Do you want to launch a membership product? Wondering how Social Media Examiner evolved its marketing over time?
In this article, we’ll go behind the scenes to explore how we market one of our products—the Social Media Marketing Society.
Why Are Membership Products Important to Marketers?
Membership communities have become an increasingly popular offering in the marketing world. As marketers and businesses look to diversify revenue streams, build deeper connections with their audience, and provide ongoing value, membership sites offer significant advantages.
They provide predictable recurring income while allowing virtually unlimited scalability at low incremental costs. Memberships foster meaningful relationships between creators and community members and facilitate valuable peer-to-peer interactions. For marketers specifically, a membership site structure enables you to deliver updates on the latest tactics and strategies in this fast-changing industry. It also helps combat the isolation many marketing professionals experience.
With a well-structured membership program, content creators can flourish. Thoughtfully planned memberships allow you to establish domain expertise and authority in a niche while accessibly monetizing your knowledge.
Ali Kelly, manager of the Social Media Marketing Society—a premium Social Media Examiner community—discusses the history and evolution of this membership community, how the concept originated, key challenges faced along the way, and the strategies used to market and grow the community over time.
How Social Media Examiner Evolved Its Membership Marketing Strategy Over Time
I founded Social Media Examiner in 2009 and began hosting the Social Media Marketing World conference in 2013. In 2015, I had the idea to create an exclusive membership site after identifying a need for more ongoing education in the fast-changing social media field. I made an exploratory video out in the wilderness with a blank sign, envisioning a guide through the ever-shifting social media landscape.
The first person brought on board was Leslie Samuel, who remains involved today as the main stage emcee for Social Media Marketing World.
A couple of months after launch, it became clear that the membership needed a full-time community manager.
Ali discovered Social Media Marketing World while finishing her Master of Business Administration degree, intrigued by the emerging social media space for small-to-medium-sized businesses. She attended the 2013 event, hooked by the people and energy. The following year, she made an impression, handing out fun ribbons to spur conversations.
By 2015, Ali was actively participating in the new Society, loving the ongoing education. Seeing the job posting felt like a natural fit with her skills. Her thorough plan for the community stood out among the many strong applicants. She dove in, eagerly guiding the Society to the next level, where she remains today.
#1: The Power of a Membership Model
Ali explains the smart business sense of an automatically renewing base. Unlike in-person events, you can grow an online community infinitely without much extra work. The profit potential is endless.
Community members get VIP access to staff, experts, discussion forums, and real-time updates in an evolving industry. Instead of waiting a year for the next conference, learners can get training on emerging topics, like artificial intelligence (AI), much sooner. A membership also builds connections and fights isolation that many marketers experience working solo at small companies.
A membership offers mutually beneficial value for the business and members year-round. The recurring revenue model also increases your customer lifetime value—some members have been with the Society since it began—and provides valuable metrics and data to inform decisions.
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GET THE DETAILS#2: Key Challenges of Growing a Membership
Marketers Have Evolved
When the Society started, social media was simple—just a few platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter existed. Over time, it evolved rapidly—new platforms emerged, Facebook grew enormously, and social media became integrated into overall marketing strategies.
As social media changed, our audience and their needs changed, too. Many members started agencies and consultancies or took on broader marketing roles. They needed training on more topics like email marketing, content marketing, and AI integration.
So, we had to evolve the membership product and training to match our audience's changing interests. We were also early to the membership model—professional online communities with monthly fees were still new. With little competition, we could offer monthly membership for just $30 to grow our community rapidly. But over time, the space became more competitive.
Early Adopters of Paid Content
As the concept of memberships grew, we faced comparisons against free or low-cost educational alternatives like YouTube, Linda (now LinkedIn Learning), Udemy, individual experts’ offerings, and even AI training. Much of this training, while good quality, doesn't evolve.
But what matters is what your consumer thinks. If they feel that even two-year-old free training is still valid, they'll compare it to your membership.
To deal with this democratization of information, we had to rethink the value of our membership. It wasn't just about the training anymore. We injected more community experiences—online and in-person meetups at our events. This allowed members to talk to other marketers and better understand each other's challenges.
So, now, our membership value comes from the training, the community, and the shared experiences. That's harder for competitors to replicate.
Finding Good Talent
Another critical challenge for our membership is keeping the training component updated and relevant. Experts don't stay experts forever. Many experts who were hot on specific trends eventually fizzled out, moved on, or started their own paid offerings.
Keeping content fresh and relevant as social media platforms relentlessly evolve takes ongoing effort and resources. Carefully selecting knowledgeable contributors from a vast talent pool keeps our twice-monthly training engaging for members. It requires a discovery system and deep relationship bench—many trainers are podcast guests I’ve befriended.
While it’s logistically challenging to map out experts to topics and schedule 24 fresh trainings annually, it ensures our members get cutting-edge, up-to-date training from the top minds in the social media marketing industry.
#3: Early Marketing of Social Media Marketing Society and its Evolution
Initially, with few membership site competitors, our messaging focused squarely on our primary value proposition—affordable access to training opportunities.
We used scarcity and deadlines to boost signups, set enrollment periods, and closed the doors—like a private university. This sense of urgency created a fear of missing out (FOMO) with customers, so much so that there was a waitlist to become a member. Ali also marketed a private Facebook group—when groups had substantial organic reach—as a key benefit. However, we faced challenges with churn—members canceling after 1–3 months. Many people didn't experience enough value fast enough before canceling.
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We created a discounted annual plan to boost retention, making the monthly option more expensive. This encouraged longer commitments so people experienced more value before deciding to renew. Now, most members are on annual plans, which helps retention.
We also tried selling one-off trainings during COVID-19, then upselling to the full membership. But that didn't work well. Over time, we evolved from focusing on access to training to emphasizing the total membership value—training, community, and experiences.
New Pricing Structure
Recently, we significantly changed our pricing structure—we offer only quarterly and annual subscription options, abandoning monthly memberships.
The issue with monthly pricing was that new members, again, didn't have enough time to experience real value before the next billing cycle. So, they would often cancel after the first month before seeing the full benefit.
The annual premium can be too big of a commitment upfront for many people—we needed a middle option. The new quarterly plan gives people 2–3 months to properly try out the Society and experience real value from the membership before automatic renewal or cancellation. We hope this will further improve customer retention.
It's also more profitable for us than big annual discounts. So, moving people from monthly to quarterly pricing should be a win-win across higher customer lifetime value and revenue for us.
Year-Round Enrollment
Another change is that the Social Media Marketing Society remains open for enrollment year-round rather than the old fixed seasonal access.
In the past, having it closed most of the year created scarcity and FOMO with customers, which helped drive sales. But it also meant turning away many people who wanted to join at other times.
To retain some scarcity elements, we:
- Established a higher “retail” pricing plan for quarterly and annual subscriptions (year-round pricing).
- Will have seasonal sale periods with deep discounts off quarterly and annual pricing—making it feel like short “flash” deals. For example, customers who choose the yearly plan will essentially get three months free.
The discounted seasonal offer will be an excellent chance for new members to save. If people miss it, they can still join year-round at retail. We will drive the discounted seasons aggressively, and during off-seasons, we'll market at full retail pricing through our social media channels, email newsletters, podcasts, and website.
The Move Away From Facebook Groups
We also moved away from relying solely on a Facebook group for our community. Facebook has deprioritized Groups—posts don't show up in feeds much anymore. They're also shutting down their APIs soon, limiting the features many businesses can offer.
So, we decided to launch our custom community platform using a third-party tool.
The new platform allows for:
- Topic-based discussion channels
- Voice/video rooms for real-time connection
- Integrated Zoom webinars with breakout discussions
- Email notifications to improve engagement
- Searchable member directories and profiles
- Better integration with mobile notifications
Compared to Facebook Groups, this gives us much more flexibility to create an experience tailored to our members' needs. And it should lead to more member interaction versus Facebook's declining organic reach.
New Messaging
We also changed the Society's marketing copy and positioning. Initially, it focused heavily on the training itself—using language like ”Become a marketing pro” and “Level up your skills.”
But with more training and workshop competition, we now highlight the community aspect more. New messaging includes language like “Gain access to over 1,000 focused, business-building marketers,” “A welcoming community is waiting for you,” and “Connect with others who ‘get’ your role.”
This matters because many marketers work alone or with teams that don't understand their function. A supportive community helps with isolation and allows people to bounce ideas around. The camaraderie and networking are now a more significant part of the Social Media Marketing Society's value proposition than just the training content itself.
We also updated our messaging to better align with the current landscape, taking some behavioral economic concepts from previous Social Media Marketing Podcast guest, Melina Palmer. Some examples include:
- “For everyone seeking change, welcome to the Social Media Marketing Society”—speaks to how much flux our industry is in now.
- “When you're a member, you get new and ongoing professional development”—presupposes they'll join rather than “if.”
- Focusing on community and personal growth rather than hard skill
The new messaging moves away from high-pressure sales tactics. Instead, it gets prospects to imagine the positive impact membership could have for embracing change and connecting with supportive peers during turbulent times.
This warmer, more inclusive tone seems to fit better both the reality of 2024 and resonates more than some of the traditional masculine “hard sell” language did.
Any membership today should take stock of how evolving user expectations impact messaging that converts. Minor tweaks can have a noticeable impact.
Ali Kelly is manager of the Social Media Marketing Society—a Social Media Examiner community. She’s been working at Social Media Examiner for eight years. You can find her on LinkedIn.
Other Notes From This Episode
- Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on Twitter.
- Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.
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