Marketing with a Membership Funnel

TOFU, MOFU and BOFU I know, I know it sounds like the latest dodgy vegetarian superfood you’d buy from the local grocery store.

But ToFu, MoFu and BoFu are one of the best, most accurate acronyms you’re ever likely to hear for marketing and sales funnels when it comes to membership websites. Membership funnels also help to break something that can be very complex into manageable bite-size chunks just like your brand new veggie superfood.

No matter where you are in your membership journey when you run any marketing campaign, an automated marketing and sales funnel can be a game-changer for you and your members signing up. Your funnel not only should move prospects through your membership funnel marketing machine. Membership funnels will also save you hours of manual labour as well as take back any missed sales opportunities. Still, it will help you to maintain and improve your relationship with new and potential members.

Many membership owners we work with fear the funnel – They think it sounds like too much work, so they don’t even try, or they put in half the effort they should. Yes, membership funnels can be very complex, but an effective funnel can be very simple.

That sound good? Let’s break it down from the BoFu to the ToFu.

TOFU – Top Of funnel. Raising Awareness and Conversions

The top of the funnel is the starting point of the journey for you and your new prospective members.

Your public facing website will be the place you will drive traffic to convert them into a new lead.

At this stage, your main objective should be to turn your website visitors into new prospects by either filling out a form to download a lead magnet or even giving you a call.

The top of the funnel is the widest part of any membership funnels, so content doesn’t need to be dense. It should contain enough information to keep potential new members engaged and interested enough to trade their details for your information.

TOFU can contain many things to bring new members in, your sign up forms could take new prospective members to the first module of a course, give them a free informational PDF relating to your membership or even sign them up for a free short email course.

Key Elements Required

• Landing Pages
• Sign up forms around your website
• Direct Mail campaign
• Paid Traffic Campaign
• Retargeting adverts

MOFU – Middle Of a Funnel – Building a Relationship

Once your new prospective member enters your CRM like ActiveCampaign or customer relationship manager, you’ll have successfully turned this one visitor from traffic you don’t control to traffic you do control. They’ve gone from red to amber, like a traffic light. What’re you going to do to turn that new prospective member to green?

This is where you should give your new prospective member as much value as possible to help educate them, cement that relationship and build that trust. This new-found trust will enable you to be more successful when you do hit the time you want to sell your membership or services to your new-found friend.

Your new selling points can be triggered quicker based on your user’s actions or path – they could click a link in an email which then leapfrogs them from the first email, which then triggers a new sales email. The user taking an action could also send a notification to the sales team, automatically order a piece of direct mail, or both!

MOFU is arguably the most important part of a membership funnel. If done correctly, it will optimize getting potential members across the line and getting the sales.

Key Elements Required

• Sales Page
• Email Autoresponders 
• Trigger Tags or equivalent
• Building a relationship through email
• Sales Team or Person
• Re-targeting Adverts
• Direct Mail – Brochures, Product samples, Letters

If you’re looking for some reasons to connect your membership to a CRM click here to find out why you should

BOFU – Bottom Of a Funnel – Sales and Customer Love

This part is where things start to get real and a little scary. BoFu will decide the true success of any of your memberships funnels.

This is the point where you’ll convert your prospects from a formal relationship into a transactional relationship where they sign up for your membership. It’s now time to stand out and dazzle your new member by answering their questions and leveraging your expertise. 

Send them a bouquet of flowers, some chocolates or even just sending them a card. Make new prospective members feel special, and you now have an opportunity to boost your sales with upsells of other services you offer and the problems you can solve.

A lot of marketing talks nowadays say that direct mail marketing is dead, that’s simply not true. People love tangible things that they can actually hold. It cements your business as a real thing. Most memberships don’t do that, and here at MemberLab, we think that is a big mistake.

Key Elements Required

• Additional Upsell Sales Pages
• Welcome email series
• Drip feed training content
• Customer Surveys
• Welcome packs – thanks cards
• Timed triggers for planning follow up calls.

So next time you’re sat with some strange vegetarian meat substitute (If ever, we prefer a pizza) on your lap give your marketing membership funnels a thought. Do you know how you could automatically move your prospective members from red to green while making more sales?

If you need help putting together your membership funnels, please give me a shout – We’d be more than happy to help.