As a video creator in 2023, you might have been considering converting your online fanbase into a paid online community, or you might have already started the journey, but have confronted blockers and need growth ideas to improve member acquisition.
In this article, we’ll cover 4 actions that you could take to boost member acquisition in 2023. You will also get access to our hand-picked free templates and resources!
- Listen to your fans: what content are they expecting and are more willing to pay for? When talking about paid content from you, are there any other factors to consider, for example, post frequency, content length, etc?
- Test and iterate the ideas: Which kinds of programs can convert your fans into paying members? How to set the pricing strategy that is more suitable for your community?
- Promote your content: How to make your fans more aware that they can get access to something premium from you?
- Optimize your workflow: How to streamline the to-dos? How to maximize the ROI of time & efforts of running an online paid community? (Free templates and resources included!)
Action 1: Listen to your fans
No matter how hard one stresses promotion, if the original content/product doesn’t seem appealing at all, it won’t generate strong traction. Listening to the fans can help you gain valuable inspiration on creating content that will be loved.
Use social media to contact and understand fans: what are they expecting to see and might be willing to pay for? Here below are 2 actions you could take to receive feedback.
🎙️1.1 Go Live on your main social media channel.
Live can create a close and easy atmosphere. Start the discussions, and note down your learnings!
📪 1.2 Conduct surveys or quick polls.
Don’t have time for a lengthy live chat? Try out the following methods to receive feedback!
- Hold a survey in Instagram stories
- Start a poll or ask for feedback on YouTube community tab
- Create a Twitter poll
- Initiate a Facebook poll
- Conduct free surveys using Typeform
Put what you gathered in a sheet for an overview, or even draw a graph to visualize the numbers and see what outranks the others!
Action 2: Test and iterate the ideas
Based on the collected feedback, you will have some ideas on what and how to launch, but you might still have some questions in mind, such as:
- How much should I charge?
- Which ideas are good ones that would help me with member acquisition and generate revenues?
- Which kind of offerings should I release? Individual content, a membership program, or a combination of both?
Before using gut feelings and directly committing a large budget & time, test the ideas out!
Below are a couple of ways to test which ideas or business plans will grow your paid community, improve your member acquisition and thus be worth the budget & time.
💰2.1 Offer a PWYC to see how much fans are willing to pay.
How to set the right price is always a question causing headaches. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all pricing strategy, and it could be a quite sensitive question to ask directly.
PWYC (pay what you can) can be a valuable solution here. It’s a customer-centric form of participative pricing where a buyer has control over the price setting. However, you can always set a floor price to indicate your baseline expectation.
By letting people pay as they wish, you could successfully tap into different types of fans: from those who always opt to pay the minimum, to those willing to pay much more. Hence, it gives you:
- A general understanding of the overall paying preference of your community;
- More insights into the willingness-to-pay of each ‘customer segment’ within your community.
In the long-term, these would turn into your personal ‘actionable insights’ when setting pricing strategies for more content, programs, and products that would work better for YOUR community.
At VOYD.tv, you will be able to set PWYC to any of your offerings. Check more details in our blog on PWYC or get in touch with us in Swedish or English for more insights regarding pricing!
✏️ 2.2 Provide a free trial to test member acquisition.
Free trials are about building more trust from fans, by knowing what they’re going to get by paying. Say that you want to see whether it’s worth starting a monthly membership business, you could start by giving potential members a free trial over a specific period. By releasing a free trial project, you can gain benefits like:
- Insights on how many fans are interested in the concept, setting aside the price factor;
- Feedback from fans to improve content;
- Email addresses of those who joined for future member acquisition campaigns;
- Valuable experience for future business initiatives.
At VOYD.tv, our team would LOVE to help you start a free trial project. However, if you think it could be too time-consuming for you to test different ideas, we’ve got your back! Get in touch with VOYD’s Creator Success team for more real cases and inspirations that may also work for you.
Action 3: Promote your content
After releasing the awesome content or program, you also need to spread the word so fans know that they can get premium stuff from you, and kick-start the member acquisition!
🎬 3.1 Provide a teaser for potential members.
Teaser is effective at generating excitement and curiosity. Try offering a visual sample of your content or program, put some highlights in, and release it to your fans on social media or via emails to your ‘potential customers’ list.
At VOYD.tv, there are 2 ways to utilize the power of a ‘teaser’: Sneak Peek and Trailer. First, with a single click, you can choose to open up 1 minute of your uploaded video as a sneak peek that potential buyers can watch before they buy. Second, if you have produced a trailer, you can always upload it and give the playing option to your potential buyers. Check our detailed tutorials on Sneak Peek & Trailer!
📣 3.2 Share regularly to acquire members.
As a creator, you’ve probably heard about this 100 times, but still, it’s more than important to share on social media on a regular basis. Let data tell us why:
- According to VOYD’s data in 2022, on average, 60% of the yearly traffic to the pages belonging to our top 10 selling creators came from different social media platforms. Social media is the engine to drive continuous traffic to your content/pages, putting it on a higher priority to grow your paid online community!
- Promotion frequency can significantly impact whether you can make your content known to fans, acquire new members, and ultimately, how much you earn in reality. According to the research done by Patreon in 2022, creators who promote every day turn out to earn 75% more and those who share once a week earn 31% more.
Action 4: Optimize your workflow
Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
James Clear, < Automic Habits >
Being a video creator meanwhile running a paid community is nothing easy. There are a couple of steps that you could try, to break big goals into smaller, achievable actions each day:
- Brainstorm. Jot any to-dos that come to your mind down in a doc.
- Organize and prioritize. Put them into themes such as content production, social media operation, paid community management, etc. Assign them with priorities according to the value they deliver and the efforts they would take.
- Implement and reward. Scratch the items when they are finished and give yourself some rewards!
- Reflect and iterate. Don’t forget to have a self-retrospective from time to time. Reflect on your plan, implementations and make adjustments!
By documenting, practising and optimising daily/regular operations, you will soon have a personal SOP (standardized operation process), it reduces cognitive load so that you can focus more on creation, helps to streamline a workflow that suits you the best, and ultimately facilitate your paid community growth step by step.
Here below are a couple of resources that might be useful for you!
- Inspirations on how to create a YouTube Publishing Plan
- A free Notion template for prioritizing your everyday tasks
- Three free templates for community management created by Hubspot
Conclusion
Members in the online paid community are the ones who want to support you tangibly, as they benefit so much from you, they love your creation, and they want you to feel their appreciation and keep producing valuable content. The community is bound to grow when you are open to listening, dare to innovate and test new ideas, commit time to make it relevant & vibrant, and find a cadence that suits you and the community the best.
With Voyd.tv, we have a platform with features to help you monetize content, also a team that is dedicated to supporting you from content creation to marketing and growth. Create a channel on VOYD directly, or get in touch with our Creator Success team!
