How to Effectively Funnel People into Your Membership in 6 Steps

An effective marketing funnel targets the right people, at the right time, to give them relatable and insightful content that resonates with their needs. It’s how you subtly build up to the moment where they see your membership and think “This is what I’ve been looking for.”

I’m the content creator and founder of a multi-six-figure social media agency, Simply Multimedia, which provides and executes innovative marketing strategies. I’ve worked with lots of membership businesses to help them achieve their marketing goals, alongside sharing the best social media practices with my 60,000 Instagram followers.

Below, I’m going to share the six steps to creating a successful marketing funnel to help you attract the right audience for your membership and convert them into paying members. 

You’ll learn how to define your ideal members and build a connection with them through social media, valuable content and email. Then how to build up to your launch day, and what to do once your membership is up-and-running. 

Ready to master your marketing funnel? Let’s get started!

6 steps for creating a marketing funnel that works for your membership

1. Define your ideal member to target the right audience 

To define your ideal member, you want to start by identifying who you want to work with, and who your membership is for. 

Having a clear idea of who you’re trying to attract to your membership allows you to tailor your marketing and messaging to this audience in a way that resonates with them, and moves the needle for you. 

Here’s what you need to know about your ideal member:

1. Who are they? Their demographics, psychographics, geographics, etc.
2. What are their core pain points and goals? What they struggle with the most, and where they hope to be once they overcome their challenges.
3. Which of your competitors are they considering or actively paying for? The memberships in your niche that target the same audience.

Here’s how to gather and use this information…

1. Define the basics

Start by looking at the basic demographics that make up your audience: where are they based? What age range do they fall into? Factors like gender, profession and average income are also important to research to build a fuller picture.

Psychographics are made up of values, belief systems and the general goals these people want to achieve. In other words, the core things your audience cares about.

You can gather this information by looking at who is following you on social media and engaging with your content. Sending out surveys is another way to collect these insights, or if you have any existing members then analyzing their data is a great place to start.

2. Use social media to research your audience

Once you’ve nailed down who your ideal member is, use social media for your audience research to find out what their pain points are. The comments section is a goldmine for this. How people react and respond to content is a big indicator of how it resonates with their pain points. 

You don’t have to stick to your own social media channels to do this research; analyze how your ideal audience interacts with other well-known and relevant accounts.

Another effective way to gather this information is to directly ask your audience what they struggle with. Create polls on social media where users can simply click to vote or send out a survey to your email list if you have one. 

While both these channels are valid ways of doing this research, social media has the lowest barrier for getting those answers, making it easy for people to give these insights.

3. Look at what competitors are doing to define what makes you stand out

Now that you’ve got a clear idea of who your target audience is and what they care about, the next step is to research what other memberships are doing. 

Focus on who your competitors are, and look at what they’re offering and who they are targeting. This will help inform how you stand out from them. Define why your ideal members should choose your membership above these other choices. 

This definition will form the basis of your unique value proposition (USP). Think of it as your elevator pitch, describing what your membership is all about, and what makes it unique. Take all the research you’ve done so far, and use this to refine the definition of what your membership is, who it’s for and why it stands out from the others. 

Key takeaways:

• Start by identifying who you want to work with and who your membership is for
• Use social media to research your audience’s pain points through polls and the comments section
• Research competitors to define how you stand out and inform your USP

2. Create valuable lead magnets for the start of your funnel to draw people in

One type of lead magnet that I’ve seen be successful over and over again is to offer a free challenge. They work extremely well because they’re action driven, free to take part in and you already get a feel for what it’s like to be part of the community as you’re doing it altogether.

Fitness challenges are a good example but you can create an effective challenge no matter what type of membership you have.

The value of going live

The best way to maximize the chance at converting people from a challenge is to make it live, so that people are taking part in real-time. This adds a bit of extra motivation because everyone is doing it together, heightening the sense of community. 

You can create hype for your challenge in the run-up to it by having countdowns to get people excited about it, which is a great promotional tool to push as many people as possible to sign up. 

Building a landing page to capture their email addresses is crucial. Once you get them onto your email list, you have the opportunity to nurture them over the course of the challenge. 

Encourage them as they progress and then at the end, offer them the chance to join your membership at a special discounted price if they want to continue with the accountability, support and community that they’ve enjoyed throughout the challenge.

Best practices for lead magnets

An effective lead magnet ‘trains’ your audience to be in the right mindset for your membership. For example, I have a quiz I use as a lead magnet. Users take the quiz and their result tells them where they can find their next client.

It gives them valuable insights to get them thinking about action to take and then leads them into the next stage of the funnel, rather than directing them straight into the membership to solve their problems. 

Use your lead magnets to train your audience to be on the same page as you – really touch on their desires, pain points and why they need the membership. 

The content you create here should be action-oriented and give them valuable information and insights, but just enough to spark their interest and desire for more. It should spur them on to engage with the next resource, the final step being to sign up to your membership to truly become unstuck with the problem they have.

Create content for all stages of the funnel

Another key area to consider is which stage your audience is in so you can target them with the right content at the right time. Create a content strategy which covers all the stages of your funnel, so you have a balance between the top, middle and bottom of funnel content.

This provides a mix and ensures there’s something for everyone at all stages. From there, it’s all about setting a schedule for when you plan to share and promote the different content types. 

During a launch, in the last week you should be focusing on bottom of the funnel content because you want to convert the people who are already following and engaging with you. 

At other stages, or between launches, the focus should be on creating plenty of new top of funnel content to capture more people until they’re ready to move into the middle of the funnel stage.

🧐Definitions: 

• The top of the funnel is the awareness stage. These are the people who are just starting to engage with your content on social media.
• The middle of the funnel is one step further, where they’re familiar with you and looking to deepen that relationship and engage with what you have to offer. 
• The last stage is the bottom of the funnel, where people are ready to buy. 

What the different stages might look like 

A good example of top of funnel content could be a funny reel that touches on a common pain point for your audience. This is something I did recently, which caught the attention of lots of new social media managers (the target audience). It resonated so much because the content was relatable, and the format made it easy and fun to engage with.This type of content is how you bring in a new audience. 

Then, over time, you can bring in middle of funnel content which would be more in depth free resources that help them to solve particular challenges. For example, a free download, webinar, or podcast. 

Bottom of the funnel content is more direct, and this is where you would invite people to join your membership. Examples of this would be limited time offers, sales emails, or any call to action that directs people to buy. 

Key takeaways:

• Free challenges are action-driven and give people a taste of what it’s like to be a member
• Touch on your audience’s pain points in your lead magnets
• Create different types of content for each stage of your marketing funnel

3. How to use social media effectively to drive traffic into your funnel

Each different channel is going to serve its own purpose for promoting your membership. YouTube is a great channel for sharing top of funnel video content to draw people in. 

You can make the best use of it by adding all your key links to the video descriptions. This means whenever users watch and engage with your content, you can always send them to the right place afterwards to get them into the next stage of your funnel.

Check out a snippet from one of my video descriptions below:

Tik Tok is another channel that works well for bringing in top of funnel traffic for clients. Whereas Instagram provides more conversation and the ability to build relationships, allowing you to actively convert people.

It really depends on where your audience is – which is the key to using social media effectively. Identify which channels they use, and that’s where you should be.

The typical funnel stages my followers move through 

Let’s look at the typical journey my followers might take on my social media channels. 

People tend to find me first on YouTube. If they listen to my videos for long enough they get very familiar with me, then they might follow me on Instagram because they want to see what I do outside of YouTube, so then the relationship keeps building. 

They then will engage with one of my lead magnets, taking an action such as downloading one of my templates and joining my email list. 

From there, I nurture these leads through email, providing valuable content and relevant CTAs that nudge them towards that conversion. 

Breaking this down into a three stage funnel, it looks like this: 

• Top of funnel: YouTube – Capturing interest and attention
• Middle of funnel: Instagram – Relationship building and registering further interest
• Bottom of funnel: Email – Sales messaging and converting interested subscribers into members

Best practices for turning your social media audience into an owned list

A useful tool for turning followers into leads is Many Chat. This is an Instagram automation tool that responds to your followers when they comment using particular keywords. 

For example, you can ask followers to comment on your post to say “I’m interested” if they want to get access to more helpful content. Then, when they comment using this keyword, Many Chat automatically responds to ask for their email address so you can send out the link to them.

It’s a great way to capture people, because it means you have them on both social media and email at this point. It gives you a much deeper understanding of the people subscribing to your list, and you can narrow down more to target their needs and interests. 

You can build out these chat funnels to be as simple or as complicated as you want. The tool also allows you to track metrics like how often your chat funnel has been triggered, what people clicked on, and the average click through rate. 

Key takeaways: 

• Each channel has its own purpose for how its used
• Provide a clear route for moving people through your funnel on social media
• Build the relationship further as they progress, using automation tools to scale

4. Leveraging email marketing to nurture potential members

The main starting point is to make sure your email list provides value. Having a newsletter where you’re sharing useful updates and storytelling is giving valuable information and a sense of connection to the people on your email list, rather than emails that are constantly promoting your membership to them. 

Once you’ve built up a bit of a connection, you can start to add in calls to action. For example: 

• If you have an upcoming launch for your membership, invite them to join the waitlist
• Rounding up a particular pain point to say that joining your membership can help them to solve it
• Advertise limited time offers to give a sense of urgency 

Promote a lead magnet

You can also nurture your email list by providing them with content that offers useful and relevant insights, getting them ready to convert and become members.

I do this by promoting a lead magnet, like the quiz I mentioned earlier. Once users have gone through the quiz, their result leads them into a free webinar where I can then convert them to join the membership because they’re struggling with the particular pain points I cover in it. 

In the email, I’m not promoting the membership, but the quiz itself. Then, as people take the quiz and move through the various stages, they get sold the membership at the optimal time –  after they’ve already uncovered some of the value it could bring them.

This works because they’re in the right frame of mind at this stage in the funnel. I’ve built them up by guiding them through the right resources before trying to sell my membership to them.

Best practices for email marketing

Basic audience segmentation allows you to tailor your emails to each audience and see more impact. For example, creating a waitlist is a great way to gauge interest in your membership and you can set this up in whatever email software you use. 

Then, you can segment that audience to keep them separate so you’re not constantly emailing them. Instead, wait until you go live with your membership and give them early access. 

Having a set layout for your emails helps to ensure they’re always consistent in how they look and ensures you don’t leave out any important information. 

My emails are templated so all the calls to action and key links are at the bottom. This way, if someone wants to go straight to the waitlist or to purchase something, these links are always available. 

Key takeaways: 

• Provide value to your email list through newsletters and storytelling 
• Use basic segmentation to separate your waitlist from the rest of your subscribers
• Template your emails to ensure you always include key links and details

5. Plan a launch strategy to generate a buzz about your upcoming membership

A proper marketing launch is important for effectively spreading the word about your upcoming membership in the 4-6 weeks before you launch.

To illustrate this, I’ll walk you through what my launch strategy looks like:

1. Weeks 1-2: I start with a lead generator, which for me is the quiz. This is available publicly, but also promoted over email. 
2. Weeks: 3-4: After users take the quiz, they get access to a private podcast. 

Week 5: A live webinar that serves almost as a sales call, where I’m telling them everything they need to know about my membership. If these attendants want to continue working with me after this, they’re prompted to join my membership.

Don’t be afraid to ‘build in public’

Another effective best practice is the trend of ‘building in public’ – where you share snippets of your progress as you’re building your membership. Post on Instagram stories and tag your waitlist there to give them a sneak peek of what’s to come, creating the perfect FOMO.

This way, your followers know what you’re working on, as opposed to building the perfect membership and waiting until the day it’s ready to announce it. 

People want to see progress, and to be part of the journey. I know sometimes it’s hard to do, it’s kind of vulnerable but it is very effective. It really doesn’t need to be perfect.

Always treat your first launch as a beta launch, and keep refining from there. I think it’s fun when members help to create the product as they opt in during the beta launch. 

Once you get your first members in, they will tell you what they need and what they’re looking for – helping you to refine as you go. 

Create a waitlist

The key is to start your waitlist early. It doesn’t need to be fancy, a simple landing page where people can opt-in is all you need. 

Even if you haven’t started working on your membership yet, at least if the waitlist is up there people know something is coming. Then the next step is to promote it everywhere – on social media and your email list. 

Then, when your launch day is approaching, provide early access to the people on your waitlist for a founding member price to make it feel special. 

Key takeaways: 

• Start promoting your launch 4-6 weeks before you go live
• Share your progress with your followers so they can be part of the journey
• Treat your first launch as a beta launch and refine your membership from there 

6. Analyze your data to inform where you can optimize to increase success

Reviewing your conversion rate is a big indicator of whether your marketing content is hitting the right pain points for your audience. 

The average conversion rate is around 2%. Depending on the size of your audience or how big the pool of leads you have is, this is the conversion rate you can expect. 

If you’re exceeding it, then great! If it’s much lower, or you’re not converting at all then it’s a sign that one of the pieces in your funnel doesn’t align with your audience. 

It could also indicate that one of your content pieces isn’t accurately conveying what people get in the membership, or that you’re attracting people at the wrong stage where they’re not ready to commit to paying yet.

Analyze your performance quarterly 

The best time frame to analyze the performance of your marketing efforts is quarterly. You want to give it time for your marketing efforts to have an effect. 

If you’re not seeing the results you’d like, this doesn’t mean you have to throw the entire funnel out of the window and start over. Instead, identify where you can make adjustments and small tweaks to improve.

To take a client example, if we see a certain lead magnet is driving more people into the funnel than others, we focus more heavily on that lead magnet. Then to support that, you can create social media content on the same topic so it always leads them into that freebie.

It’s a case of testing to see what works, and finding what you should focus on based on the data.

A/B test to find what works best for your audience

A great way to find what works is to A/B test multiple free downloads and resources to see which one converts more people into the membership. You can do this by segmenting your email list, and sending half of your list one download, and the other half a different one and then monitor the results. 

This is just one example of how you can do this in a controlled way to gather the data you need. There’s no limit to how many free downloads you can have to attract people into your membership funnel. It’s good to have a variety to find out what works best at aligning with your target audience and their pain points.

Key takeaways:

• If you’re not meeting the ideal conversion rate, refresh and improve what you have 
• Review your marketing performance every quarter 
• Test to find what works for your audience, and what you should be focusing on

Final thoughts

The main thing to remember when creating your marketing funnel is to always think about your audience. Spending that time at the beginning to really nail down the specifics of who they are and what they need is going to inform how to get their attention and what kind of content will be useful to them. 

It’s okay if this changes over time. Your membership isn’t a fixed product, it’s something that will naturally grow and evolve over time as you start to gain members. 

Give it the best chance of success by planning out a launch strategy, developing a marketing funnel with great content at every stage, and keep talking about it on social media. 

It’s simple with Uscreen.

Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.

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