91 | Membership Launch Debrief: Behind-the-scenes of the founding launch for The Audience Growth Club
Membership Launch Debrief: Behind-the-scenes of the founding launch for The Audience Growth Club
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I recently wrapped up the founding member launch for my new membership, The Audience Growth Club, and I’m taking you behind the scenes of it all in this episode! Tune in to find out how many founding members we enrolled, the marketing strategy that fueled it, what worked well, the lessons I learned and more! If you’re thinking of launching a course or membership, you’ll learn a lot from this episode.
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What is The Audience Growth Club?
The Audience Growth Club is a membership for online business owners who want to grow their audience, make a bigger impact, and increase their income fast! It’s been designed for online coaches, service providers and course creators who want to organically grow their email list, and attract perfect-fit clients into their community every month - no matter their current list size or budget.
My big vision for The Audience Growth Club is to become THE go-to place for online business owners to get the resources, network & opportunity they need to grow their audience with hundreds of qualified leads each month so that they never have to worry about where their next client/student is going to come from again.
My Launch Goals
My overall goal for the membership was to get 25 founding members through the door.
I wanted this first launch to be quite small and intimate because it’s a new membership and I wanted to really be able to roll out the red carpet for my new members, get to know them personally and learn what they want from the membership so that I can shape the future of The Club around their feedback and what they’re telling me they want.
The Pre-Launch
As with any launch, I began to warm my audience up within the pre-launch, before opening the doors.
Content
I didn’t have a set date to launch this membership at the start, but I knew that the next thing I launched would be The Audience Growth Club. So, from February/March I began to shift all my content to focus on audience growth.
The podcast was all themed around audience growth strategies, email marketing, collaboration… even all of my guest episodes were themed around this. I have been really intentional with the guests I’ve brought onto the show over the past few months, and the topics we’ve been talking about. All of my guests, since March, have been interviewed on what they’re currently doing to grow their audience.
I was really intentional with the content because I wanted to warm my audience up to the idea of building their email list, growing their audience and collaboration… because that’s what The Audience Growth Club is all about!
Lead Magnet
The next thing I did was to create a lead magnet that relates to the membership and would help my audience to grow their audience. This lead magnet was called 18 Ways To Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration and I created this in May.
It was actually a resource that I created for The Audience Growth Club, but I took it out and offered it as a free lead magnet as well, so that I could identify who on my email list was interested in that topic. This was the only freebie I promoted over that 2 month period, and I had just over 300 sign-ups for it by the end.
If I’m being honest, I could have done a better job at promoting it, and if I were to go back I probably would have done some freebie swaps and a few other collaborative events. However, May and June were pretty hectic months for me as I moved home from London and then after being back in my family home for a few weeks, I moved into a new apartment… so it was pretty full on and probably the worst time to be planning a launch as well, but I was just so sick of being delayed in launching this membership and I didn’t want to put it off any longer. So, I’m happy with how that went considering the circumstances.
Waitlist
As soon as I knew I’d be launching The Audience Growth Club, I started sharing a few teaser snippets and behind-the-scenes content over on Instagram and created a waitlist page I could link to. I also sent out a couple of emails to my full email list announcing my idea for The Club and inviting them to join the waitlist.
By the time I launched, I had just over 100 people on the waitlist. Again, this is something I definitely could have promoted harder, but with how busy I was in my personal life with all the moving, I just let it be what it was.
I did send out a few emails to my waitlisters, however. I let them know about my idea for the membership, I shared a couple of sneak peeks and screenshots as I worked on it behind the scenes, and then one week out from doors opening, I let them know the launch date and that there’d be a special bonus for those who signed up within the first 24 hours.
The Launch
I opened doors on July 9th and the launch was scheduled to run for 7 days, until the 16th.
As a bonus, everyone who joined the membership within the first 24 hours of doors opening would receive a free Day of Voxer Support with me where we could chat & strategise about their audience growth strategy.
I didn’t want to close the doors with this membership launch - my plan is to have an always open membership, but I needed an incentive for my audience to join during this week and a way to end the launch, so I offered a special founding member price on our VIP tier. Anyone who joined the VIP membership within that week would lock the price in for $77/m as opposed to $97/m - and that special price stays intact for as long as they’re a member.
If you’re not a VIP, the membership price is $37/m. This is just what feels good for the membership right now… I debated on offering a lower founding member price, but anything else just seemed too low for the value of the membership. And I could’ve raised the price after to $47, but again, I just felt like $37 is a good price. That might change in the future, but this is just what felt good to me, so I didn’t do any kind of discount or price rise with the regular membership price for this launch.
Launch Results
My goal was to finish this launch with 25 founding members. And of those founding members, I was hoping that 5 of them would be VIP members.
Within the first 24 hours, we had 10 members. The most amount of people joined within the first 3 days. We did have a bit of a mid-cart dip (there was one day where we didn’t get any new members at all and, funnily enough, that was the only day I didn’t send an email about it, so take from that what you will…) but it picked up again in the final 48 hours of the promo and we had 7 members join on the last day.
Overall, we ended up with 27 founding members, 6 of whom signed up for the VIP membership.
What worked well with this launch
Pivoting my content
When it comes to what worked well, I think the thing that had the most impact was the shift in my content. I spent a long time nurturing my audience, talking to them about the importance of growing their audience, helping them overcome their limiting beliefs, introducing them to the idea of collaboration and the different ways they could implement this… and I think all of this played a big part!
Teasing & hinting
I also kept mentioning within my content and emails that I was working on a membership and giving little hints and details about it. I think this helped to raise my audience’s awareness that a launch was coming up and it allowed them to know exactly what was coming and get excited.
Sharing a video tour of the membership portal
Another thing that I think worked well was the fact that I recorded a video tour of the membership and sent it out in my launch emails. A lot of the time, before someone makes a purchase, they like to see what they’re getting. And, yes, you can include a mockup. But allowing someone to see a full video tour behind the scenes is so much more powerful.
I knew that some of my audience members might be hesitant to join because it’s a new membership and they couldn’t be sure what to expect, so I killed that objection by showing them exactly what they could expect. And when I sent that video tour out, I did see a few members join directly from that.
Releasing the membership schedule
Leading on from that, I sent out an email that broke down what would be happening inside the membership over the next few months. Essentially, I gave them our training & event schedule.
I let them know the trainings that would be coming up from now until November, and I also let them in on the events we’d be running inside the membership. Again, I noticed an increase in members joining from this email.
What I’d do differently next time
Take more time to generate exposure during the pre-launch phase
Firstly, obviously I would do a lot more to promote my launch. As I mentioned earlier, I was in a really busy period with moving houses multiple times during that period! So the next time I launch, it will definitely be in a period when I’m not so busy and can dedicate more time to the pre-launch.
I would focus on podcast guesting as a way to reach more people. And I would also try to schedule maybe 2 or 3 summits during my pre-launch phase where I can create a training on audience growth and encourage attendees to go and grab my lead magnet so that I can spend some time nurturing them on my email list.
Launch Event
I had wanted to host a launch event, such as a 3 day challenge, to introduce the membership and kick off the launch. I decided against this due to how busy I was in my personal life. I know that I could have delayed the launch by a couple of weeks to give myself time to plan and organise this but in full honesty, I just wanted to launch. I wanted to get The Club out into the world and I didn’t want to wait any longer, so I scrapped the launch event.
Considering we still exceeded the launch goals, I stand by my decision to do this… but I wil definitely be hosting one next time because I just know how powerful they are at driving conversions!
My overall thoughts on the launch
Overall, i think the launch went really well. It was a founding launch, we hit our goal. And it all came from messy action… I could’ve waited until I wasn’t so busy. I could’ve waited until I had the time to plan and host a whole launch event. I could’ve waited to feel 100% ready to launch. But, you know what? I’m glad I didn’t. Because I now have a membership with 27 incredible members who are ready to start prioritising their audience growth and the membership is helping them do that.
I’ve had so many incredible conversations with members, particularly my VIPs, and we’ve already made so much process in the 2 weeks the doors have been open.
I am so happy with how this launch went and the incredible business owners I now have the honour of supporting, so I wouldn’t change a thing about this launch.
Join The Audience Growth Club
If you want to stop pouring countless hours into marketing strategies that deliver little to no results and, instead, increase your visibility and authority so that you’re booked out for your 1:1 services months in advance and make daily sales from your digital offers, I would love to invite you to join The Audience Growth Club.
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hey, I'm Tish!
I'm a multi-passionate business owner, digital marketing strategist, business mentor & part-time digital nomad ✈️
I'm on a mission to help you create more time, freedom & profit in your business through the implementation of sustainable & scalable business and marketing strategies!
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