5 reasons why having a membership will benefit your business

Want to know why having a membership will benefit your business? Maybe someone else has mentioned you should consider running a membership and you aren’t sure. Or maybe you’ve seen your competitors running memberships and are working out whether it’s something you should do too. Keep on reading to find out 5 reasons why having a membership will benefit your business.

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5 REASONS WHY HAVING A MEMBERSHIP WILL BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS

1. Monthly recurring revenue

Let’s start with an obvious reason why having a membership will benefit your business – it will give you a recurring revenue stream. One of the reasons why running membership sites has become so popular is because they are recommended as a way to generate a recurring revenue stream, which is something a lot of business owners dream of creating.

As a business having a recurring revenue stream allows you to have more confidence about your income on a month-to-month basis. Having more certainty over your income in future months will allow you to have more confidence when doing financial forecasting. This will enable you to make more informed decisions, especially when thinking about investing in order to grow your business.

A membership is just one way to make recurring revenue. If your goal is to make recurring revenue and you aren’t too sure whether a membership is what you really want to run check out this blog post – 6 ways to create monthly recurring revenue as a coach, consultant or online expert.

2. Create raving fans

Have you ever come across Keven Kelly’s idea that you only need 1,000 True Fans to be a successful creator? It was written with creatives in mind, but it is super applicable to business owners. It is easy to think that you need thousands and thousands of people in order to build a successful business. But rather than growing a base of casual customers you should be focusing on building raving fans. And a membership will allow you to do just that.

The nature of a membership means that people can end up staying in a membership for years. During that time the know, like and trust factor will continue to get stronger and stronger. Memberships make it really easy for you to build raving fans.

Those ravings fans not only are paying to be in your membership month after month, but are likely to be recommending your membership and your business. If you have a knowledge-based business then your members are likely to see you as the ‘go-to’ expert in that area and when someone else asks for recommendations in that area they’ll mention you.

You likely already know the power of word of mouth, referrals and recommendations. Having a memberships give your business for the rate of referrals, recommendations and word of mouth to go through the roof.

Think about it as a one-to-one service provider you can only work with a limited number of people each year. Let’s say you work with 100 people. 30% will refer you to 1 person, 30% refer you to 2 people and 40% refer you to no one. That means the 100 people will refer you to 90 people.

Now let’s imagine you have a membership with 400 people and the referral percentages are the same. That means the 400 people will refer you to 360 people. In many ways, business is a numbers game. If you help more people there are more people out there to recommend you and that will create a snowball effect.

WANT TO SUCCESSFULLY ADD A MEMBERSHIP TO YOUR BUSINESS?

If you are currently providing a 1-to-1 service and you like the sound of offering a membership, mastermind or group programme then Fully Booked and Scaling is perfect for you!

In this 6-month one-to-one programme, I’ll help you to choose, market and sell your new membership. You’ll create a membership that will give you a predictable recurring revenue, raving fans and more – without impacting the demand for your 1-to-1 service.

For more information, and to apply, click here.

3. Upsell opportunities

Another reason why having a membership will benefit your business is that you’ll have an audience of warm people who have bought from you at least once, which means the upsell opportunities are great.

For some businesses, a membership is their core offering, but if you are looking to add a membership to your business then it is important to think about how the membership can benefit your other services.

This year I’ve been part of a membership where the business owner would always share her new offers with the membership. I had no problem with this type of marketing because the value provided in the membership was high and I know that other members bought some of her new offers.

The key to successfully upselling is to ensure that firstly you have a great membership that is amazing value for money and really positions you as an expert. Then the upsell opportunity needs to feel like a complimentary opportunity. For example, it makes absolute sense to offer opportunities to work deeper on a one-to-one or intimate group basis. To really make your members feel special and to maximise upsells you can even share offers with your membership before you share with the general public. You can make it clear that you are sharing with them 24 or 48 hours before the rest of the word so they have the chance to buy first. When you use that type of framing it will actually reinforce that you are treating them like a VIP/insider and giving them first access.

4. Allows you to easily scale your business with exponential growth opportunities

Adding your membership to your business means you are adding a way for your business to scale and have exponential growth potential. In business, you can be growing (where there is a direct correlation between your input and output) and then you can be scaling (where the relationship between your input and output are not linked). You can find out more about growing a business vs scaling a business here.

If you have a membership, on the whole, the work it will take is the same whether you have 10 people, 100 people or 1,000 people. As your membership numbers increase you might need to upgrade your tech/software, spend more hours on customer support or hire a community manager. But these changes don’t increase with every single new member. They are just additions that will happen at certain stages of growth.

5. Help more people and create a bigger impact through your business

As just discussed having a membership means it isn’t much more work to help 100 people or 1,000 people than it is to help 10. This means you are able to help a lot more people without burning yourself out and you are able to make a bigger impact (from a breadth perspective) through your business. It might be that you’ve set a mission for your business to help hundreds of thousands or even millions of people by a certain time in the future. If so it is essential that you find a way to successfully scale your business and be able to help lots of people simultaneously. A membership can be a great way for you to achieve that.

That’s it! You now know 5 reasons why having a membership will benefit your business.

As you can see having a membership can be advantageous for your business for multiple reasons. A lot of the focus around having a membership is around having a recurring revenue stream or being able to scale your business. There are multiple ways to create a recurring revenue stream or scale your business. However, by considering the other advantages hopefully you can decide whether creating a membership is the right thing to do for your business.

Share in the comments what your business takeaway has been.

WANT TO SUCCESSFULLY SCALE YOUR BUSINESS WITH A MEMBERSHIP?

Choosing to add a membership to your business is just the start. What will you price it at? How will you market it? How will it work alongside everything else you already sell and deliver in your business?

There is a lot to consider and do in order to successfully create, launch and run a membership. Luckily, for you I’m here to make the whole process a lot easier.

Fully Booked and Scaling will help ensure you are able to get your membership created, launched and running successfully within the next 6 months.