5 W's of Courses/Memberships

The Momentum Marketing Podcast

Most membership sites and courses miss the five W's that are so important and crucial to selling your course and membership, getting people to finish your course or membership and continuing to build and grow that amazing raving fan community. If you want to learn more about the five W's of membership sites and course content stick around. I'm Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing podcast. I'm a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co author.

In each episode you'll get real world, practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you're ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you're in the right place.

Hey, there, it's Jillian Kendrick, your host for the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I'm so excited to be with you today. How are you, how's life? Really?

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On deck today. We're talking about the 5 W's that most coaches consultants miss out on or forget about when it comes to building their membership site or course content. And I want you to take a second and really think about how you want to approach listening to this episode. Maybe I would suggest taking notes, but also think about it in terms of like if you already have a membership, if you already have courses that you've created, don't just listen to this and check off the boxes in your mind and say, ok, I have that. Ok, I have that. That's great. But I would really encourage you as you're listening to this, go back and re-look at the content at the courses that you have at the memberships that you have and really dive into the nitty gritty and the details of ok. Am I actually doing this thing or am I just checking off that box? That yes, it's done.

Don't forget your course. Your membership is a living breathing entity. It's never gonna be perfect, but it can also never be fully finished because you could always be getting feedback. You can be learning new things that you want to add to the membership site. You could be learning and developing neW'strategies that you want to add to your courses. So you don't have to just create it one time and then let it be done. You can, that's totally fine. But I would really encourage you as you're listening to this episode. Don't just think about OK. Yes, I did that thing. Check off that box. I have it in the bag. But how am I doing it? Am I doing it as well as I can? Am I doing it as well as my competitors? Can it be better? Can it be improved? Can it be more simple? Can it be easier to understand? Can it be easier to do? How is the access? Right? Just think about those things.

And honestly, if you haven't gone into your course or membership site in a while, this could be the best time for you to do that because a fresh set of eyes will give you so much new perspective that you didn't have before when you're building your course or membership. So it strongly suggests, don't just listen to this episode and check off the boxes in your mind, go back and see if you can be doing things better or make them easier or more simplified, really dive into that and let this be an exercise for you.

W number one is who? And it's really easy to say, ok, who is my avatar? Who am I marketing to? Who is this for? But more importantly, can you look at the service or product that you're providing? Not just based on demographics, but what's the problem that you're providing a solution for, for some service providers? It might be people who don't know how to do what you do or don't want to take the time to learn or take the time to even do the thing that you're doing. I could very easily take some time and do my own bookkeeping and accounting, but I don't want to and that's not a good use of my time. So I pay somebody as a service to do that thing for me so that I don't have to. And that's of incredible benefit to me that I get to stay focused on my business and stay focused on the things that I'm really good at the things that I love doing. And it opens up an opportunity for me to continue working on the things that are most important in the business and continue to make neW'sales and more sales as opposed to spending hours trying to learn quick books or figuring out where that receipt came from or something like that? Who needs your solution? Who has the problem, that your solution, that your product or your service provides? Who needs that solution? What part of life are they in right now or what stage of business are they in right now? That's so important.

You could be serving brand new businesses that are just starting up, but they might not have the money to pay for the service that they actually need.

You could be serving long term businesses and that's great. The longer term more seasonal businesses will tend to have a bit more money to pay for your products or services. But they're not without their own faults of having the baggage of having used virtual assistance or having bought courses or memberships before and they're a bit jaded and it can be a little bit harder of a sell. It could also potentially be a little bit easier of a cell where you have a solution. They have a problem, they see you as the solution to their problem and they throw money at you. Right. That's the ideal scenario. But make sure that you're really, really clear on who the results are for. Who do you want to create those results for who is best suited to you or who are you best suited to serve? Is that demographic, a boys club?

Is that demographic more leaning towards female entrepreneurs or parents? Is it a gender non-binary type of thing, whatever that looks like for you be really crystal clear on it. The next w that I see a lot of courses and membership sites totally miss out on is what is the best way to deliver those results?

In my 13 years of the internet marketing world. I have bought so many courses and membership sites, but I've also worked with a lot of course creators and membership site gurus. And sometimes I can honestly tell you that some of the people that I've worked with or some of the memberships that I've bought over the years would deliver their content all in PDF. Well, I don't want to sit there and have to read a bunch of PDFs. Some of them would deliver it all in video. OK. Well, if I need to work through something, like if I need a workbook or I need to brainstorm or I need to start writing something that might be better suited for a workbook, not necessarily for video content, the best membership sites I've seen and have built the best courses that I've ever taken and have built, have been a combination of all of those things, whether it's email templates, can templates, workbooks, PDFs, videos, written content, tips, tools, et cetera. Lists of books, you know, the list goes on for the best, really, truly, the best memberships that I've ever seen have built on my own for myself and my students and have built for other clients have been the ones where the teacher is really methodical about the best way to deliver that content. Sometimes it's audio, sometimes it's video, sometimes it's images, sometimes it's workbooks, sometimes it's an ebook, sometimes it's other things. Sometimes it's printed material that actually gets physically mailed to your address.

Either way, I don't want you to miss out on a student not finishing your course or just saying my man, this isn't for me because they don't want to read through a 70 page PDF which could be amazing and beautiful and have incredible content that's going to be so life changing for them, but they're not gonna do it because it feels like work, there's a barrier there. And so when you can be methodical about the way in which your content is being delivered and the best way to deliver that content so that your student gets the greatest result for themselves. That is just such a game changer. And I cannot even tell you you over my 13 years of being in business, how many courses and memberships I've seen where that's just not the case with the teacher or the business professional or the guru or whoever it is, they just don't think through that thing or they themselves like one medium over another. Maybe they're really good and comfortable on video, maybe they like doing audio, maybe they just like screen recording powerpoint presentations and there's nothing wrong with any of it. But when you can think methodically over the best way to deliver that content so that it maximizes not only the likelihood of your students finishing that membership or course, but it maximizes the potential for the result that they're going to get, it absolutely changes everything. You can have a membership or a course that has one single step or one video or one PDF or one set of email templates.

And that is going to be so much more impactful. If it's delivered in the right way, then a membership or a course with 100 videos that nobody watches or an 800 page PDF that again might be beautiful and life changing because you're amazing at what you do. Nobody's gonna read it. It's not gonna have the impact that you want it to have because it's not being delivered in a digestible fashion. So really, really think through, OK, what am I doing? What am I teaching? What do they need to know at this stage of the game? And what is the best way? Is it video? Is it audio? Is it a powerpoint? Is it a couple bullet points on your website? Is it a blog post that you've already written? Whatever method of delivery you can choose that is going to maximize the results for your students and members. That is the absolute best way I would even encourage you to take it a step further. And if you already have a membership site or course, go ahead and survey your students, existing, past, survey them and ask them, hey, what did you like best about this? What did you dislike best about this and be really specific? I would even say, hey, this section of this thing, would it be better if you had had a step by step guide? Would it have been better if you had an audio to accompany this? Right? Something something like that.

The third w that I see most membership site creators and content course creators miss out on is where, what I mean by where is, where is your student right now in this moment in their business? And this really goes back to what result are you providing for them? Every business needs something a little bit different for every stage that they're in a business that's brand new that just started a week ago needs different things than a business that's been in business for 10 years.

So who are you providing the solution for? And what stage of business are they at that will allow you to talk to them in the conversation that they're already having in their own mind? It will allow you to provide solutions for their specific stage of business. Again, in my 13 years of experience, I cannot tell you how many memberships are courses I have seen or created with, with clients of mine over the years where that person or that teacher went on teaching the thing and trying to provide a solution to their students, but completely bypassing an acknowledgement of where that student was at that stage of their business.

Let's take email marketing, for example, in my opinion. And it's not just an opinion at this point. I really do believe it's fact. Every single business in the world needs email marketing, it needs to be able to email its their list, their students, their prospects, their leads, their clients. And even though everyone needs that solution, they need different versions of that solution depending on the stage of business that they're in. So a great example would be again, if you're a brand new business, you're just a week old, you might need some email templates to just get you started, even like a mad lib sort of template where you can fill in the blank and that will help that person or that business owner get up and running, get a good start when it comes to email marketing. Because the problem that I see with most new businesses when it comes to email marketing is they just aren't comfortable doing it. It's not that they can't do it. It's not that there's this massive learning curve. It's not even that they are or aren't good writers. That's just an excuse. The problem. It's just new to them. It's something that they've never done. How do you feel when you have to go do something brand new? Is it exhilarating? Is it exciting? Do you have a little bit of fear or trepidation? They're feeling that exact same thing with. It doesn't even matter whether it's email marketing, whether it's social media, whether it's creating videos, whether it's something else, if it's new and in those early stages they're feeling all that trepidation and they're using excuses like, well, I don't have time. I'm not a good writer. I don't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So all you have to do as the expert is help them overcome that hurdle. That's it. That's all you have to do. It doesn't even have to be amazing, just get them into the habit. And likewise, again, with email marketing, someone who's been in business for six months or a year or three years or five years is going to need a different kind of solution when it comes to email marketing. Sure templates will probably still work for them. That's totally fine. If you're trying to sell email templates or even social media templates to a beginning business owner or an experienced business owner, it's not necessarily that they won't work or that they don't fit. It's just that that person who's been in business for a while has a different experience when it comes to doing social media or doing email marketing, maybe they've been doing email marketing for a while and they need some help. That's why they want to use your templates. Maybe they understand email marketing and they know how important it is, but they don't have time to do it for themselves. So they need your templates. It's just a matter of how you talk to them and the languaging that you're going to use around it. So really decide: who do you want to serve at what stage of business and talk to them at that stage. And if you genuinely believe that you have a product or service that can serve any business at any stage, then divvy up your marketing, use the exact same product with maybe the same more similar offers, but just talk to it a little bit differently. When you're talking to different audiences, it's a complete game changer and it genuinely is something that most course creators and content creators completely forget.

So we have who, what, where the fourth w is when, when do I Upsell, when do I down sell? When do I move someone to the next sales opportunity after so many memberships, after so much content, after creating these things for other clients, after buying them all myself, I can genuinely say this is where a lot of course creators and membership site owners really miss the mark. I cannot tell you how many times I've signed up for a membership and then I don't get taken out of, like, the retargeting emails or the retargeting Facebook ads for that exact membership that I just signed up for and not that it's the end of the world. It doesn't matter at the end of the day, I just ignore whatever it is. But you want to be more professional than that. You want to be better than that. You want to know where in, like, the life cycle or the sales journey or the sales process that every single customer you have is at and you want to be able to market to them and talk to them based on the actions that they've taken or not taken. The other big mistake that I see when it comes to when to Upsell and when to down sell is most of the time course creators as teachers, as experts in our field. We're so good at what we do. We know so much, that gift of knowledge can truly be a crutch when it comes to creating courses.

Again, I want you to focus on the result. Focus on, I need to take someone from A to B or A to Z. I don't need to take someone through every alphabet of every single language on the planet. That would be insane. That's way too much information. That's way too much content. They're not ready for that, they're gonna get overwhelmed.

But if I can take someone from A to B or A to C or A to D, those transformations, those little transformations are gonna be so much more impactful and going back to the likelihood of them actually finishing your course and getting results from it, the more focused and deliberate you can be with your course content and delivering those results to your students, the better results you're going to get with more sales, more students that finish your course, a greater impact on their lives and businesses and a greater impact on your life and business. Think about it this way too. Once someone has bought a course or they've bought into your membership, you might not want to continue to market to them for a little while. You might want to give them the opportunity to get into your course or membership and actually digest and work through some of that content. Now, live launching is a little bit different, right? Live launching, you're actually doing it live, you want as many people to show up as possible, you're probably going to have some kind of timely bonuses or content that's really, really specific to that launch. So live launching is a little bit of, like, a different game and I don't think it quite applies to what we're talking about. But as far as your Evergreen Funnel, the stuff that you're always running, the stuff that you're always pitching, give them a little bit of free their time, pull them out of those remarketing retargeting campaigns and give them some time to digest your content, whether you can do it by tagging them or keeping track on them depending on like the videos that they watch or the content that they download or consume. Or if you have a general idea of how long it should take from start to finish to go through your actual course. Or maybe if you know that your membership is six months long and you want to give them at least month, or two, into the membership so that they can work through some of your content and then go back to marketing to them to other things that's totally fine. But make sure that you're giving them a little bit of breather room to actually digest the thing that they just purchased.

Because if you're constantly shoving pitch after pitch after pitch, after pitch down their throats, especially if it's the same thing that they already just bought from you, you're gonna begin to lose a lot of trust. I'm not saying don't pitch to them. I just said a minute ago, live launching does not count when it comes to this.

I'm just talking about your evergreen stuff. Your long term, always open, always pitching stuff.

The fifth W if you haven't already figured it out is why, and this is two fold. This is two sides of the same coin, is the way that I think about it.

Why are you doing it? Obviously you're doing it for money, right? We're all in business to make money. But why, what is your, why, what is your, why in terms of your motivation to keep going what is your, why in terms of why this product or why this content or why this membership? What is your why in terms of the delivery? There is a reason that you picked building a membership that maybe is six months or a year or two months or two weeks versus doing an evergreen course, there's a reason for that. So pick your why and then the other side of that coin is the customers, why? Or the clients, the students, why, why are they doing it again to make money? If you're in business and you're teaching business stuff, it's probably to make money. If you're in relationships, or you're doing some kind of, like, a coaching thing. If you're into yoga and you're teaching yoga classes, that could be health. Everything that we do in marketing revolves around three things, health, wealth and relationships. Absolutely everything. All the problems that we have as human beings can be tied to one of those three things, health, your wealth or your relationships. Saving time can be related to health because you're not doing something that you wouldn't have to normally do. It can also be related to wealth and that you're saving time. So you're saving money. But figure out your customer or client or students, why? Based on the results that they want the results that you're providing to them and their motivation to do that thing. Because when you can get really, really clear on this all of your marketing, all of your branding, all of your social posts, all of your ad, copy all of your content, all of your course content. Let's say you're creating a brand new course and you've just outlined it and you're trying to pitch it and sell it before you even create the content. Or maybe you have a membership that you've outlined and you're going to create it as you go through.

If you can get really, really clear, not only on your why, but on the customers, why all of your content, all of your social posting, everything that you build and do comes from and is inspired by that motivation. And most of the time when I see courses or I see course creators, they're just, they're in it for the money, they're in it for the quick buck even though this is, this is not what this is about and they've lost sight of their why or their own. Why is so much more important than their customers, why? And if it outweighs theirs, it is a much harder sell, it's so much harder to create content and I can promise you from experience, it is an uphill battle all the way.

Those are my five W’s for creating courses and memberships. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Momentum Marketing podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life, or given you any insight to help you build your own momentum in your life or business. Then please share it with a friend and I'll see you on the next episode.

The Momentum Marketing Podcast By Jillian Kendrick Episode: #8 Topic: 5 W's of Courses/Memberships Contact: [e-mail] IG: instagram.com/automatedmama jilliankendrick.com/webinar