Running a membership-based business comes with some great benefits. For instance, since users are subscribed on a regular basis, this makes it easier to project future earnings. If someone signs up for a year-long subscription, you don’t have to worry about losing that money for the entire year.
On the other hand, there are some significant challenges with membership-based businesses as well. One such challenge is growing your business, as it’s often hard to convince new people to sign up for a recurring membership to something. Below, we’ll outline some great tips you can use to grow your business and start bringing in new members.
1. Go Over Your Business Plan Again
Before you start making some significant changes to your business, it’s a good idea to go over your business plan again. It may be some time since you’ve last looked at it or since you created it. If so, there’s a good chance that things have changed for you since then.
By looking at your business plan again, you can remind yourself of your initial goals while also adjusting things based on your current situation. And if you want to rewrite it, you can look for a business plan template free of charge, then create your business plan from scratch. This will help to reestablish your goals so that you can make better decisions for your business.
2. Make It Easy to Sign Up
One of the most important things you can do as an owner of a membership-based business is to make it as easy as possible for new members to sign up. If a new member has to go through a lot of steps just to sign up, they are likely to get frustrated in the middle and give up.
Go through your signup process and look for ways to reduce the number of steps involved. Maybe the only way new users can sign up right now is by calling your business directly and speaking with a sales rep. This is a time-consuming process that people would likely avoid.
If you offer online courses, for example, you can set up a simple WordPress site with a WordPress LMS plugin that allows users to easily join your membership program and enables you to manage subscriptions effortlessly.
Every business is different, but generally speaking, the easier it is to sign up, the more people you’ll get.
3. Research Your Competition
Spend some time identifying and analyzing your biggest competition. Some key things you’ll want to learn are the audience they are targeting, the benefits their product/service provides, and the cost. With this information, you can better adjust your own marketing approach.
For example, if your competition is targeting a specific audience, you can either approach this same audience in a better way or target an entirely different audience to avoid overlap. You can also price your subscription competitively by knowing what others charge. Once you conduct this research, be sure to regularly check back in to see if your competition changed anything.
4. Get Feedback From Your Audience
It’s also important to ask for feedback from your audience. This includes previous, current, and potential customers. Ask them for feedback about what they like about your membership program and what they don’t like.
A simple survey with a few questions on it can reveal a lot about what your audience is thinking, which you can then use to adjust your approach. Sometimes the best way to know what your target audience wants is to simply ask them.
5. Explore New Marketing Methods
If you find that your membership-based business isn’t growing, this could be because you’re sticking with the same marketing methods. A good practice is to explore other possibilities and see if they could help your business.
For example, you can use Telegram channels to expand your reach and if you’ve primarily promoted yourself through PPC ads and SEO, maybe now is a good time to try an influencer marketing campaign. Dedicate some time and money to testing new marketing approaches. Try a small campaign and measure the results. You can continue to use it if it works, and if not, at least you’ll know which marketing approaches don’t work for you.
6. Keep Adding New Features
Finally, look to regularly add new features to your membership program. Doing so can help convince current members to stick around, as you are regularly adding more value to their subscription.
In addition, you may convince customers of your competitors to switch over as you continue to make your product better. This is another area where research into your audience and competition can help, as it will tell you what sort of features are most in demand.
Start Growing Your Membership-Based Business
Running a membership-based business has a lot to offer but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You’ll need to keep trying new things if you want to grow your business and stay ahead of the competition. Start implementing the tips above and hopefully before long you’ll start to see that steady climb in membership you’ve been after.
