1. Start Your Own Affiliate Program
Recurring commission products are attractive and if you have a good product that converts well, you’ll be able to find plenty of willing promoters.
Ensure your product is something that people want/need AND are willing to pay for. You can determine this by understanding your readers’ buying habits, seeing if there are other similar products out there, etc.
Make the concept of the affiliate program easy for your non-internet marketing members to understand – it’s simply a referral program where they can refer family and friends. Make it attractive by telling them they might earn enough cash to pay for their membership (or even more!)
2. Keep your focus on a particular and well-defined target market.
Keep the target of your subscription well-defined.
For example, if you have a weight loss newsletter and you target anyone who wants to lose weight, you’re going to have a tough time getting people
really excited about your membership and staying on for a long period.
Excess weight occurs for a variety of different reasons and solutions will vary from person to person (or certain types of people).
In addition, you’re going to be competing with the likes of some very big players trying to get a slice of the action!
A potential subscriber who feels you really understand their problem is more likely get on board and get help from you.
3. Find your continuity product’s USP (unique selling position).
If you’re not familiar with the term USP, it simply means what makes your product different than everyone else’s and how that uniqueness will have
customers coming to you, instead of a competitor.
You can position your uniqueness on the quality of your product, your guarantees, the speed of service, etc. Dig deep on this one, see what others
are doing and make your product different.
4. Clearly illustrate the benefits of the continuity program.
Yes, the features of your product, membership, service are important…but when asking them to sign up for ongoing payments, you really need to let them
know the benefits.
For example: save time, save money, excel at a skill, ease stress, have more stamina, etc.
5. Give free or low-cost trials to get more people to try your product.
Even if your subscription offer can be cancelled at anytime, people are often weary of getting hooked into a subscription of something they’re unsure of. You can offer a free or a very low-cost trial to try it out.
Have the subscriber commit to a subscription after the trial period is over and to let them know they have a full XXX days to try it out and can cancel anytime.
That will help you convert more trial users into happy clients. If they are left with the responsibility of renewing their membership manually, in many
cases, they probably won’t bother. Of course, you can test out both methods and see what produces the best results.
6. Offer Satisfaction Guarantees.
A guarantee can go a long way into instilling more confidence to buy from your prospects.
In the case of membership sites where you are delivering digital content, there are minimal costs per member that offering a 30-day money back guarantee, for example, is easy enough to do.
You might also easily do the same with a magazine, DVD, CD or other low print cost subscription. The publication and shipping costs are likely low enough and the losses due to refund will be made up by additional subscriptions the guarantee can bring.
If you’re offering a physical product (ex. sock of the month club), you can still offer a guarantee that requires return shipment of the product.
If you are offering personal service, it’s a judgment call. You are either investing time or money to another subcontractor to provide a service and you’ll need to evaluate whether money-back is worth it for you. You might find the extra assurance your guarantee offers brings in enough extra clients to more than cover any losses due to refunds.
7. Allow cancellation at anytime.
In addition to giving them a guarantee, make sure they know they can cancel anytime.
If you feel your offer requires a time commitment (ex. 3 month minimum contract), it’s up to you, but in most cases there is no reason to make people feel tied to a subscription. They will more likely give it a try if they know they can get out easily.
8. Gather and Publish Subscriber Testimonials.
Get detailed feedback from your current customers and publish them on your website and in your other promotional materials. Have the testimonial provider explain how they use the product and how it has benefited them.
You can get testimonials by simply asking for them! (Offer a free gift for completing a survey).
If you receive unsolicited positive feedback, always as your customer if they would mind if you shared that feedback with prospective members.
9. Create a sense of urgency.
Make your subscribers feel like they need to order now. You can do this in a few ways:
Offer special limited-time offers.
Offer a low introductory price to get an initial influx of members to cover your costs.
Show them that your product is the solution to a problem they’ve been trying to solve for a while.
Limit your member numbers if it makes sense to do so and close your membership when you hit the limit.
You might limit membership when you offer a labor-intensive service or members might suffer in some way if too many people gained access.
10. Offer lower introductory prices for existing members
They keep that price as long as they keep their subscription active to keep members faithful to you for a long time.
11. Give them great value and useable.
If you are offering a service, make sure it’s timely and reliable.
Offer more goodies as costs and time allows. Bulk up the value of your subscription on a regular basis. It could be by providing more content (even if you sell a physical product), support and interactivity.
This will keep your current subscribers hanging on because they keep getting more value and it will also attract new members who are getting extra perks.
12. Sell products that make it difficult for your subscribers to decide to cancel.
Of course, I’m not talking about holding your customers’ credit card numbers hostage, but I’m talking about creating types of products and especially services that make it hard for them to make the decision to cancel.
It’s been called the “pain of disconnect” from receiving your ongoing expertise and guidance (so they feel a little “lost”)
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