How to Ask People to Join Your Membership Site?

author
Published in How To December 6, 2024 9 min read

You are ready to create a membership website but are confused on how to ask people to join your membership site business? It can be daunting when it comes to marketing your membership business and growing your members. But all you have to focus on is the value you provide for your members, simple. 

There are multiple ways in which you can inspire an audience to join a membership site. From having a clear communication about your membership offer to hosting social media giveaways, there’s a lot in the hat. 

Don’t worry, I am not Joey who doesn’t share. 😉

This article will help you with multiple ways in which you can promote your membership site and ask people to onboard you. But before that, there are some questions for you. 

First answer yourself, Why would People Join Your Membership Site?

Why would People Join Your Membership Site

Understand the audience and step in their shoes. Why would they join your membership? What does your membership plan provide that is valuable to your audience? Above that, you should know your membership value. How are you solving any member problems? Are you offering, 

  • Education and Knowledge to scale up and learn something new?
  • New Tools and Methods to get faster, efficient, and obtain better results?
  • Continued Support in any journey along with discussions and problem-solving? 
  • A feeling of community and belonging on a membership site?
  • Resources to Excel in their Life and Profession?

If your membership business falls in any of the above problem-solving categories, congratulations! There is a legit scope for the audience to onboard your membership business. Now, you can move ahead to the next step. 

Include the ‘Why’ in your ‘Ask Members to Join’ Campaign

Whatever is your offering and solution, it must be included very clearly in your ‘Ask to Join’ efforts. Create a membership joining communication that highlights your offer. It is not necessary to be catchy always. Your language can be simple and straightforward. So, find your USPs and emphasize on it on a regular basis instead of changing the communication again and again. This way, you can establish yourself as a leader of the field and be strongly associated with what you’re offering as a membership site. 

Best Ways to Motivate People to Join a Membership Site 

Once you are ready with your audience demographics, your offer, and a fixed set of communication words/USPs, you can move ahead with promotions of your membership. These are some of the ways to invite people to join a membership program. 

Clear Definition of your Value and Solution

Clear Definition of your Value and Solution to get more members

Make sure you do not miss out on any features that you provide. Apart from your main offer, what are your sub offers for members to join? For instance, if you are a fitness membership site, providing fitness programs will be your main offering. Your sub-offering will be one-to-one weekly consultations to track progress, tailored nutrition plans, weekly/monthly podcast episodes with a well-known fitness instructor/nutritionist/sports person and so on. 

Make sure you communicate the exclusive membership benefits in all your communication and marketing campaigns. Got it!

Weave a Brand Story

Weave a Brand Story

What’s the most intriguing question to ask someone? According to me it’s ‘What’s Your Story, Huh?’ This is one of the most amazing, ice-breaking questions. That’s what you have to do to attract an audience towards your membership. Create a brand story! 

Instead of directly getting to the point, share your story. Who are you? How did this membership business come into being? People love stories and get instantly attached to them. Your brand story will become your hook after which you will list out your features and USPs. This makes it easy to ask them to join your membership mission and vision. 

Offer Free Trials and Free Downloads 

Offer Free Trials and Free Downloads for your memberships

Okay, in the business, you might have to offer something for free. I know, I know, you’ve created it all with a lot of effort. But sweetheart, look at the bigger picture. Would you buy clothes if you had no option to try them or return them if they don’t fit? You will be skeptical, right. That’s the case while growing a membership site as well. 

Your audience might like your offer but would be skeptical about if it would actually help them. In that case, you can provide a sneak peek by offering a free trial of your membership site. This is a limited time deal wherein a member can experience what it’s like to join as a premium member with you. Further, you can also use landing pages to provide free downloads which in turn will increase your mailing list. These are your future leads, not a loss! 

Be Human and Show Social Proof

Be Human and Show Social Proof to attract more joiners

Gone are the days of being all professional and mechanical. You must show your audience that you are a human, understand human emotions, needs, and are here to solve them. Of course, the approach depends on the niche of your membership, but don’t be all uptight while promoting your membership site, okay. 

With this, it is necessary to showcase genuine membership feedback and testimonials. Experiences of your current members will help build social proof and trust in your membership website. You must avoid refining them and just let them be. Be attentive to negative reviews and solve them and highlight the positive reviews. 

Provide Tiered Memberships 

Provide Tiered Memberships for membership convenience

I can’t stress this enough. Tiered memberships are the way to go to grow membership sites and your member base. Not everyone has a huge budget to put aside for various subscriptions. Based on who your audience is, define different tiers with distinguished pricing levels. This will attract a wider audience with different needs and budgets. 

Enable Diverse Marketing Strategies

Enable Diverse Marketing Strategies to get more members

Hey, we’re in the digital era with so many evolved marketing strategies. So, you must utilize the power of all. 

  • Set up membership email marketing by creating opt-in forms and landing pages. Use the member welcome email tips and send membership invitations via mail. 
  • Use social media to promote a membership site. Be present where your audience is most active and talk to them in their own language. Yes, it includes creating memes, using Gen-Z/Gen Alpha slangs, and dancing on Reels. When you walk the talk of town, you attract more eyeballs and ask people to join your site, in their language. 
  • Promote limited-time membership site offers by creating a special membership tier. Give it some catchy membership level name and promote it via various social media channels. 

Organize Various Online/Offline Events 

Organize Various Online- Offline Events and ask people to join your memberships

Use targeted membership invitation strategies and bring together your potential members in an online or offline event. Create a platform for discussion between like-minded people. Also invite your current members to the event and let them talk about your membership site. What’s more beneficial? Allowing your loyal members to conduct and host the session. This will build greater trust in the mind of potential members and it will be an organic way that member’s join your site. 

Set a Membership Referral Program 

Instead of you asking others to join your membership, let your current member’s do the job for you. Set an affiliate program to promote your membership website. This will motivate your current members and give them an opportunity to earn side income. Now, how is it beneficial to you? Well, in an affiliate program, you only pay when you receive a conversion. Thus, you only pay for the results you get from your affiliate partners. 

You can even approach other well-known blogs and influencers in the niche with your affiliate offer. If it aligns with their audience, you will get a huge benefit out of their popularity and loyal audience. 

Focus on Membership Retention After Member’s Join Your Site

What to do after a member joins your program can be a tricky question. Once you have a subsequent amount of members, your efforts will be doubled. You need to focus on gaining new members as well as retain the old ones by providing quality and value. And did you know it is five times cheaper to retain the old members instead of finding the new ones? It’s not me, it’s the latest membership statistics that say that. 

Thus, you must have a 60% focus on providing value to the existing members and retaining them. And 40% on asking new people to join your membership business. From providing content on a regular basis to reminder emails for membership, you need to look for steps to retain and improve member experiences. 

Are you Ready to Invite People to Your Membership Site?

Once you get out of your shell, it is very easy to approach people and ask them to join your site. Share what you do and how you help, and get them on board. It’s as simple as that. You can even use targeted email invitation strategies to attract a desired group of audience to your site. 

With multiple tools and plugins for WordPress, it has become easy to sustain a membership site and protect it. ARMember is a well-rounded membership plugin that helps even non-techie people to create and sustain a membership website. With all its advanced features, all your marketing and content strategies will be on point. Start following these methods religiously and you will get more members on your membership site. 

Do you have any more doubts or questions? Let me know in the comment and I shall get back to you super soon!

Read Other Related Articles:

Brain Denim

Brian Denim

Meet Brian, a WordPress expert with a decade of experience in web development and a passion for technical writing, watching movies, and camping.

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Stay in the loop with the latest WordPress and web performance updates. Straight to your inbox every two weeks.