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Liz Mackenzie

By: Liz Mackenzie on November 2nd, 2015

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How Membership Marketing is Ideal for Building Passive Income

Inbound Marketing | Analytics & Measurement

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

Passive income is highly appealing but very difficult to obtain. The world doesn't generally allow for passive income unless you are an investor and have already obtained wealth. The idea of receiving an income with little to no effort required seems like just another get rich quick scheme. However, passive income is by no means fake, nor is it unearned. Once a passive income strategy is in place, it may take little effort to maintain but it certainly took everything you had to build. Passive income strategies rely on inbound marketing methdologies to work.

Membership marketing is an ideal way to build passive income. This is because memberships typically revolve around some form of content, such as a guide or video series. Memberships can also grant the subscriber access to products or services but generally, these are hands-off services that can be provided passively such as access to online knowledge libraries, content, resources or journals that have been made available for members. There may be a need to provide support and you are sure to encounter other complications along the way, but membership marketing is a very passive income source for most organizations.

 Membership Business Models are Focused on the Content's Value

One of the great things about owning a membership website is that you get to focus on what is most important, the value of your content. When a user subscribes, they are likely given access to a membership area where all of your hard work is accessible. This includes any videos, articles or other content that you have developed.

As you get more subscribers, you will quickly realize that your only true focus for the business is to improve the value that you are providing to your members. You don't have to worry about shipping, customer service or anything that traditional business models struggle with. Instead, your primary goal is to make the membership worth its cost and provide real value to your audience. There are very few things as passive as this. Once the membership has the value your audience needs, it requires less and less effort to maintain and could eventually be entirely passive.

Membership Marketing Is Often Content Marketing

One of the best ways to showcase the advantages and opportunities that your membership provides is to write about it. You can use content marketing strategies to produce blog content such as articles or videos, then use this content for outreach and promotional methods. Membership marketing can be content marketing at its core, the difference is that you are promoting a membership and not a physical product.

Outsourcing Membership Marketing

Once you have a reliable strategy in place, it becomes much simpler to build the business into a passive income opportunity. You can outsource your membership marketing strategy to a company or individual that is capable of repeating the process for you, day-in and day-out. Hiring an agency to handle some of the repetitive tasks that work well for growing the membership will take the workload off you and free up your time.

Some ideas for outsourcing membership marketing include:

  • Guest posting on authority blogs
  • Submitting content to web properties and social sites
  • Social bookmarking and sharing the content
  • Press release submissions
  • Article directory submissions
  • PDF/document submissions
  • Reputation management
  • Social media growth
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook advertising purchase plans
  • Retargeting campaigns

Nurture Your Leads

Nurturing leads can be very important to a membership website. Approximately 2-5% of users will signup on their first visit and the other 95-97% of visitors will be lost if you don't obtain any contact information.

One way to nurture your leads is to funnel the traffic toward an opt-in box, to capture email addresses and gain newsletter subscribers. Once they are subscribed, you can set up a blog-based email notification series that sends out free, useful content. Over the course of days or weeks, you can subtly point those subscribers who show real interest  in the direction of your membership. This is a great way to nurture leads and start to associate "users" with the key personas for which you are trying to attract.

For more information on How to Attract New Members, check out our October Topic of the Month Webinars: