The Complete Guide to Scaling Your Business with a Membership Site (Part V)

I like to approach marketing or sales funnels or whatever you want to call it, from the end goal backwards.

We need to start with the number one thing. Sales.

Most service providers focus on trying to get more traffic when they're actually losing prospects further down the funnel. Instead of more traffic, they need to sell consistently to people they already know.

How do you typically make a sale?

If you've made any money in your business, you've made sales. Knowing what drives sales and where buyers found you is the only metric you need to track in your business.

Doubling down on what is working is often the best strategy to increase sales. Once you have more confidence that those channels will keep working for you and people still want to buy what you sell, you can look at expanding your offers and sales funnels.

True story:  I've earned most of the revenue in my business from people searching "business coach" or "business strategist" on Google. Because I always kept my site fresh with the occasional blog post and good copy, Google ranked me fairly high.

This indicates that I have a combination of commitment, skills and interests (writing, good copy and a compelling offer), which is something I need to keep doing. To quit writing and selling my private VIP Days, altogether and shift to something else completely experimental makes no sense.

We get excited about selling the next thing because it seems easier than improving our sales with our current thing. Improving our sales rate with what we currently have, or even making more from it by charging more is much easier than starting with something new.

The same goes for trying to get new clients vs. adding programs (like a membership) for people who have already worked with you.

This is why the Follow-up model (mentioned in Part III of this post) is the easiest membership to begin. All it requires is offering an ongoing service to people who already trust you.

This is really important:  your founding members often come from your current or recent clients. 

Don't forget to invite them!

Building relationships 

How do people get to know you, your expertise and your approach? I mentioned that many of my ideal clients found my website via a Google search. My copy alone created a connection with them. So many people claimed they felt I was speaking directly to them. (Copy is BIG for a service professional).

Which is why I teach it inside the Profitable Membership Club. Being able to articulate the value of what you do before or without even having a conversation is critical to selling online.

Otherwise, we're driving traffic, and people don't buy. Heck, they don't even sign up!

But that's another story.

Many people, especially now, need to feel cared for and respected, and they're going to want to check you out for a little while to make sure you're really the right person to follow and receive guidance from.

They are not willing to take the leap until they know who you are. Many  marketers rely on social proof (stories of people who got results) and dominating the marketing (investing heavily in promotion) to prove what they have will work for their prospects.

Well, not everyone is in that position to operate like that. And who wants to be a mass marketer anyway? I personally prefer longer and deeper content, like this blog post, my podcast, workshops and trainings as a way to connect to people and share more about who I am, and how I can help.

I've had people decide to work with me because of things I've said on my podcast.

Finding your way with content and consistently providing value to prospects warms up your audience and gets them closer to choosing you to guide them!

The real way to gain visibility

Truth - Most small businesses owners are completely winging it & chasing one tactic to the next without having any idea about what's working ...

I wish this weren't true, but as I said earlier, it's easier for us to jump from one thing to the next than to be tenacious and work on the first thing, until it works.

Truth - We don't have to be on all the channels to be visible.

We just need to commit to one place that we like being and bring people back to consume our longer content, get on our list through a lead magnet, listen to the podcast or join an event.

Truth - What you enjoy will work best!

You're only going to shine if you really like what you are doing or are very motivated to show up.

So you've got to find that channel that feels fun, heart-warming, entertaining, strategically interesting (that's FB ads for me) and worth it. Recently, I've gone a bit quiet on IG because I just wasn't enjoying it, and I've rarely received a client from it.

I do better on other people's podcasts and on Summits because, as I mentioned earlier, I love longer content and training.

Some people do amazing posting on their personal FB profile and even TikTok.

Wherever you may be, just make sure you're sharing both a bit of who you are as well as what you know and sending people back to the place where they can engage more with you!

Your business (and membership) is an ecosystem

You just need to figure out what it is and have someone help you do it.

Like Mark from Unboring Wedding, he came to me because he wanted more sales and thought he needed to produce more content to get better visibility. He already had loads of great content on YouTube and many people coming into his email funnel.