How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 5: Triggers
Read previous articles in this series:
- How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 1: Build Your Preeminence
- How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 2: Communication Channels
- How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 3: Technology
- How To Launch A Membership Site – Part 4: Content and Pricing
I’d like to tell you that your hard work is done, but really you have only just laid the foundation for a successful membership site and now the real work begins. Everything you learned so far in this series – building and demonstrating preeminence, finding ways to market, bringing together the right technology components, deciding on the content you will provide and how much you charge – all come together during the prelaunch and launch phase. This is the make or break time for your membership site – it’s the money time.
Triggers
Before discussing what you do during the prelaunch and launch phases in the next article I want to briefly relate to you some of the major triggers you are attempting to elicit in people. It’s these triggers that create the right conditions for people to feel comfortable making the decision to join your membership site – in fact they should feel an overwhelming compulsion to join if you use these triggers well.
Note that many of these elements are going to feel like you are “tricking” people, that you are attempting to force them into a decision that isn’t necessarily in their best interest by manipulating their emotions. Guess what – it’s true!
I don’t want to jump into a deep philosophical debate over the current state of our capitalist driven, self-serving, environmentally destructive, self-esteem crushing society in this article, but I can’t lie to you – everything you are about to learn is designed to make people desire something they don’t need (in most circumstances anyway).
Marketing is a social science – it’s the study of human behavior – and everything you are learning in this series relates to human behavior. Remember that marketing and these triggers are not inherently wrong, they are simply understandings we have come to as a result of testing. It’s what the knowledge is used for that the potential for abuse arises.
The problem is – and this is where the agitation many people feel towards marketing arises from – that we use our understanding of human behavior to manipulate people into making purchasing decisions for things they don’t need, purely in the interest of profit. It’s a self destructive formula that we feel the negative effects of every day, no person is immune to it and most of the problems in western society are at least somewhat related to it.
It’s not my job to present alternatives to these methods and frankly, I don’t have any good answers anyway. I personally make the decision every day to be a marketer and use these triggers when I run my business and I don’t think I could argue that anything I sell or recommend are necessities in life. I offer “wants”, not “needs”, chances are you do too.
What I can say to you is when you use these triggers that you attempt to be as “honest” as you can, which is the philosophy I apply. Don’t say anything you can’t back up, don’t make promises you can’t keep and use your own internal compass as a guide.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at these triggers.
