#81 Service Membership Model
This week I want to talk about a trend I’m seeing that brings together services + the membership model.
It’s tough to scale services… you only have so much time in a day.
And if you build an agency model you have to put in a lot of work to build systems, templates, etc. to make your team efficient enough to make a good profit.
Oh and that takes a lot of trial and error.
And if you LOVE actually doing the work you might get too far from your craft because now you’re in the management, sales, and marketing seat.
So how can you scale services without creating an agency … or maybe we can define this as a new type of agency?
If you offer any kind of services in your business, this issue is for you.
Let’s get into it –
First let’s define a “service membership”–
A service membership is similar to a retainer or recurring client service but at a smaller, repeatable, and even productized scale. It’s delivering a service each month in addition to other non-personalized aspects.
Service Memberships can work great for service businesses that have tangible deliverables. There isn’t room for interpretation of what is included or not (like fractional work 😅).
So what’s included??
Included in service memberships are features that apply to ALL members.
In some cases there is a deeply connected community experience, and in others the community space operates more like a broadcast channel.
In addition to what everyone else gets there is a level of personalization that makes this feel like a high end service. It is bespoke to the individual business.
Let’s look at a couple of examples –
Copywriter
Emily Claire is a copywriting expert with a copyediting membership that will hold you accountable to sending weekly emails.
Service / Deliverable: Monthly personalized email strategy and weekly copyedits.
Member Access: Workshop events, templates & resources, and more!
Check out the 10k Email Club
Sponsorship Advisor
Justin Moore “Creator Wizard” is a sponsorship coach with a coaching membership. This allows creators to avoid losing a lot of money in fees to agents or agencies.
Service / Deliverable: Weekly sponsorship reviews and feedback.
Member Access: Community channel to review sponsorship feedback for other creators.
Social Media Manager
Jess Jones is a social media strategist with a coaching membership.
Service / Deliverable: Each month you get a custom content calendar based on your long form content (like these newsletters). It includes hooks, prompts, and inspiration to reference (like a reel example).
Member Access: Broadcast channel with trending audios, social trends, and everything you need to know to keep up with social.
Message me for a referral to this one 😉
“Done With You”
This phrase is thrown around the coaching / online business space quite a bit and … it’s smart!
All of the examples above have a “done-with-you” element that allows the customer to save time and money but isn’t outrageous.
It’s a great way to scale services and be able to offer a more affordable price. I use this model myself – our transformative product sprint (we help you figure out what to build) service has two options:
VIP (done for you) – we do everything for you “white glove service”
Standard (done with you) – we give you the tools, feedback along the way, and a simplified deliverable.
The VIP option costs 3x the standard.
This is a one-time service but thinking about a “done with you” service that you could repeat every month is essentially a service-membership.
Resource Subscription
If we take one step down and remove the personalization, we can think about this as a weekly/monthly template service that is the same for all of your customers. Here’s an example:
Justin Welsh has a template subscription where you receive LinkedIn templates every week so that you don’t have to think too much about your LinkedIn posts. This is just for templates – NO personalization.
Pricing It Right
Service membership does NOT equal cheap.
You can’t under price a hands-on service or you’ll find that you’re up to your eyeballs in work and not making enough money.
But it should be more affordable than a white-glove, everything done-for-you experience. Look at 1/3 - 1/5 of the white-glove price as a starting point and do this test:
How many hours per month will it take you per client?
How many clients can you take based on that?
Client x Price = is it worth it for you?
Membership Renewal Cadence
In most cases I’d probably recommend a monthly membership for a service membership with a minimum — for example, monthly membership with 3 or 6 months minimum required.
We want to give them enough time to see results or build the habit of using this new deliverable each month so that they stick around.
We’ll also have higher effort month 1 to get them set up from an admin perspective. If you’re delivering any kind of service like copy or design you need to learn their business.
Don't launch with an annual option – you'll box yourself into doing a service for a year before you know if it works. Start with monthly.
Scale Your Revenue With Tiers
You only have so much space for clients in your highest tier that includes the done-with-you services.
By offering other features, like Emily’s weekly workshops, you can create a lower tier that gives access to those features only.
This is a great way to capture more revenue without spending more hands-on time. Plus it gives you an opportunity to nurture your community and help them be successful so that they’ll be ready for the higher tier sooner.
Use Your Service Membership As Research
You will work closely with your members and learn so much about their pain points, needs, and what they get stuck on.
You can build an incredible digital product with that data. This could be something like a template pack, a course, live program, playbook, etc.
Your digital product will be MUCH better if you go in this order.
Give It A Shot
It's easy to beta test this kind of offer – you can sell using something simple like an email, voice note or google doc. Get 3-5 people in there and work out the kinks before a full launch.
Are you going to give a service membership a test? I'd love to hear what you come up with!
If you loved this, you can subscribe to the weekly newsletter here for free! I send a bunch of resources & share a bts happenings of my business in the email version.