Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

Anyone who has followed us for a while will probably know that we tend to put more effort into talking people out of starting a membership than we do to trying to convince people they should start one.

Simple reason is that there are countless snake oil salesman out there portraying memberships as something they're not. We try to save people from that.

In fact we kicked off last year with a show all about the reasons NOT to start a membership!

However, today's episode of The Membership Guys Podcast breaks from our norm as we take a look at some of the most compelling reasons you should consider starting a membership website in 2018.

• Why Mike usually tries to talk people OUT of starting a membership website!
• The upsides of recurring revenue for both profitability and business stability
• How working 'one-to-one' limits you in more ways than you realise
• The importance of being fulfilled as a business owner, and how memberships help

And just like that, another year is almost over!

How was your 2017?

In what's becoming a bit of a tradition, I'm wrapping the year up by taking a look back at some of the fantastic episodes of The Membership Guys Podcast, counting down the top 10 most downloaded episodes of 2017.

Thanks to each and every one of you for your continued support of the show - here's to even more membership awesomeness in 2018!

• Chris Ducker on Running Live Events to Grow Your Membership
• Insights & Advice from Experienced Membership Owners (Episode 100)
• Advanced Tips and Tactics for Offering a Membership Trial
• Grant Baldwin on Growing Your Membership with Public Speaking
• How to Use Live Video to Market Your Membership with Luria Petrucci
• Insights & Reflections on Year 2 of the Member Site Academy
• Jeff Goins on Monetizing your Skills and Creativity
• Tips and Tricks for Increasing your Membership Sales
• 5 Reasons Why I Dislike the Closed Door Membership Strategy
• Carrie Green on Conditioning Yourself for Membership Success

When it comes to marketing your membership, not everything is about finding that killer sales funnel or running huge promotions.

More often than not, membership success comes from maintaining a consistent baseline of day to day activity – it’s about doing the “little and often” things that keep you top of mind for your audience.

This episode of The Membership Guys Podcast digs into the strategy we use for keeping up this consistent strategy, and explores the sort of tactics you should be using to market your membership.

• Why is consistency important in your marketing?
• What is the DWM Method of membership marketing?
• What marketing tasks should you be completing on a consistent ongoing basis?
• The 3 key objectives of a solid membership marketing strategy.

Your membership won't be right for everyone, and there are countless random reasons why someone may decide not to join.

However in our experience of working with hundreds of memberships, we often see the same 5 objections coming up time after time.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I reveal the 5 most common objections people have to joining memberships - and more importantly what you can do to overcome them.

• How to stop people thinking that your membership is too expensive.
• Why social proof and risk reversal are crucial components in your membership sales strategy.
• The most important thing to have on your checkout page.
• Why convincing people NOT to join your membership is actually a good thing!

Much of what we do as membership site owners involves experimentation.

Regardless of what some people may try to tell you, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy or magic formula for membership success; you have to test and figure out what works for you.

We recently pulled back the curtain inside Member Site Academy to share our own experiments and tests with our members as part of the new 'Membership Lab' - and feedback has been incredible.

In this episode, I give an overview of 3 of the most recent tactics we've been experimenting with ourselves.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why we decided to have full transparency by documenting and sharing new tools and tactics we're experimenting with
• How we're able to provide a personal touch even with a large scale member base
• Our spin on offering a trial period to entice new sign-ups, and how it's performed so far
• The methods we're using to keep members updated about new content

I'm going to let you in on a little secret...

Everyone - even us - makes mistakes with their membership website.

In fact it's often from those mistakes that we learn the most important lessons about what works and what doesn't for our own particular product.

Most "membership mistakes" are harmless and go by unnoticed; but there are some whoppers that can do real damage to the potential success of your membership website - so let us save you from the biggest boo-boo's a membership site owner can make.

Social media marketing has changed dramatically over the past few years.

From the rise of live video, to the huge drop-off in organic reach for Facebook pages. New platforms launching and disappearing seemingly overnight. It can be hard for the busy membership owner to keep up.

Mike Stelzner is a man with his finger on the pulse of social media marketing. As founder of Social Media Examiner and the man behind the largest conference in the industry - Social Media Marketing World - he's the first port of call for experts and influencers worldwide when it comes to whats working right now in social media.

In today's episode of The Membership Guys Podcast - I talk to Mike about the current state of social media marketing, and chat about how he uses social media and content marketing for both his conference and Social Media Examiners own membership website.

When charging a monthly payment for access to your membership site, member engagement is key.

It’s not enough to have static content that never changes, as once that’s been consumed by your members they’ll have very little reason to stick around.

Many membership site owners set out with the intention of continuously adding new courses and premium content to their site; however this typically proves easier said than done, and often the logistics of doing so can be too great an undertaking.

Fortunately there are a number of types of content you can produce that will add value to your membership site and give your members something to get their teeth into without requiring a huge amount of effort on your part and on this episode we explore these. 

We often talk about how crucial community is to long term membership success.

In many memberships, even though members join for the content it's actually the community that they stick around for.

However that's not always the case, and in this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast I dig into ways in which adding a community to your membership may not be all it's cracked up to be.

• Why having a community is generally better for engagement and long term member retention.
• The downsides of having a community that most people usually don't tell you.
• Specific situations and scenarios where having a community might actually be a BAD thing!
• Ideas for keeping members engaged if you don't have an online forum or member group.

Trying to pick the right WordPress membership plugin can be a painstaking process.

It's harder still if your expectations and understanding of what a membership plugin will and won't do are unrealistic.

Too many people expect their membership plugin to check off every single requirement they have, without understanding that they're simply one piece of the puzzle when it comes to building a membership site.

In this episode I go through the 5 things you need to understand before you even start shopping for a membership plugin, in the hopes that it will make the whole process easier and save you some frustration.

• Why it's so important to have realistic expectations from your WordPress membership plugin
• How WordPress plugins work in tandem with themes, and how this affects your membership
• The challenges of changing your mind on which membership plugin to use
• What functionality won't typically be included with most membership plugins and what you'll need to do instead.