Building a Strong Online Membership Community
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about online membership communities.
Just this week, one of my newer clients, Rebecca, told me, “Monica, I’m really good at working in groups – I don’t want to work one on one. I want to build a meditation community where people pay $97 a month. I’ll get 100 people to join and end up making close to $10,000 a month.”
This type of program is an amazing goal – but there are some truths that you need to know. I’m all about going after your dreams while knowing the truth of how it’s done along the way.
Memberships and communities are amazing, but they are a strategy that is a little bit more advanced for a number of reasons. I’d like to offer you three questions to ask yourself as you consider building your membership program or community.
#1: How will you replenish your membership each month?
Let’s say you open your membership community in January and 30 people join. The statistics say that 30% of your community will drop out every month.
If 30 members join in January, the odds are that nine people drop out in January, nine people drop out in February, and nine people drop out in March.
This leaves you with three people in the program at the beginning of April. That can feel devastating.
It’s important to formulate a plan for continuously adding new members into your membership community. Most people will do this by using social media, ads, funnels, referral partners, or speaking events.
#2: How will the people in your membership community continue to buy from you?
When people join your membership community, they’ll likely stay with you anywhere from one month to six months.
During that time, you want those folks to purchase something more from you so that all of the work and money you invested to pull them into your program pays off.
The last thing you want is to pull people into your membership community, have them fall in love with you, and then watch them tire of that particular way of connecting with you and have nothing else to offer them. What kinds of offerings will you give to people who join at your membership level so that they can stay with you longer?
#3: How will you create meaningful interaction between yourself and your members as well as within the community of your membership program?
One of the things I’ve noticed that does not work in any kind of program is selling courses that don’t give people the opportunity to interact or connect with you.
People tend to put off completing the course material when they have to study on their own. They buy a program from you and then you never hear from them again.
I really highly recommend creating some sort of connection point with the community that will keep people interested in staying longer and allow them to build a relationship with you.
This is a lot to think about. If you’re thinking of building a membership program or community and feeling like you could use a hand, I invite you to reach out to us at Support@RevenueBreakthrough.com to set up a conversation.
We’re happy to help you come up with a strategy around what’s next.
