When you are planning a membership site, there are certain elements that you must maintain, regardless what type of site it is. These elements work together to drive great, relevant traffic and make it successful. Apply these elements to your own membership site and watch it take off.
Make sure the niche is correct
When you choose a niche, you want to choose the best niche for your site, product or service. If you choose the wrong niche and market that way, you will lose many great customers who want to spend money on your site, but can’t because they can never find their way there.
You also should find a niche that is in demand but has little competition( KEI Ratio).
This may be a bit of a challenge, but if you do some research you can find a niche that works great for what you have to offer and has little competition. Find relevant keywords to use but use them wisely.
Make sure you can create quality, relevant content
If you don’t have content on your website, the search engines can not find you. This means that your customers or potential customers can not find you.
The catch is, if your content is not optimized for the search engines and is not relevant to your business, your customers will surf on by as well. You have to have content to make a decent showing in the search engines, but you have to have relevant content to attract the right kind of customers.
Find keywords that your customers would use to find you and optimize your content using them. This will guide your customers right to your door.
Make sure you can keep members engaged
Getting your customers to your site is one thing, keeping them there and keeping them engaged is quite another.
Give them things that they not only want, but that they can use. Give your members information in the form of articles, e-courses and newsletters. These are inexpensive and simple ways to keep your members interested. Keep in touch but don’t overwhelm.
You may want to use auto responders to send messages to your members, just to touch base now and then, but sending them a barrage of emails, overwhelming them will only serve to lead them to unsubscribe.
Make sure that you give members something to come back for
You have a great product or service, that is a given, but you want your members to venture back to your site time and again. Do this by updating your site often, updating the information on your site, adding new products and services and just keeping the site fresh.
If they come back, and they have had previous experiences that were positive, then when you offer them new things and new information, they are likely to return again and again.
Make sure you constantly sell to the subscribers even after selling the membership
Selling the membership to your subscribers is just opening the door to a lasting relationship with your customers. Offer them lots of products or services and give them plenty to purchase.
You may want to offer members discounts on your products as an incentive to purchase the membership as well as purchase the products.
A typical example would be offering a 2 months free membership after a successful 12 months paid membership. Or discounting high priced products over 50% after a successful 12 months paid membership.
Whatever way you do it, keep selling to your members after you sell the membership. Selling the membership is just the beginning.
Remember! during the process of selling don’t compromise on Value. Make sure you provide valuable content all along.