How to Test Your Membership Site Idea Before Launching

You’ve got a great idea for a membership that’s been brewing in your mind for months. You’re excited, you’re motivated, and you’re ready to dive in headfirst. 

But wait! Before you start turning your idea into a reality, there’s a crucial step you shouldn’t skip: testing and validating that idea.

Why? Well, let me tell you. By testing your idea…

1. You’ll make better decisions with more confidence, steering clear of those “I wish I’d known that earlier” moments.
2. You’ll know exactly where to focus your energy for maximum impact, especially during those crucial early days of prep and launch. No more shots in the dark or wasted efforts!
3. When launch-day finally arrives, you’ll be set up for success. Understanding your audience and validating your idea ahead of time means you’re more likely to hit the ground running.

And, to be clear, these benefits aren’t just theoretical. 

Thanks to the testing and preparation I did, my membership site generated $8.5k+ in recurring revenue in the first 30 days after I launched. 

Now, I’m here to distill my 8+ years of marketing and business experience, and break down exactly what I did to test and prepare my membership site for a successful launch.

So, are you ready to prime your membership for success? Let’s get started!

Prime Your Membership for Success: How To Test & Validate Your Membership Idea Before Launching

Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience is crucial to the success of this process and your membership business in the long-term.

You may already have a solid understanding of some of your audience’s key characteristics, like their demographic and geographic information. But, this is only part of the picture.

There are a few other pieces of information you need to gain a well-rounded, true understanding of the audience that your membership is targeting, allowing you to make better decisions with confidence – instead of having to rely on guesswork or assumptions.

The key things you need to know about your audience at this stage of your membership prep are…

• Pain points: their biggest challenges, as it relates to your niche.
• Perceived Value: whether they’re willing to pay for a solution to their challenges.
• Preferences: how they prefer to consume content, and how they want to pay for it.

So, let’s talk about how to gather this information.

How to Survey Your Audience (+ Questions Template)

Surveying your audience is a fantastic way to get the answers you’re looking for. Plus, it can be a low-effort task and doesn’t have to cost a thing, besides a bit of your time. 

Here’s how to get it done quickly and effectively:

1. Pick a free survey tool: there are some great survey tools that are entirely free to use and easy to share with your audience; like Google Forms and Typeform (I personally like to use Typeform).

2. Add your questions: when you add the questions to your form, focus on making it as easy as possible for people to respond; this means keeping your survey short and focused, making your questions clear and simple, and allowing respondents to choose from preset multiple choice answers. Unsure what to ask? I’ve added a template of questions further down to get you started!

3. Design your form (optional): if the look and feel of your form is important to you, you can customize the colors, logo, and any other visuals to align with your branding.

4. Share your survey: make your survey easily accessible across each platform where your target audience is active, including your email list.

5. Promote your survey: actively promote your survey to your audience for about a week; make it clear what you’re asking for, but you don’t need to disclose that you’re building an online membership site. Share it in your link-in-bio areas, your stories, your video descriptions, and your email communications. You can keep 

6. Organize your results: once you’re happy with the number of responses you’ve received, you can start to pick out the insights you’ve gathered. Find trends across the responses for each question, and note these down.

Want to make sure you’re asking all the right questions to get to the core of your audience’s problems and preferences? Here are some of the most important things you need to cover…

Template: What to Ask Your Audience Messaging to Help You Make the Ask “I’m working on something big that I think you will love! To make sure it’s everything you want and more, could you let me know what you think? Your answers to this X minute survey will make a huge difference! Plus, you can sign up for an exclusive waitlist so you’re the first to hear the news…” Questions: Pain Points What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to [your niche]?  How much time do you spend per week trying to overcome this challenge? What solutions have you tried so far to address this challenge that have worked?  Questions: Perceived Value Would you be willing to pay for valuable content that helps solve [your biggest challenge]? If you received unlimited access to exclusive content and a tight knit community of peers, what length of time would you commit for? (eg. would you pay for a year upfront, quarterly, or month-to-month) Questions: Preferences On top of premium content and a private community, what other perks would be valuable to you? (eg. a private coaching session, bonus content and resources, etc.) What structure helps you to learn most effectively? (eg. structured online courses, open library of content, Q&A sessions, etc.) Where do you like to watch your content? (eg. on your computer, on your phone, on your TV, etc.)

As a bonus, here’s how I laid out my own survey when I was in the testing and planning phase.

Once you’ve wrapped up your survey, you should be set up for success to start planning your membership offering. 

When do you know for sure that you’re ready to move forward, though?

Here’s the thing – there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It’s all about reaching that sweet spot where you feel confident in your idea and have enough data to back it up. 

In my case, I felt ready to move forward after getting responses from roughly 5% of my audience. That said, I also had the reassurance of previous successful paid offers under my belt, so a paid membership site didn’t feel like a leap.

If you’re starting from scratch without that guarantee, you might want to gather a larger volume of responses before taking the plunge. Trust your gut, but let the data guide you.

Test & Validate Your Membership Site Idea

Like all new membership sites, your content catalog will be limited to just a handful of videos and resources when you first launch, and your community building efforts will just be getting started. 

After all, creating content and nurturing an engaged community will take time. And as your library and community grow, so will the value that organically attracts prospective members and keeps new sign-ups steady.

But, to motivate your audience to sign up as soon as you launch, you’ll need to be strategic with your first few pieces of content and have these focus on their biggest pain points. 

Your survey has given you an idea of which pain points are most important to the people who responded. The only limitation here is that it’s tricky to get more than a few dozen responses to something like a survey, which essentially only benefits you in the short-term. 

A foolproof way to figure out which topics and pain points are most important to your broader target audience is to offer things that immediately benefit them; like free guides, templates, or courses.

Plus, these free resources allow you to capture email addresses and build out your email list – something that will come in handy when you start promoting your membership launch.

Let’s talk about how to do this effectively – and efficiently! 

How to Use Free Offers to Test Your Membership Site Idea

Some of the best free resources you can use to gauge interest and confirm what really matters to your audience are a step-by-step guide, an easy-to-use template, and video courses.

Here’s how to do this in a way that maximizes results while keeping your effort and resources at a minimum…

1. List out the pain points and topics to test: between the plan you have for your membership content, and the responses you received from your survey, pick a total of 2-3 relevant pain points and/or topics to test.

2. Assess your existing content: the goal is to avoid creating a resource completely from scratch, so take a look at the relevant content you already have that falls under the topics you selected. Do you already have a guide you can polish up? Or maybe a series of related videos that you can turn into a mini-course?

3. Pick your resource format: to create resources relevant to your audience, pick a format that makes sense based on your existing content, the time you have to spare, and the format that makes the most sense for your audience.

4. Create or update your resources: if you need to update any existing resources, or create new ones, keep them as simple as possible. Treat these like a minimum viable product (MVP) and grab support from all the tools you can to speed up the content creation for you (eg. customize a Canva template, use ChatGPT to help update content, etc.)

5. Share your new resources: organize your new resources somewhere where your audience can easily find all of them, like on a landing page or pop-ups on your website, your link-in-bio areas, and your video descriptions. Having all these resources visible next to each other will allow your audience to choose the resource/s that are most relevant to them. 

6. Actively promote these resources, then note the results: similar to how you would have promoted your survey, make sure you’re actively talking about these resources across your platforms to draw more attention to them and maximize their reach. After a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to see which resource is most popular.

Once you’re done testing these resources and you have the answers you were looking for, they can continue to act as a lead magnet for your email list and membership for months and years to come.

For example, I offer a free Brand Partnerships Guide. Today, I host it on my membership site. And, since one of the core topics of my membership is helping creators secure more partnerships, it’s the perfect lead magnet for my business.

If you want to talk about a two-birds-one-stone kind of win, this step will not only give you the information you need to create a great online business, but you’ll also have a couple of marketing strategies already set up.

Don’t have time for all that stuff right now? You can also use your free content across your YouTube, social media, and newsletter to run smaller tests.

Use native polling tools across these platforms to ask the most important questions, and create posts and videos around key pain points to gauge interest and feedback.

By this stage, you should have everything you need to confidently start building and preparing to launch a successful membership site.

Final Thoughts on Testing Your Membership Site Ideas

Once you have a deep understanding of your audience’s pain points, their willingness to pay, and their content preferences – and you’ve tested the waters with free resources – you have all the elements you need to move forward with your idea.

Remember, this isn’t just busy work – it’s the foundation of your membership’s success. By taking the time to understand your audience and validate your idea, you’re not just building a membership site; you’re crafting a member experience that your audience truly wants and needs.

So, are you feeling ready to turn that membership idea into reality? With these insights in your back pocket, you’re well on your way to creating something truly remarkable. Good luck, and here’s to your success!