3 Under Used Membership Sites Ideas for Promoting Your Business

People typically think of membership sites as the place for making their membership content available. It's where you send your members to get the paid content they purchased from you. Given our focus on building Infusionsoft membership sites, we build a good number of these sites every month.  What I want to highlight here is there are proven and often neglected ways of using membership sites to:

• generate leads,
• build your brand,
• get referrals and
• just plain grow your business.

Here are three concrete examples for doing just that.

Idea # 1: Delivering Your Lead Magnets

You visit the web and see businesses every where offering lead magnets.  Lead magnets are information pieces intended to pique the interest of your ideal prospect.  It can be an e-book, a report, a white paper, maybe even a video.  The point is to offer something of interest to the audience you're targeting.

They request it and, in exchange, you get their email address.  Now you start a follow up email campaign targeting those that opt-in based on what they requested.  (I'll be writing blog article soon on what to do after you've gotten them to bite.)

Lead magnet delivery can be done via the opt-in form's thank you page.   It can be done by sending them an email with a link to the piece.  I've seen it done many different ways.   But, hey,  what if you sent them a link that automatically logs them into your membership site. There they would find the lead magnet and anything else you might want to share with them.   You can do this with a stand-alone membership site or via your existing membership site where you provide your paying members with their content.

Whether it's a stand-alone or existing membership site, the point is to land these new, somewhat interested prospects into a site where the lead magnet is a positioned as part of something bigger.  They get what they requested and you get a chance to introduce them to all they can get from you.

We definitely recommend a set up where these non-paying members see a button, a badge or your course selection links just like the ones seem by your paying members.  The difference is their selectors are grey or shown with a padlock icon.  Since these visitors haven't paid, clicking on these selectors gets them a , "Wa, wa! This valuable information is only valuable to paying members."  Then you take them to a sales page where you tell them about all they're missing.  It's your chance to make the sale.

This approach works well across many different industries.

Idea # 2: Offer a New Client Wow Package

Many businesses lack a nice up front "something" when they on-board new clients.  We call them "Wow! Packages. "  It can be something simple like sending them a box of cookies, etc.  But what if you put a membership site to work for you?  You could provide them access to their schedule or project plan for the work they'll be getting.  You can introduce them to the team members you'll assign to their project.  You can offer them material addressing buyer's remorse.  You want to give them information making them happy they made the decision to buy from your or work with you.

When someone makes a purchase, they don't really expect to be wowed, but when they do it's greatly appreciated.  You bolster your relationship with them and, who knows, they may just start telling their friends.

Using a membership site to provide new clients this kind of information is an excellent way to put a membership site to work.  And keep in mind, you can closely monitor what these new clients do.  Membership site software for building Infusionsoft-based membership sites makes it easy to track what members do while logged in so you can take steps to get them what they need.  Click here for an article I've written explaining what you can do to watch members closely and better sell them based on their behavior.  It's kind of creepy what you can do. )

 Idea # 3: Hosting a Home Base Site and Forum

I was a part of a coaching program that used their a membership site as home base for getting information out to the people in the program.  They would publish travel information information for upcoming meetings.  They would provide answers to frequently asked questions.   They let you review your payment information and statements.

A feature I really appreciated was their member forum.  You could go to the site and interact with others in the coaching program.  After I had learned most of what I needed from this coaching program, it was this forum and the other people in the program that kept me in the program as long as I did.

Don't underestimate the value people place on meeting and interacting with other members doing business with you.  In many cases, more advanced members can share their stories with the newbies.   They can be the ones answering questions asked in the forum.  Before you know it, your members are taking on customer service work for you.

So there you have it - three great ideas for wooing your prospects and customers using membership sites.  Maybe it will lead to increased sales.