Offer a Free Membership to Grow Your Business
3 Ways to Offer a Free Membership to Grow Your Business
There are a variety of different reasons you should be offering a free membership to your membership site in order to grow your business. This is true even if you don’t have a dedicated, separate membership site. Just adding a free member’s only area to your current website can provide benefits. In order to examine the different reasons you should offer a free membership to grow your business the easiest method is to look at the different ways to offer a free membership and how it will impact your business.
1. Free Trial/Special Promotion
The first way to offer a free membership to expand your business is to build it into a current paid membership website. This could be a small free trial or short-term special promotion. The purpose of providing a free trial to prospective members is it gives them the ability to see what you are truly offering. Some people choose to limit what members can access with a free trial while others do not. There are proven benefits to both. In general, you do not want to grant an all access free trial if you are not drip feeding content or constantly adding new content because free trial members will quickly notice that they are already getting access to everything they would as a paid member. The purpose of this is simply to expand your footprint, gain attention to your brand, and identify new target markets.
2. Free Introductory Tier
The second way to offer free membership and grow your business is to create a free introductory tier. This is a strategy which can only be used if you are also offering additional paid membership tiers. Unlike a free trial or special promotion members can join the free introductory tear for an unlimited amount of time. In most cases, you will only offer the most basic content that you have. This allows them to understand the foundation the rest of your membership levels are based on. It also allows you to continually promote your paid membership tiers to them until they upgrade. Even if they never upgrade, you can use the free introductory tier for additional product promotions which will expand your revenue streams.
3. Completely Free Membership Site
The final way to offer a free membership to expand your business is to create a completely free membership site. The purpose of a completely free membership site is twofold. The first is to treat it as an advanced way to build a list. The best part is it is easier to improve your reputation and brand awareness if people are visiting a dedicated website rather than just reading your newsletters in their inbox. The second purpose of a free membership website is to leverage additional streams of income. Within a free membership area you can promote a variety of additional products, sell advertising space, and even give away products you are about to launch in order to get feedback.
All of these methods have been proven effective in terms of expanding your business and increasing your bottom line. The key is to choose a free membership style which best fits your current digital assets and future online marketing goals.
3 Comments