I remember taking a training from a well known marketer. In this training he said membership sites have 3 important functions.
Training. Community. Coaching.
Maybe you don’t have all these components in your membership. In your defence, there is no one rule on how you should structure your membership site.
But in my experience, the coaching has added so much value to my membership and my members look forward to it every month.
Just to define, coaching is where they get to jump on a call with you in a group setting.
What you do on that call is up to you. I personally have an agenda for accountability and Q&A.
Here are some ideas of how you can incorporate coaching into your membership.
Facilitate a Monthly Coaching Call
Many of the memberships I’ve been involved in have a monthly coaching component.
Some even go as far as having a weekly or bi-weekly meeting for members; like Angela Will’s Laptop Lifestyle YoUniversity or Tawnya Sutherland’s VA Insiders Club.
You can use a variety of tools to launch your meeting.
I personally prefer meetings where the group members can collaborate and engage one another. That also takes the pressure off of you as the host.
I use Zoom for such calls.
The structure of such calls can include:
- FAQ
- Mastermind
- Accountability and Goal Setting
- Teaching a topic
Coaching as an addon
You can also offer coaching calls as a bonus, incentive or upsell.
An example of someone who used to do this early in his membership lifecycle, was Troy Dean of WP Elevation.
I remember him running contests using a points system and the winner got a 1 on 1 coaching call.
Points were earned through way of engagement.
On the flipside, he also had the ability for members to purchase blocks of 1 on 1 coaching. The benefit of this is that it solidified the dollar value of the coaching in its prize form.
I intend to implement a 1 on 1 coaching session for my own membership site, the WP Study Group.
I am working on some additional modules which will allow me to upsell a unique member’s area for this purpose. Stay tuned 😉
Facebook Group Coaching
Okay so this kind of falls into the community category, but you can create an inner circle group for coaching.
When I was getting business coaching from Angela Wills, she set up a group for only the two of us.
I would pose a daily question in this group and she would answer. Sometimes with a live video.
There are distractions on Facebook for sure. But it’s still a good option when starting out. Particularly if you don’t have your own website or forum platform.
I hope this was useful to you. I would encourage you to respond in the comments with additional ways of facilitating coaching for your members.
And just a heads up! I’m cookin’ up my own membership platform —- kinda.
My team and I are using existing plugins and extending them but we need your help.
We are looking for folks like you who want to create your own membership site to join in our Done-For-You Membership Site Pilot.
This will be a great opportunity for you to “crowdsource” the features you want alongside other pilot members.
You can check out more here: https://markofapproval.com/pilot/
