Understanding Human Psychology in Order to Sell More Memberships
When you’re selling a membership, you’re essentially fighting an up-hill struggle. As great as your website and your content might be, the reality is unfortunately that you’re offering a tough proposition: you’re inviting people to pay for something that they normally get for free. They can read millions of blogs across the net for free right now, or they can pay for yours.
They’ve never heard of you before and they likely don’t trust you not to run off with their money. It makes you wonder how anyone ever gets any members for their sites! So what’s their trick? Well normally, it comes down to human psychology. Here’s a few tricks you can use.
People Love to Feel Belonging and Importance
The big clue here is in the name: ‘membership’. People love to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves, they love to feel a sense of community with other people and they get a real kick out of getting VIP treatment. When they sign up to be a member they get all of those things and this is really what sells a membership site as opposed to the idea of reading more content (often anyway).
Remove Buyers’ Guilt
But while people want to feel like they’re a member of something important and that they’re important themselves, they also don’t want to spend money on a website. They feel guilty because they know they can get a similar experience for free elsewhere. This is called ‘buyers’ guilt’ and your job is to try and remove that guilt.
To do this, you can do things like introducing a special offer which makes it pertinent for them to act quickly and take advantage of the saving. Likewise, you can also give your buyers money off of other products, thereby helping them to essentially save money. But perhaps the best strategy of all is to make sure that membership helps them further their careers – which is why industry-related membership sites work so well!
Remove Risk
Finally, you also need to remove any risk that is associated with this deal. People will worry that you can’t be trusted and/or that what you’re selling isn’t worth the money. You need to remove both these fears by a) using a well-known payment method and b) making sure people can unsubscribe at any time and even get a refund for months in arears.
