Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

How do people view your brand? Businesses don’t achieve brand loyalty because they’ve picked a great color scheme for their website. You earn brand loyalty by aligning and effectively communicating your principles and purpose. You probably already know your membership’s values, vision, and mission, but does your audience? These key elements play a big part in how people view and interpret your bra...

Does your WordPress membership site have sufficient security measures in place? Many membership site owners live in fear of their website being attacked, and for good reason... If someone manages to hack into your Wordpress website, install something nasty or delete or steal your data, it could cripple your membership business. That's why it's so important to be extra vigilant and make sure you ta...

Are you considering increasing the price your existing members are paying? When you first launched your membership, you might have offered your initial members an amazing deal to entice them to join. However, it’s now a few years later and your membership has evolved. You’ve added lots of new content, your community’s grown, and your membership is much more valuable. You’ve increased the price for...

Are you celebrating the milestones in your membership business? If not, you should be! Whether it's an anniversary or hitting an important goal, it's worth making an effort to mark those significant achievements. In this episode, I share my top tips for celebrating your membership milestones in style...

Turning your membership idea into a reality can take a lot of time and, often, a lot of money. As such you might be trying to find a way to raise funds earlier in the process. Some membership owners do this with a pre-sale. A pre-sale works like this: you have a great idea for a membership, so you test its viability by taking it to your audience to see if they are willing to invest in your concept...

Customer service is at the heart of the member experience. No matter how great your membership site is, you’re going to have members contacting you for additional support at some point. Providing your members with good customer service is an easy way to elevate their experience of your site, and similarly a bad customer service experience will quickly turn their opinion of your membership sour. In...

As a membership site owner it’s easy to tie yourself in knots trying to come up with the best ways to get your members to engage with your site, your content, and your community. From fancy progress tracking to complex loyalty schemes; laborious member outreach programs through to advanced gamification systems. However it can be easy to forget that often some of the less glamor...

When people think about launching a membership, they think about the day that they finally open their doors for the very first time and welcome their first crop of new members. It's a big deal! However that grand opening isn't the only opportunity you have to launch... There are different launch types for each stage of your business, depending on how far along you are in the membership site creati...

Have you launched your membership and then found yourself regretting your choice of technology that runs your website? Or maybe you haven't yet launched but you live in fear of that turning out to be your reality. “What if I make the wrong choice and then in 6 months’ time I discover I’m stuck with it?” Because of this we see a lot of people have a lot of anxiety about deciding on which platform o...

Do you know the difference between good marketing advice and bad marketing advice? The marketing industry is full of information. Some can help you build meaningful customer relationships and effectively generate sales. But some is based on misinformation, pressure tactics, and “shortcuts” that could lead to slower audience growth or even a damaged reputation. I find it so infuriating that people...

How much should you charge for your membership site? And, what should your pricing strategy look like? Well, the answers to both of those questions depend on your membership. However, there are some advanced pricing tactics that successful membership sites use when it comes to determining their prices. As I’m sure you’re aware, getting the price of your membership right is so important. But it’s o...

Is your membership community a ghost town? Are you constantly banging your head against a wall trying to figure out ways to get your members to actually converse with each other? This guide has got the answers. We’ve said it many times before - people come for the content but they stay for the community. However, getting an active, thriving community inside your membership is easier said than...

Wow... 5 years of Membership Academy! And what a rollercoaster ride our fifth year has been. Listen in as Callie and I recap the highs and lows of the past 12 months of Membership Academy, and look ahead to what's in store in the next year and beyond. In this episode, Callie and I discuss: The real impact that running our first conference had on our membership business How we navigated personal il...

A membership has many moving parts, lots of technical elements, and will take plenty of hard work to get started. But there is one element of running a membership site that is constant and, if you don’t have it, you won’t keep your membership alive. If you don’t have an audience, you won’t have a membership. So, if you’re just starting out and eager to get your membership going, it’ll pay dividend...

Setting boundaries is essential if you want your membership to be productive and positive for you – and your members. But how do you do it without cutting people off, coming across as aloof or inaccessible, and how can you ensure your members are having their questions answered whilst still respecting your boundaries. It’s certainly a balancing act, but it’s one you can perfect by putting into pra...

“Cancellation” is a word that sends a shiver down the spine of any membership site owner, but are membership site owners missing a trick when it comes to how they handle cancelled members? In our own membership, Membership Academy, 25% of members who leave end up rejoining. This is why it’s essential not to burn your bridges – and to put a rock-solid win-back strategy in place. Join us in this epi...

Your blog and your website host all of the content used in your marketing – so how do you join the dots between your blog and your membership? There are plenty of ways membership site owners can do this, but many don’t because they’ve heard bad advice from marketing ‘gurus’ or they’re worried about sounding salesy. The good news is there are direct and indirect ways of linking from your blog to yo...

Despite my protests over the years, I’m ready to admit that there are a few instances where it is a good idea to use a closed door membership model. Some of them are very niche, some of them require a few “ifs” and asterisks, but they are entirely valid and are all better suited to a closed door model. This episode is well worth checking out if you’re just starting out or if you’re trying new thin...

Community is often the heart of membership sites but working out the best way to introduce it to your membership isn’t as easy it might seem. Often, we see debates around how to host membership communities that end up focusing on quantity of engagement, rather than quality. Quantity isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not always what you’re actually aiming for. If you want to find the signal in the noise...

Member retention is critical to the long-term success of your membership website. It costs 7-10 times more on average to win a new member than it does to hold on to an existing one; and if you’re losing more members than you bring in then your business won’t last long! In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, we’re giving you 21 quick tips for improvements you can make to your membership st...

Every industry, topic and niche has its fair share of jargon. And memberships are no different. There’s already so much to juggle as a membership site owner, so the last thing you want to have to worry about is needing to wrap your head around all of the lingo! So to make it easier for you, we’ve rounded up the 9 key terms and phrases you need to know if you run a membership.

Facebook remarketing is one of the most exciting developments in online advertising in recent years.  Now, instead of being limited to picking demographics and targeting options that we think relate to our target audience; we can actually leverage actual user behaviour to determine which ads they are shown. This enables us to show the right message to the right person at the right time, which...

Running a membership site is a juggling act. There’s a seemingly never-ending list of things to keep on top of; and with much of the focus revolving around things like producing content and marketing to bring in new members it’s easy to see why some of the basics get missed. However it’s often the relatively minor day to day activities that have the real impact on how successful a membership...

Social proof is a powerful, persuasive factor when it comes to making buying decisions. If we see others behaving in a particular way, buying a product or, say, joining a membership site; then we're far more inclined to follow suit. More and more, customers are basing their buying decisions on what other people recommend, rather than promotions, discounts and other sales tactics. In this episode,...

Memberships are a marathon, not a sprint. Unlike other products where the sale is the end of the journey, with memberships it’s just the beginning. That “journey” – the  Member Lifecycle  – typically breaks down into 5 key stages: acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention and reactivation. In this episode, we’re looking at each of these 5 stages and what they mean for you as a membe...