Membership Marketing Tactics That Work & Get You More Members
Struggling to grow? Learn membership marketing tactics that convert visitors into loyal members. Get actionable tips that deliver results today.
—————-Sponsors——————
Kintsa – https://bit.ly/3VskGBT
WP-Rollover – https://bit.ly/3VskGBT
LifterLMS – https://bit.ly/3VskGBT
—————-Sponsors——————
#1 – Market and talk about your membership idea well before building it.
It’s incredible how many businesses I’ve seen that hide their membership behind pages and pages of content—no links in the navigation bar, and just the occasional whisper about it on social media.
#2 – Real membership success comes from your email list, not its size, but from its engagement.
Once they’ve joined your email list, use that high engagement to offer them a free trial, a limited-time discount, a splinter product (more on those later), or a small taster of what it’s like to be a full member.
#3 – Good marketing content is the public window display into your membership
Your podcast, your blog – whatever the free content is that you are producing – shouldn’t exist in a vacuum It should be a driver to your membership platform.
#4 – Take people behind the scenes
If you instead focus on sharing behind-the-scenes content at different stages of your sales funnel, you’ll show non-members what’s inside the box and give them a clear sense of the full membership.
#5 – Going on the podcasts as a guest
#6 – The right online partnerships can really work
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:39.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 150. One Big 150. In this episode, we’ll discuss membership marketing tactics at work and how to get more members—a vital topic. Many people don’t think about this when launching their membership website. You don’t be one of them, folks. I’ve got my great co-host. She has extensive experience in eLearning, education, corporate, and entrepreneurship. I’ve got Kurt Van Heijzen in the house. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself quickly?
[00:01:35.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I run an agency called Manana Nomas, and we work directly with folks like WP Tonic and Lifter LMS.
[00:01:44.280] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. As I said, it should be a great show. I think we can provide you with valuable insights and tips. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of the show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into this great show, I also want to point out that we have a great course by Kirk at a reduced price that shows you how to build a membership website on WordPress from beginning to end. And you want to consider WordPress because it’s the most flexible, powerful, and you own it the most popular platform out there. And we’ve got some great special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technology and services to help you build that membership website. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you get all the goodies there. So, Kurt, let’s go straight into it. Number one on my list: mark it and discuss your membership idea well before building it. I’m not sure whether I should start.
[00:03:02.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m just going to ask: what were your thoughts when I put this at number one?
[00:03:07.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s right on the money because it’s counterintuitive. Most people, before they launch their product, and I don’t know where this comes from, Jonathan, but everyone thinks that they’re the first to think of something or it’s an original idea or whatever, and they want to hold off. They don’t want to share it with anyone until it’s fully built out and perfect, and looks exactly as they wish. And that is like a kiss from the devil, right?
[00:03:33.120] – Jonathan Denwood
One, they’ve been building it for one year. They’ve been building it for two years. An individual said he had been building it for five years. It’s just madness. Yeah.
[00:03:45.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
You want to begin hyping your community and your organization early in the process. And that’s going to do more than just build an audience. But people are going to, A, tell you if you’re crazy or not, right? Like, well, I would never pay to be part of that. Well, then you know. Okay, well, they’re not a customer, right? So then it helps you figure out who’s your avatar, who are you going to sell to, if you have a product to sell, if you have a service to sell. And to be honest, When you get positive or negative feedback during this process, when you’re sharing the idea, it’s going to help you create a better platform.
[00:04:23.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ve built a platform. It took me a couple of years adding new functionality. Never spoke to the target audience. It’s in mothballs at the present moment. I might revise it because I don’t like giving up. But I’m basing this on mistakes I made, but I didn’t know any better at the time. I try not to be too harsh on myself because I’ve been known.
[00:04:50.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think it’s a mistake everyone makes, Jonathan. I did it with Mañana No Mas.
[00:04:54.020] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s terrible, isn’t it? You just don’t want to do it, do you?
[00:04:57.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I ended up with 18 or 20 courses in Mañana No Mas. It was pretty, it was beautiful. It had community, it had all these things built in, and no audience, which meant it was never going to grow from that.
[00:05:08.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you get these things said, Oh, I don’t want to tell anybody. It’s a secret.
[00:05:15.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Can you sign an MBA?
[00:05:17.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you sign an MBA? This is a course, folks. I wouldn’t even bother doing that with a SAS. I was building out a small SAS. Well, it ended up being multi-featured. It was a small SAS when I started. The other trap, I thought adding more and more functionality would make it a better product. In some ways it is, but you just don’t want to do it, folks. We’re getting a lot of this, or I am, from the world of bootstrap SaaS, folks, and you just don’t want to do it when it’s a membership site. You need to get out there on communities, on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook. I don’t care where it is or where it is, where it is, and you need to be part of communities, Facebook groups, Reddit forums. There’s loads of places now. There’s no shortage of places where you can share what you’re proposing to build as a course, and you need to be talking about it ASP well before you even start building anything. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:06:24.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Again, right on the money. I think it’s from learning the hard way. I’m launching a in-person apprenticeship program for future WordPress agencies, and we’re launching that spring of 2026. I’ve been talking about it for the last six months, Jonathan, every chance I get. You got to drum it up. You got to You got to get some momentum behind it so that when you launch, you actually have people waiting for it and saying, Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Instead of you launch it and people go, What’s this?
[00:06:56.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and the biggest hurdle is getting those first 10 or a dozen students, folks. It’s like turning a big heavy cogwheel. Getting it moving is the hardest part. If you don’t get the message out, if you’re not talking about it months before you build the first course. And your first course shouldn’t be some enormous course. We’ve talked about that endless during this show, and I’m still going to still say it. It does not want to be an enormous course. It’s got to provide value. It’s got to provide something to the audience, but it doesn’t want to be enormous, does it?
[00:07:38.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
This translates into so many other spaces, Jonathan. If we take a look at… Let’s just look at a few of the tools that we use or the people that we’ve interviewed recently. We just interviewed the people at Creator LMS as they launched Creator LMS. And as they released it, it worked, but it was a fairly bare bones thing. But they released it and they invited people to try it. And they had a… You always hear these things, alpha version, beta version, right? And then just last week, they had announced a new events feature for that platform. But they had already built the momentum of people being interested in it so that when they release that new feature, it really rounded out that product as a complete product. And I think them having pre-launched before that final feature is what really gives them that heightened crescendo of an announcement.
[00:08:32.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally agree with you because it’s in the title Creator LMS. They’re focusing it on a sub-target audience of people that got YouTube TikTok, Instagram, reels, what it is. And they don’t like Patreon. We’ve looked at all these solutions, haven’t we, on this show? We’ve looked at Patreon, we’ve looked other platforms, SaaS platforms. We’ve looked at it all, weren’t we? But the most ownership, the most control you get is with WordPress. So they know that. It won’t appeal to some people. They’re just committed to a SaaS platform, and that’s what they’re aiming their product up. So don’t build an enormous course, because I don’t know anybody that’s got a successful membership website, and they didn’t have to change direction after they got their first students in and they got feedback. I don’t know anybody who… Unless they’re very established, and they’ve marketed a lot of books and they’ve got a lot They’ve got a lot of experience. Anybody else, they’ve had to change the course anyway.
[00:09:50.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Or switch to your point, I have a client with 96 lessons in one course, and it’s wonderful content. It’s beautiful content. It’s a phenomenal… It’s one of the prettiest websites I’ve ever made. But I really think that her course should be four or maybe five courses that she could sell as a bundle.
[00:10:13.140] – Jonathan Denwood
You know what I mean? Yeah, initial, a low-price trigger project to build what we’re going to be talking next, which real membership success comes from the email list, not the size, but the engagement. I wish I knew this earlier as well, because it’s that. I think I’m not a bad marketer. I’ve become much stronger over the last 18 months, but I didn’t realize how important it was to have an email list. Now, the good news, folks, it doesn’t have to be thousands of people. This is the thing, folks. Honestly, it doesn’t, because all you’re looking is people say, I’m going to do a launch and I’m going to get hundreds of people sign up. Well, unless you’ve got a big presence, a big community, your well known influencer in your industry, in your community, in your tribe, it ain’t going to happen, folks. Secondly, you wouldn’t be able to cope with it. Thirdly, you probably peeve off a lot of your initial customers. It’s not a good idea anyway. Really what’s a good idea is just to get that first 12, 15 students in and try and interview them after they’ve gone through the course one to one, write down what they thought about the course.
[00:11:45.380] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re trying to get market fit here. It’s the same with the email list. It does not have to be hundreds. It’s great if it is, all you need is 100 people that regularly open it, that have signed up because you’ve done some social media, you’ve gone out there, they respect what your opinion is on the subject which the course is on. You only need 100. If you get 100 people sign up for your newsletter and they’re regularly opening it and you’re getting some engagement, you’re going to get those 12 initial students buying. It’s pretty guaranteed, isn’t it?
[00:12:30.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I hate to use the word guarantee, but it definitely comes into… I really take this part seriously, Jonathan. This is one of the things on your show notes that really popped off to me. I’m one of these people that used to have a big email list, and it used to be a combination of everyone I ever met in my entire life. They were in some church I was in, in Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, all these places where I lived.
[00:12:56.080] – Jonathan Denwood
You’ve been about, and you could- Yeah, I’ve been all over the place, and I had this giant mail list, and I would keep popping out these emails.
[00:13:03.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m like, what’s going on? No one’s signing up. This is crazy. And then from every walk of life, every job I had ever had, I mean, thousands of people were in this list. And then one day I said, you know what? I did some analysis. I looked at the numbers and my open rate was like 2 %, three %, something ridiculous. And I said, you know what? I’m just going to delete the list and start over. And I was shaking. I mean, literally, like physically sick, thinking I’m going to flush this down the I deleted the list. I purged everything out of my CRM. I switched CRM tools, and I started from scratch. And now I’ve only got 15 or 1,600 people on my mail list. But my open rate, Jonathan, is between 50 and 55 % every time I send a newsletter.
[00:13:48.660] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s amazing.
[00:13:49.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
So if I’ve got 750 people interested in what I’m putting out for content or for features or deals or whatever, that’s a whole lot more influential. Influence and a whole lot more success than I was getting with that 2 % at 6,000 people on a list. Things didn’t make sense. And so when you are having a conversation, a digital conversation with people that want the content, it’s a whole different ball game. The energy is completely different, the success metrics are completely different, and you’re able to actually meet that product-market fit, that elusive term that you’ve already mentioned in the show.
[00:14:29.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s Having a small, growing, that’s opened, that’s consumed email list is one of the key factors that will make your launch of your membership website a success. I can’t emphasize it more than that, really. You need to concentrate. That’s why you need to be talking using social media, YouTube, TikTok, it doesn’t matter what it is, talking the subject, which, of course, is going to be out, and saying, I do a weekly newsletter on my website. Here’s the ULR. Go and sign up and get at going the right way before you do your landing page and making your early bird offer. I can’t emphasize how important it is. Good marketing content is a public window to display into to your membership. Well, what did you think of that one?
[00:15:38.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, first off, I want to give a shout out to someone that put in a comment live. They asked, What CRM tool did I switch to? And currently, there’s no secrets with me. Currently, I’m using Fluent CRM Pro. And thanks for putting in the comments. We always welcome people to get involved in the show.
[00:15:53.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we love to get more engagement, don’t we, Kirk?
[00:15:58.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, yeah. I got The next question I thought was, again, right on point, right? Good marketing content is the public window display to your membership. Jonathan, I think this is really quite honestly, and I’m not trying to kiss your patootie, but this is one of the things that you nail really hard. You’re on multiple podcasts. You’ve guested on podcasts recently. Your blog is super, super strong. You’ve got a lot of content that you put out on the blog.
[00:16:26.400] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to be doing things about that. So it’s a bit stronger, the layout is more easy to use in the new year.
[00:16:32.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. So I agree with a lot of what’s here. And I think if… This is one of those, don’t just do what we say, watch what we do and follow what we do. I’m on five podcasts a week, and now you got to figure out what fits your person the best.
[00:16:50.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I thought you were on three.
[00:16:52.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I do the two shows for Lifter LMS. I do the two shows. I do the Agency Action Show with WP Minute. And then if I have someone to interview for Mañana No Mas, that goes up on the block, too. And so I really believe that there is a lot of quality content and a lot of great discussions to be had, and I really enjoy the podcast space. So for me, I really push that. I do some type of live, probably three, four times a week. I typically publish that to Rumbl, which goes out to X and out to YouTube as well. And then I repurpose all that content. But you have to. You’re using social media and these tools to cast out this net, and then that net, hopefully, is where you bring people to something. And when you bring them to something, hopefully that something is your own website or your own project that can lead to conversion for you for revenue.
[00:17:47.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think depending different platforms, if your course is going to appeal to business, B2B, probably LinkedIn. If it’s to consumer, you’re probably Facebook, Facebook and YouTube. I am a big fan of YouTube. I published a load, I think I’m over 1700 videos. I haven’t got a massive audience. It’s went up a bit. It’s tell down a little bit, but hopefully, if I put some effort into it, it’ll go in the right direction in 2026. But it’s around 10,000 over… It’s between 10,000 and 12,000. And only 10% of YouTube channels have over I think I’ve done reasonably well. And the engagement isn’t as much as I was hopeful. I’m going to have to try and do that. But I can tell you, if I get somebody that wants to talk to me, and they go to the WP tonic website to book a free chat with me, 30-minute chat, they normally are going to sign up, and almost all of them have said, Well, we’ve worked with you. We’ve We’ve watched your YouTube channel, we’ve watched your videos, and we like what WP Tonic. The people that don’t book, they normally just sign up. But those that book a consultation, it’s because They’ve read posts and other stuff, but then they’ve gone to the YouTube channel and they’ve just feasted on all those videos.
[00:19:24.040] – Jonathan Denwood
So getting content is really important. Was it any final thoughts on this, Kerr?
[00:19:32.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just encourage people because we run into this when we’re consulting people from the eLearning space, especially. People are afraid to put the content out. They think that they need a special microphone a special camera, special lighting, so a background, a green screen. Stop overthinking it. Make some content and share the content. You can always go back later. You can always like when things are great and you’ve got flow You’ve got customers, and you’ve got customers and you’ve got time or you’ve got staff to delegate to. You can revamp stuff. You can always improve things. But if you’re waiting for it to be perfect before you feel comfortable sharing it, you’re never going to share it. So the best thing you can do is turn on the camera and go.
[00:20:18.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, folks, to read the blog content, all you have to do is go to the main sponsor of this show, which is Wp-tonic. Com, and go to the top navigation right up there. It says blog. There’s hundreds of blogs and content about membership, the best tools. I literally covered everything, and it’s a fantastic resource, folks. I think we’re going to go for our middle break, and when we come back, we’ve got some other excellent points and insights to give to you. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, three, If you want to sign up for the newsletter that’s part of this podcast, go over to Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter, Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter. I do a weekly newsletter. It covers normally a subject we’ve discussed in this podcast. And also I throw in some news that has come on my radar. It’s a fantastic weekly resource. So please think about signing. And it’s totally free, and it’s done by myself, totally. So please sign up for that. It’s a great resource. We got another. See, LinkedIn. I’m going to make sure this LinkedIn is working. We got somebody saying, Get more and more prominent. I think raw human content will get more and more compelling.
[00:22:03.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re totally spot on there. I just think content, community, a real person, the face of the brand. And funny enough, it’s linked in to my next point on our list here. That’s funny. It’s quite good, really. Take people behind the scenes. And I think it’s linked to this commenter said, because it shows that you’re real people, you’re a real person, actually showing how you make the content, talking about the content, the process of making it, the mistakes you made, the things that you People are a bit scared because they think, Oh, if I say I made a mistake, but I think it makes you more human, more relatable. What’s your thoughts about this, Kurt?
[00:22:56.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was just talking about this with another group today, Jonathan, and that is in my own 18 to 24 month forecast of what we’re going to see, I think we’re going to see more and more people drive to analog, authentic content, leadership, consulting. I think there’s a certain AI fatigue or a lack of trust with AI right now. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but young people, like mid-school, high-school kids, when they see something that is When you tell them, Oh, hey, if you keep walking around with your bottom lip hanging out, a bird is going to land on it. Remember when you would frown and your mom would say that to you?
[00:23:38.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Mom, English, we never had that term.
[00:23:41.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
A kid’s response nowadays would be, That’s so AI. And they say, That’s so AI. That’s a bunch of snot. That’s completely made up. So I think what we’re going to see- AI snot. Yeah. I think what we’re going to see is more and more people drive to what’s organic, what’s real, what’s authentic. And to your point, you said, Hey, if you make a mistake or when you make mistakes, when you do something wrong, don’t be afraid to share that, too. And just this week, one of our assets that we made was we made a complete website using WP Funnel’s tools. We have three tools from WP Funnel’s. We made a whole tutorial, and then it was like an hour and 20 minutes long. And people are watching it because it’s being talked by a human all the way through it. Like, Hey, let’s learn this together.
[00:24:33.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Where can I get that?
[00:24:35.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s on YouTube. That’s on the Manana Nomas YouTube channel.
[00:24:38.320] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, go there. I’ll have to have a look at it. It’s one of the resources that WP tonic suppliers when you host with us, folks. You did a bit of a dive. What do you think of it?
[00:24:52.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
On the WP funnel stuff? Yes. They have WP funnels, Mailment, and their creator, LMS product. And since they came out with that new events feature, I wanted to really go through that, use it, and go through the process with Zoom to connect it. And so I went through all that through the process, and I used ASTRO with ZipW WP just to build it as a sample site. And I think it went well. I think it went well. The WP Funnel, it’s deceiving a little bit because it looks easy. It looks like it should be intuitive and easy and visually driven and all those things, but you’re still building a funnel.
[00:25:40.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m not being rude, but you’re so spot on. You’re so intuitive-ness. Is that a word, Kurt?
[00:25:49.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
You just made it up, but I like it.
[00:25:51.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it? That’s why I was trying with the SASFIN I’ve built I was trying to get… So it’s more step rather than a diagram, because I think it was one of the things Groundhog did right, actually, but it’s not my favorite at all. So we’re going off the subject, but I think people like to see how the sausage is made to a certain degree, folks. Obviously, you can overdo it, where you’re just bitching and moaning and being English. But people do like it, it makes you more human. Going on podcast as a guest. I’ve been doing a bit of it. I backed off because I’ve been dealing with a load of stuff, folks. In the new year, I might go back to actually… Because I actually enjoy going on other people’s podcast. It’s an eye opener about how people, what tools they use, how they organize it. I went on a couple of months ago, I went on about 15. I’m not Hopefully, I’m not coming across as arrogant or anything. It pleased me. I think me and Kirk, we’ve got a very good process with especially our other show about how we onboard people, and that’s pretty slick.
[00:27:29.640] – Jonathan Denwood
So But I think it’s fantastic. If you’re looking to build your tribe, to be out there, to talk to people that might be interested in your membership, I’m talking about doing this before you even got a membership. I’m talking about being seen as the expert. You might only have a early bird sell, a landing page saying, In the next few months, this course is going to be available, and sign up and you get a discount. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. But going on podcast and saying, I got this early bird, go to this ULR on my website, sign up. It’s just a great way of promoting it. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:28:20.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and I don’t want to leave out the idea that the podcast as a guest thing, it’s not just for launches. It’s really good to keep the energy going. It helps create momentum. It does a lot of things. So I’m typically on the other side of the interview. I’m typically the person that’s interviewing other people. And then there is a marked difference when you get to be the guest. It’s a completely different dynamic. And so if you do the podcast as a guest angle, you really got to make the commitment to do it. And when I say commitment to do it, you got to set aside It’s all the time. When you do the podcast, you got to be distraction free. You got to be focused, you got to be engaged with the host, right? Whether they’re your favorite person or not, you got to be engaged with that host. And then there’s an obligation on the back end of podcasting that I think a lot of people, even if they consider it, they don’t follow up on it. And that is your marketing piece. You’re the guest. The spotlight was on you. It’s your marketing piece.
[00:29:28.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
They’re going to give you links to it, and you need to be a good guest and share the living crap out of it. I shouldn’t be… So on my particular podcast, my Mañana No Mas podcast, I’ve got over 100 episodes, and I’m going to tell you, 90 % of the promotion of that podcast comes solely from myself. Only 10% of the links, of the referral links, of the traffic that comes to that channel, only 10% of that traffic comes from external recommendations and referrals. And it should be the opposite. It should be the other way around. We’re providing the service to make the podcast. The people that are the guests should be sharing the living crud out of them. So I really want to encourage you, if you guest on other people’s podcast, your guests. You got to roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and you got to do some of the work that goes with it.
[00:30:21.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Why do you think that is? I totally agree. You’re very insightful, Kurt.
[00:30:25.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, life is distracting. That really is what it comes down to. Life is distracting. Interacting. The thing is, is that in today’s age, Jonathan, you and I are both very much aware of this. But if someone shares a link with me, I can set it up in my social media tool and have it post every three days for the next 60 days if I wanted to. I literally just set it up once and let the system take care of it. And so I don’t know why people hesitate to do that so much, but they do. And maybe it’s a little bit of that imposter syndrome. Maybe they don’t want to feel like they’re bragging on themselves for their interview, but you’re not. You could phrase the post as in, I was super humbled and blessed to be on the show with Jonathan and Kurt, and then put up the link. You don’t have to be like, check out this brilliant interview with me telling you how the world spends. That’s an arrogant way to post it. But there are ways to post it with a sense of humility.
[00:31:20.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you say, I’ve just been on this podcast, we had a fantastic discussion. Go and have a look at it. We covered these areas. I’m sure you’re going to get some value from it.
[00:31:31.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, little humility, hat in hand. If you’ve got imposter syndrome and you’re trying to launch something digitally, you got to get over it. You just got to get over it and you got to put yourself out there and you got to promote the snot out of these things.
[00:31:43.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Another area I’ve not been I’m not being very good at, I think you’re better at this than me a lot, is the right online partnerships can really work, building relationships. I don’t think I I’m an unfriendly person, and I think I’ve got a reasonably good heart, but you’re more outgoing and you know how to build these relationships a bit more than me. But I think partnership, that’s the informal sense of it. I suppose this maybe is more prevalent into B2B, finding partners that got audience, that through affiliate through because they think you’re a good resource. They think that your course will offer value to their audience, to their community. Finding those partners that can share your course can make a real big difference to your initial launch. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:32:58.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
First off, thank you for your very kind words. They may be overestimated.
[00:33:04.480] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s culture as well, because I am for 43 years, I was in England, and I’m English. So I think Americans are more friendly me initially up front. Sorry, I interrupted.
[00:33:21.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I think if I’m going to be really transparent on this particular question or topic, I really am cautious. I know people look me externally and they think I’m maybe extroverted or I’m super engaging or whatever. And to a certain point, yeah, I guess that’s true, right? Because I interact with a lot of people. But the truth of the matter is this, the right online partnerships can really work. And the right ones are few and far between, because most people, if you’re in the entrepreneur space and you’re a go getter, you’re going to recognize that a lot of the people that you work with are not. Like, They want to be on your coattails as much as you’re looking to grow your thing. I am absolutely done found at it. How many people invite me to their mastermind groups? And I know my mastermind group isn’t necessarily an online partnership, but I get invited to all these mastermind groups, and I say, I’m not really looking for another mastermind right now, but I’ll come and I’ll check it out. And then when I get in there, I’m the guy in the room. I can’t constantly put myself in a space where I’m the the one with the experience in the room.
[00:34:31.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
There comes a time where you need to be mentored and invested in and grown as well. And so you really have to work hard to find those right relationships, even if they’re nice to you and pat you on the back and shine and yawn, sometimes you have to be strong enough to go, well, wait a minute. This has to be a two-way street. And a perfect example of an online partnership, Jonathan, is the Power Sport Academy. That thing sat for five years and didn’t make any money. And then we made a partnership with Hero Hub, and through that partnership with Hero Hub, we’ve been able to generate revenue together and do a revenue share on our content. That’s an example of a really good partnership that can work.
[00:35:11.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because I thought I would add this because of your experience. I didn’t know if you were going to want to share it. But it’s from your own experience, getting this partnership has made a big difference, hasn’t it, to you, hasn’t it?
[00:35:27.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Well, and so And I should be really clear, it’s not just revenue, right? When you sit on a project that you put your heart and soul into and you know it’s the best thing in the country, and I’m not shining anybody on. I know that our product is the best at what it does in the country. But for five years, I couldn’t get anyone to sign up for it. And I mean, I had a couple of clients come and go, but it was not experiencing the success that it was projected to have. And that’s very dejecting. So no matter where you succeed otherwise, you’ve always got this this one anchor on the back, right? You’ve got this chain you’re dragging around with you. That’s like this failure that’s always there. And there was a couple of times I was going to turn it off and just forget about it. But I knew that it was the best product. It was so hard to have it, know that it’s the best, and know that it’s not selling. And then, quite realistically, it goes back to all those other things we talked about in the show already.
[00:36:25.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
The right people, the right content, the right momentum, the mail list. I didn’t have the I didn’t have the right puzzle pieces in the right places, and that’s why I wasn’t experiencing the success. I made a partnership with this other organization that did have the right mail list, the right communication, the right marketing, the right messaging. And then we plugged my product in with their existing system, and now we’re making sales together and doing a revenue share. It’s been a real blessing to us, both with the revenue, but also with that giant weight, that giant chain of failure gets released. And then it’s, spiritually, mentally, physically, physically, however you want to describe that, it gives you the energy to tackle those other projects with a little more confidence because you know that you have what it takes to succeed if you’re given the right channels.
[00:37:16.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks for sharing that. Are there any points, things that you think should have been on the list that you want to share with us, Kurt?
[00:37:25.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
The biggest thing to me that we didn’t cover, and I I want people to really take this with a grain of salt, because you got to investigate your own use case and what things are, is pricing. Because you had mentioned earlier in the show, you said you don’t need a giant mail list. You just need… Maybe you have a couple of hundred people, maybe you have… Okay, But out of those couple of hundred people, if they all paid $10, you would make a couple grand a month. If they all paid $50, well, that’s different. If they all paid $149, that’s $2. 99. Right when you think that you’re overpriced, go and look at the rest of the market or similar markets and see what’s happening. I mean, I literally launched a coaching product three months ago, and I priced it very, very attractively. And then I started looking at some other coaching products, people in my space and in my level of expertise. And they were four or five times what I was asking for for coaching. And so if you’re too cheap, you’re not going to get traffic either. You’ve got to have a price price that hits a sweet spot with your projected audience or avatar.
[00:38:35.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Pricing is a complex recipe to figure out. You rarely get it right the first time. I find it’s easier to overprice yourself and then offer early-bird discounts, VIP founder pricing, or similar offers. I think if you price-anchor it high and then discount it, it feels better to the customer. Whereas if you start really low and then all of a sudden, jack your price up, people think you’ve lost your mind, which is what I did with the Power Sport Academy.
[00:39:07.540] – Jonathan Denwood
I think the other thing that it’s maybe not totally linked to what we’ve been saying, folks, but as Kirk was saying that about a year ago, maybe 14 months ago, I bought a couple of 499 courses, and both of them were reasonable. But I got engaged, and then I left them. I consumed some of the content in the first week, then dropped out. I was doing other stuff. I can log in. They’re on my bookmark list. I can log in and look at them again. With an onboarding process and optimization that encourages people to log back in and consume it, you might think, “Well, you bought lifetime access.” Does it really matter? They’ve got their money. I think it matters because if people buy your course and don’t see success from it, they may not finish it, and that has an effect. It’s out of your power to a certain degree. But I’m not going to remember, but both these individuals who bought their courses, it was around the 497 mark, which is maybe one I got on a special offer, so it was like 2. 99. It’s not massive amounts.
[00:40:36.020] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not throw-away money either. But neither of them had a real onboarding sequence, and they didn’t have a sequence that triggered when you haven’t logged in for a while. I think this is important. What do you think about that, Kurt?
[00:40:53.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, any of those kinds of engagement tools, any interactions, gamification, there are all kinds of ways to have that conversation. I think they’re all essential tools and worth discussing. But I want to be really, really sure that, on this episode at least, my opinion is that comes after the launch. Focus on building the energy, building the MVP, getting your first 10 or 15 users in, and then going back and saying, “Okay, now that I’ve got these people and I’ve got some feedback, this is what was missing in the user experience explanation.” This is what was… And then build it as you go. But if you add it as a step before you launch, it’s just one more thing to postpone.
[00:41:46.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you’re totally right. This is not something to deal with what we’ve been talking about, folks. It’s something in the next step after you got that initial, but you got the flywheel moving, and you’re looking at getting your next batch of students moving on to the next level of success. I think we’re going to wrap it up now, Kurt. I thank you for your insights. I think it’s been a good show, actually. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to, Kurt?
[00:42:21.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
The best approach is to connect on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn, and if you find me there, you’ve got me.
[00:42:28.780] – Jonathan Denwood
If you want to support the show, folks, a great way of doing it, and it’s really easy, if you’re listening to this on your iPhone or your Android, on Spotify or on iTunes, is to leave a review on both mobile platforms, Spotify and iTunes. They make it really easy to leave a review. Just scroll down, and you can give us five stars if you want to, folks. Both Kirk and I would greatly appreciate it if you would do that, as it’s the best way to publicize the show and attract new listeners, which means we can secure better sponsors and continue making this show for you. We will be back next week with more tips and insights to help make your membership website and course more successful for you and your family. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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