How To Drive Traffic to Your Membership Site

So, you've decided to begin a membership site in your niche and you have a lot of the design and creation under way. 

You've researched your niche, chosen scripting software, set up a payment processor and loaded your autoresponder with email messages. 

You've created the content for your site, with a nice mix of articles, audios, videos and downloadable digital products for your members. 

You've chosen your prices, secured your domain name and set up your web hosting. You even have enough content in reserve for next month. 

Whew! You've been working hard and now you're ready for the big bucks to start rolling in, right? After all, what more do you need? You need traffic, that's what.

So how do you get traffic to your membership site? 

Driving people to your membership site uses the same tactics as driving traffic to any other website. It all starts with a sales letter.

In order to drive traffic to your site, you need a great sales letter. Many people throw up a sales letter without giving much thought to the quality of that letter. 

That's a big mistake because your sales letter is KEY to how much traffic your site will receive.

A good sales letter starts with a great headline. You need a headline to catch the eye of someone who is casually surfing the web looking for something to solve their problems. 

Your headline should speak directly to your target market. It should announce your benefits in a single concise phrase. 

 Ask a question, offer steps to solve a problem, let your readers know you are tuned in to what they want.

A good sales letter has a hook- something that reels your customer in and makes them want to read more. 

Often the best hook is in the form of a question. Ask the reader a question that your membership site answers. "Are you looking for a new approach to marketing?" might be a good question for a membership site regarding Internet marketing. 

"Are you looking for love in all the wrong places" could be a hook for a dating membership site. 

Another way to hook a reader is to call out your audience in your headline like this: ATTENTION: Calling all Internet Marketers or Do You Make These Marketing Mistakes?

The next step in writing an effective sales letter is to deepen your customer's problem. If your membership site is a credit counseling service, use your opening paragraphs of your sales page to show your prospect you understand their problem. 

Debt got you down? Are you having trouble paying your mortgage? Losing sleep because you can't pay the bills? 
Drive home the problem so your prospect is a bit uncomfortable thinking about it. You need to remind your prospect of their problem so you can show them why they need your membership site to help them solve it.

Next up? Tell them the benefits of your site. Show them how you can fix their problem. 

While you will want to talk about the features of your site, like the forum, the newsletter and the content, remember that features are not benefits. 

Benefits are the good feelings the customer will have after your site solves the problem. 

Benefits to the credit counseling site might include restoring their good credit, no more phone calls from angry collectors or having the peace of mind of knowing your financial future is secure.

Use links throughout the text of your sales letter. You never know at what point you make the sale with an individual prospect, so offer the sign up link often throughout your text. 

Some people will click the link immediately, while others will scroll down to the bottom of your page looking for it. Still other prospects will be ready to by when a particular phrases resonates with them, so having links spread throughout the text is your best bet.

Your sales letter is the first and the most important step in driving traffic to your membership site. Take your time and make sure you develop a quality sales page. 

Don't rely on hype or misinformation, but make the test interesting and compelling for the best success.