programs, a big benefit this ignores is recurring revenue. Passive recurring revenue is just about as good as it gets, and creating a high-quality membership program will get it for you.

Peaks and valleys often occur because you get a lot of client work (yay, money!) but find yourself too busy for marketing. By the time your schedule opens up ? yikes! ? you suddenly need clients and your revenues plummet. Having a membership site means you make a sale once and delighted members stay with you month after month, smoothing out the valleys.

I?ve said many times that each of our membership programs brings in between a car payment and a house payment each month. That?s pretty good for work I completed two years ago.

What? You haven?t updated the site in two years?

Nope! ;) ?That?s because I followed a really unique model for a membership program that provides recurring revenue AND freedom.

Why not a traditional membership site? While I enjoy teaching programs and I especially love working with Enlightened Marketing clients, I wanted to create passive revenue to sustain my business.

How exactly can you develop a membership program like mine? I?ll give you a quick answer and a resource.

• Choose a hot topic your audience is dying to learn more about and that you LOVE to teach
• Create your first lesson
• Put up a program page where people can learn more about it and purchase it online
• Send traffic to the program page, then ?
• When you get your first customer, start making more lessons!

Get Passive Revenue The Simple Way

If it seems too easy, let me assure you: there?s work involved. However, it IS simple. You don?t need a lot of tech knowledge, fancy software or days of time spent each month to moderate forums and create new content. Once your lessons are done, YOU?RE done.

If you?re still reading this, I want to share a resource with you: Get Passive Revenue? The Simple Way! is a free webinar I did with my colleague, Andy Riegler Andrews, detailing how to get started EXACTLY as I did back in 2009. If this article fired you up like this idea did for me back then, you simply must check out the webinar.

Photo by?takacsi75

Source: http://www.enlightenedmarketing.com/2012/08/is-it-time-to-develop-a-membership-program/

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