How To Grow Your Nutrition Membership Site On Autopilot

Special thanks to Ashley Srokosz for this awesome GUEST POST! 

You’re a genius (obviously) and have decided to offer a membership for your health business so you can have that sweet recurring revenue rolling in month after month (I mean, come on, is there any better feeling?!).

You’re already picturing taking random vacations wherever you want - because you can work from anywhere (with a strong enough wifi connection ;) - and getting mani/pedis at all hours of the day - because you can work whenever you want.

It’s the holy grail of wellness businesses … except then you actually started one and realized that new members don’t grow on avocado trees and launching every other month is hard, y’all.

Psssstttt...Andrea, here. Let me interject for just a sec:

If you haven't created your consistent income machine membership yet, you're in the right spot because that's what we do around here! CLICK HERE for a free training on exactly where to start.

You know that you could (and should) be growing your membership every month on autopilot, but you either don’t know where to start, are overwhelmed by the thought of it, or you already have a system set up … that isn’t working.

What’s a girl who just wants to work on her couch all day in yoga leggings and no bra to do?

Let’s start with these 3 foolproof steps to grow your membership on autopilot:

1. Develop a memorable brand
2. Your digital home
3. Your Sales Sequence
   
   

1. Develop a memorable brand:

As a branding expert, sometimes even *I* find it hard to explain what a “brand” really is.

In short, your brand is everything that someone can see, hear, read, or experience about you and your business that gives them a feeling about what you do and who you help.

Specifically, your brand is made up of your:

• Colors
• Logo
• Photos
• Website images
• Copywriting on your website
• Social media images
• Social media captions
• Video content

Basically, someone lands on your social media or website, and within 50 milliseconds they’ve already formed an opinion of whether or not you can help them

No, really. 50 milliseconds is the real number. (Source).

50 milliseconds.

Now that doesn’t mean you have 50 milliseconds to convert them to paying customers, that happens later (so keep reading)!

You have 50 milliseconds to get them to decide if they even want to keep looking at and consuming your content.

Your goal is to get them to read to the next sentence, then the next sentence, then read the next page on your website or watch your next video, and on and on until they become such a raving fan that they have no choice but to open up their wallet.

How do you do that, exactly, especially in the beginning?

With great design.

Did you know that a study from 2004 showed that 94% of the participants’ first impressions of whether or not they should reject or mistrust a website was based on the design? (Source)

Yay, science! This means that someone decides to keep looking at your content based on how good it looks to them.

But how do you know what’s going to look good to them?

Short answer: everyone is different.

This is where branding becomes a true art (albeit one you can totally do on your own and virtually for free), and includes doing ideal client detective work and then developing your visual brand based on the feeling, values, and beliefs that your future paying customers are most likely to resonate with.

Feeling more lost than ever? Keep reading to learn more about my simple process.
 

2. Your digital home

Many of us, when we start building our businesses, focus on social media. It’s free, and let’s face it, it’s kind of fun. Each time you get a like or a comment, you get a dopamine rush in your brain, what’s not to like?

Well, the first reason not to only use social media to grow your business is that you don’t own anyone’s information when they only follow you, and you don’t control if they can see your content.

(Unless you’re willing to invest in ads, which can feel like you’re flushing money down the Zuckerberg drain …).

With organic reach down to 2% on Facebook and about 5-10% on Instagram, you could spend months or years building an audience, only to find out that virtually none of them are seeing the content that they raised their hand to see! 

The second reason is that it’s a huge time suck.

Social media thrives off of original, constant new content, and good content takes so much time to make! Couple that in with the scrolling vortex that magically opens up whenever you open Instagram or Facebook, and voila, you’ve lost hours of your day.

The third reason is that people rarely buy off of social media.

I know, this totally surprises me, too! I buy stuff all the time off of social media, but the stats show a different story. A report from 2018 showed that “58% of respondents say social media influences a purchasing decision" (which is up from 45% in 2016), yet "82% of respondents have yet to use a feature like a social buy button to buy directly through social media", which has not changed since 2016 (Source)

Yes, social media is definitely a piece of the puzzle for getting our future paying customers to know, like, and trust us (and ultimately becoming paying customers on autopilot), but let’s face it, there’s got to be a better way … and there is!

It’s called a website with a blog. Yes, a blog.

Remember the first study I shared above, the one about how your website needs to look good? The same study then went on to show that once the participants decided to stay on a website (based on the design), 83% of them trusted the website and explored it in more depth based on the content.

This is where a blog comes in, where you can show them that you’re an expert in the problem they’re looking to solve by sharing solutions that they can put into action right now to get results.

Not only that, but blogs are highly SEO friendly (when you write them the right way), meaning that you’re more likely to be found on search engines like Google.

Andrea's note: I have seen over 7200+ visitors to my website from Google search results in one month because of my very strategic blog content. 7200+ free leads? Yes, please!

Plus, research in 2013 showed that “8 out of 10 health-related inquiries started with a search engine” (Source) … so you better make sure that your content can be found on a search engine!

Other pages on your website, especially your About Page, helps to increase that know, like, and trust factor that is so important when trying to get new customers on autopilot.

The final thing you must have on your website is your sales page.

Remember that in this autopilot scenario, something other than you has to do the heavy lifting and selling, and your sales page is the last necessity to make that happen.

You can’t make sales on autopilot if you have nowhere that actually asks for the sale!

And I’m not talking about some measly, short sales page that took you an hour to slap up.

I’m talking about a long form sales page that takes your potential customers through a journey, helping them to overcome their own objections and paints a picture of the success they’re going to have once they invest in your magical membership.

Keep reading to find out exactly what your sales page needs to get new customers on autopilot.
 

3. Sales sequence

So you’ve got your branding, which makes people trust you.

You’ve got a website full of valuable information and emotional connection, which makes people trust you.

Now you’re ready to cash in on that trust by asking for them to buy something.

EEEEEK! This probably feels like the hardest part for you, but I promise to make it as painless as I possibly can.

Believe it or not, you could sell directly from blog posts. Now, this will probably only be successful for lower priced products, let’s say under $50, and probably won’t be great for your recurring membership model.

For that, we’re going to need a blog post that leads to an automated email sales sequence to lead them from curious to committed. 

It goes like this:

• A new website visitor lands on one of your insanely valuable blog posts. Right in that blog post, you give them the opportunity to subscribe with their email address in exchange for an even more valuable tool or goodie.
  
  
• This triggers a series of highly valuable emails, usually 3 to 5, that contain all your best education on that subject. This will help your customer trust you within days after becoming a new email subscriber.
  
  
• After a few days of showing them that you know they have a problem, you understand exactly how they feel, you know how to fix it, and you’re the right person to help them,  they’ll be MUCH more receptive when you send them a last email to check out your awesome paid solution on your sales page.

The best part about using this method is that you can reuse ALL of your previous blog posts (and social media posts that no one even saw), so you’re leveraging time you’ve already invested into helping sell any future programs and products.

You’re not just working and using your content once, you’re working to create highly valuable resources that you’ll use over and over and over again, which is a super smart way of using your time so that you can duplicate yourself and your education.

As you can see, you’ve got to have a super solid system in place so that you can infinitely scale your business and take yourself out of the selling process, but that doesn’t mean it has to be hard.

Want to see more of this system at work?

Click the link below to watch my masterclass called “3 Steps to Finding New Paying Customers … on Autopilot” that goes into even more depth on the 3 steps above, including:

• The only difference between you selling your membership for 3 or 5 times the price you’re charging now
• What exactly makes up your visual brand identity
• A quick test to see if your about page is creating a true connection
• The 6 essential sections to have on your sales page

... And more!

CLICK HERE to register for: "3 Steps to Finding New Paying Customers … on Autopilot"

Why would you keep stressing yourself out with launches when you could grow your membership on autopilot?!

Whether you’re an introvert like me, or just don’t want to have to put on a bra or do your hair everyday, you don’t have to be a slave to social media anymore.

You’re building a membership business so that you can have more freedom, so get your kick-ass brand nailed down, set up your systems, and sit back and watch the new member emails roll in!

Ashley Srokosz (pronounced Sir-oh-kiss) is a former Registered Holistic Nutritionist turned wellness website & brand expert. She knows how to build a business in multiple ways after serving dozens of one-on-one health clients, generating thousands of dollars through her online courses, and growing a network marketing business to 6,500+ customers and multiple 6-figures.

Ashley’s taught hundreds of tech-shabby wellness entrepreneurs how to brand their business and build their own websites through her course Brand, Build, Blog.

She firmly believes you don’t have to be a professional graphic designer or website developer to create your own pretty and profitable website that builds your business on autopilot, you just have to know where to start.