The Boss Blog

The recent events with the pandemic have caused a stir in almost every industry.  Lots of businesses have been affected by the pandemic protocol, and few businesses and industries have been affected as much as the restaurant business has.  With the dine-in experience being severely diminished, restaurants have been closing in droves and forced to come up with innovative solutions to not only compete, but to stay afloat.  In this webinar, we present to you the solution to beating the current climate and gearing up for what is next in the restaurant business.  Enjoy!

While it’s understandable that you want to grow your customer base, how do you retain your current customer base who are likely to buy from you again? One way can be to say thank you by offering loyalty membership benefits. While it’s good for your customers, what are the benefits for your business? There are many possible financial and non-financial upsides.

Learn all about memberships and how they can help your business from our first hand experiences and other real world examples.

There comes a point, when you have set up a membership program for your business or your association, where you have to decide to either give free access to your membership or charge a fee for accessing your membership content. This decision can prove to be quite difficult at times. Hopefully after reading this, you’ll get a clear idea on how to differentiate between the two and which model would best suit your needs.

Paid Memberships

The most glaring and main benefit of paid memberships, other than providing much needed content to your members, is the added revenue it brings to your business or organization. You can charge a one-time fee for members to receive access to the exclusive members-only content or it can be a recurring fee, monthly, yearly, or whichever frequency would suit your organization better. A paid membership can act as a barrier to entry for those who aren’t seriously committed or genuinely interested in what you have to offer. Being able to keep low-interest people out is beneficial and useful in maintaining a community that is involved, dedicated and productive. On the flip side, though your member-base is more potent, you also will also have a higher turnover rate than free memberships. Not everyone will stick around for the long haul, so you do have to develop a strategy to keep attracting new members on a consistent basis.

Free Memberships

The free membership model has its own benefits and disadvantages as well. The most obvious benefit of a free membership is that access is given to everyone who wishes to get to know more about your organization. This will increase the likelihood that the people who are on the fence about purchasing your product or services will do so. Oftentimes, prospects who are adamant about not shelling out any coins would purchase from your organization because of the simple repeated exposure to your business or organization. Offering free membership access should also be contingent on who your audience is. If your products and services are geared towards a group with limited buying power, pre-teens or stay-at-home parents for instance, then it would be smarter to have free membership access since the purchase of your product or service, though used by your audience would be done by someone else or would be a big purchasing decision for them. It would be erroneous to charge membership access to a kid who might get Dad to buy that video game soon.

The Best Strategy

You’re probably wondering now what the best strategy is for your business. Do you offer paid memberships or free memberships. The great thing about offering paid and free memberships is that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive strategies for your organization. You can mix the two. That is actually the most optimal strategy to implement. Unless your organization requires you to have one or the other for some reason, it is best to have a mixture of the two. Your business can offer free membership with free content that will attract new members and pull in your audience. Then you can add a paid membership section with exclusive content only available to those who pay the fee. This strategy allows you to have the best of both worlds, a pool of interested people and a core base of dedicated members.

Knowing the difference between paid memberships and free memberships, and knowing the advantages of each is but the first step in your journey. Once you’re ready to implement one of these two or both for your business, feel free to contact us and Book a Demo to learn more about MemberBoss. As always, don’t forget to subscribe to the Boss Blog for more helpful tips pertaining to you and your members.

There are infinite kinds and varieties of membership models that any group or business can use to maximize revenue and value offered to the world. You can have an education-based membership, a community-focused membership, a service membership, a subscription, a customer loyalty program, or other types of membership models. Most, if not all of these membership models do require a website to be functional. When properly executed, membership websites can be a great source of additional revenue for your business. Let’s take a look at a type of membership model that may not seem obvious, but that any business can make use of: education-based membership.

Membership Sites

Before we dive into what an education-based membership model entails, we need to clearly identify what a membership site actually is. To put it plainly, a membership site is a website with content that is usually protected by requiring a user to login in order to access the content. Most of the time, the content on a membership site would only be available to those who have paid a membership fee, which can either be a one-time fee or a recurring fee. One of the benefits of having users log in to access their content is that you can tailor the content to be user-specific, and truly personalize each member’s experience. Such personalization enhances the user’s experience and engagement with your membership website. With the advancements in technology, nowadays, there are very few limitations on the products or services any member can receive. We pretty much live in an age where if you can conceive it, you can achieve it. A membership website can go hand in hand with almost any industry. Restaurants, podcasters, dry cleaning agencies, plumbers, to name a few, can all implement a membership model to supplement their services.

Education-based Membership

A membership site is not one-size-fits-all. As mentioned earlier there are varying kinds of membership models that can suit a business, an enterprise or an association uniquely. A quite popular membership model is the education-based membership. An education-based membership is a model that almost any business or entity can adopt. As long as you have something to teach, you have the potential to offer online courses and grow your member base. Let me reiterate, every business or organization has something to teach via online courses. The simple fact that you have something to sell, a product or a service, makes you an authority in that domain. Share the knowledge that you have through an online class or several online classes.

The beauty about creating online courses is that you can set up the format any which way you’d prefer. They can be audio courses or video courses. It can be a one-time class or several classes that culminate in the dissemination of multiple certifications. The courses can even be pre-recorded or live. Although online courses configurations can widely differ, there’s a commonality among them all: a protected online area that only the course students have access to. This protected online area will house all the course materials, videos, workbooks, etc. Once your course students have purchased access to the course or courses, they can log in and receive the education that you have provided for them.

One of the cool things about teaching someone something is knowing that you have given them something valuable that will stay with that person for the rest of their life. Knowledge truly is power, and in this case, profitable power. As you go about your business, take into consideration implementing an education-based membership for your business or association. You might just change someone’s life. If you’d like to learn more about the various tools we offer to help you implement online courses in your repertoire, feel free to Book a Demo and don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more helpful tips for you and your members.

As we move towards the future, online businesses have become more and more prolific. So much so that there are essentially two types of businesses in our current times: traditional businesses and online businesses. Traditional businesses are your brick-and-mortar businesses. They are the type of business that have a physical location. There are advantages and benefits to having an online business that your traditional business doesn’t have. The good news is that most traditional businesses can move online or at the very least increase their online presence and enjoy the same benefits that an online business would have. Nowadays, especially with the coronavirus lockdown, traditional businesses need to think outside the box and adapt to our changing environment. Let’s take a look at how a traditional, brick-and-mortar business can benefit from moving its business online:

Global Reach

More often than not, traditional businesses have a limited reach. Location, location, location. You may have heard this mantra before. It usually refers to the location of a home being one of the most important factors that dictate the value of a home. This concept holds true for traditional businesses. Not so much because of the real estate value of the business, but more so because it is a direct reflection on how much reach the business will have and how many quality customers would walk through the door. Most traditional businesses are limited to a local area. Moving the business online is a fantastic way to eliminate this restriction. Online businesses have a global reach. Anyone in the world, as long as they have internet access, can do business with an online company. Once your business is online, you can attract customers from all over the world. This leads to an increase in revenue.

More Effective Promotion

When moving to a digital space, the traditional business doesn’t necessarily have to close its doors. You can still keep your brick-and-mortar location, and become more visible than ever. Your business being online can be a great complement to the traditional business. Now that you have greater reach, you can promote to a greater market area that is not confined to your geographical location. Being online, also allows your business to perform more targeted marketing. With the help of online sales funnels and paid online advertising, including social media advertisement, you can target your ideal customer. Most businesses, if not all businesses have a specific demographic that describe their most interested customers. By being online, you can choose to zero in on that demographic population and advertise to them. Promoting your business directly to the kind of customers that is more likely to buy from you is invaluable.

Lower Administrative Costs

Adopting an online business model can prove to be quite cost-effective when it comes to administrative expenses. You may experience less of a need to keep inventory on site. This helps tremendously in reducing the costs for storage. You can also make arrangements to have your products shipped directly from your vendors to your customers. Not only does this result in less paperwork on your side, but it also allows for faster delivery of your products. Additionally, certain processes can be automated and consequently there would be less of a need for an employee to manage those processes. You know what that results to? More money in your pockets.

As we progress into a world that is ever-increasingly becoming digital, brick-and-mortar businesses need to seriously consider going online. If you’re ready to make the next step in this transition, get in touch. MemberBoss and the Contensive Team have all the tools you would need to get you started in the right direction, from e-commerce solutions to online ordering systems for restaurants. Feel free to contact us to learn more, and subscribe to The Boss Blog for more upcoming helpful tips.

Organizing events such as annual conferences, expos or trade shows is an essential part of any member-based organization. More often than not, those events are the biggest source of revenue for member-based organizations. Having the appropriate tools to help set up these events is absolutely necessary.  Additionally, these meeting management tools can also be used by businesses to help move their operations online.  Nowadays, with the global pandemic, there is an ever increasing need to execute functions online in order to keep up with the changing times.  In the following webinar, we discuss how businesses can also benefit from using meeting management tools.  So, relax, kick back and enjoy ! 


Meeting Management For Businesses Webinar

The situation with COVID-19 has changed the landscape of how business as usual is conducted. The “in-person” business event tactics has essentially been reduced and in some industries even eradicated. Many companies now are moving their “in-person” operations online, in the digital world. Video conferences and live webinars are slowly taking the place of hosted live events. As you move these events online, your marketing strategies and goals still remain similar. You still have to target the right people, and encourage the targeted audience to become your members or customers.

Embrace Bringing Your Events Online

Large public gatherings are no longer a viable option for your business or membership organization. It’s time to embrace shifting from a mindset of gathering your people in a room for a trade show or an expo to that of bringing your people together in a digital space. Instead of having a live conference with a speaker, have a live webinar with a speaker. Aside from being cost-effective and reducing expenses, a webinar would give you access to a wider audience. Fighting bringing your events online is erroneous. It’s time to adapt. Embrace the change and maximize the opportunity by learning everything you can about organizing a live webinar. You can host your webinar on a range of various topics and styles. It can be a discussion or presentation with a Q&A style or a workshop where you teach the attendees how to replace spark plugs in your car yourself.

Use Your Landing Page Wisely

An indispensable component of organizing an online event is your landing page. This is the page where your potential webinar attendee would register for the webinar itself. It is indispensable to have a landing page that converts well, meaning that encourages the page viewer to sign up for the webinar. This page helps sell the online event, therefore it is paramount that you do everything to optimize the likelihood that someone landing on that page will register. All the information on this page needs to be clear and concise. Aside from curating your registration information, speaker’s bio, agenda, login information, etc. to appeal to your prospective attendee, the design and feel of your landing page needs to be taken into account. Essentially, the look and feel of your event have to be consistent across all the channels. Bonus points if your design ties in nicely with your brand.

Promoting Your Event Online

Without promotion, you are guaranteeing an extremely low attendance. People can’t show up somewhere if they don’t even know there is a somewhere to show up to. You need to have a promotional plan. Social Media is perfect for such an endeavour. Mind you, it is not enough to only have one post on Facebook about your event. Unless you already have a disgustingly high amount of friends and followers on social media, one promotional post isn’t going to cut it. Ideally, you should develop a calendar of content centered towards your event and a detailed plan for promoting on social media. In the months or weeks leading up to your event, give your audience a taste of what your event is going to entail by writing up a blog article (or several) on what your event is going to be about. Depending on the nature and complexity of your event, you may also consider using paid online advertisement. You can design a marketing campaign that involves precise and deliberate targeting of your ideal attendee.

Every so often, things happen in the way people conduct business that require you to adapt and overcome the changes. Yes, this pandemic is a catastrophe; however, the future is still at hand and it’s up to us to make it bright. If you’d like to learn more about the various tools we offer to help you transition your live events to the digital space, feel free to Book a Demo and don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more helpful tips for you and your members.

While it’s understandable that you want to grow your customer base, how do you retain your current customer base who are likely to buy from you again? One way can be to say thank you by offering loyalty membership benefits.  In this video we discuss the key benefits of adding a membership program and how it can help attract and hold onto your target audience.

Having a printed schedule for your event is very valuable. The last thing you’d want as an organization is for your event attendees to feel lost and not be aware of the various happenings during your conference. However, there’s an alternative to using a printed schedule that can help your organization save on printing costs, and that is more convenient for your attendees to use: a mobile meeting app. Here are just a few reasons why it’s more advantageous to use one for your next event:

Last Minute Adjustments

Part of organizing an event, especially a complex one, is dealing with last minute adjustments. If you’ve ever organized an event, particularly if you’ve been the main coordinator, you know what I am talking about. There might be a necessary change of venue for one of the event sessions. There may be a time delay due to inclement weather. There might be a significant misprint of some critical information in the printed schedule. It’s uncanny how often and how common last minute changes occur during an event. Communicating these changes can prove difficult. You may not even be able to relate these corrections to every attendee. A printed schedule is useless in transmitting any last minute change, but a mobile meeting app on the other hand is very helpful during those circumstances. The push-notification functionality of a mobile meeting app would allow you to communicate the changes to every attendee right in the palm of their hands. Additionally, correcting any misinformation within the app is instantaneous. If the attendees miss the notification, at least they’ll have the correct information in real-time once the changes have been made.

Enhanced Experience

There are many ways of engaging your attendees with a printed schedule. You can have coupons for discounted products at certain booths. You might have a prize drawing using detachable tickets in the printed program. All of that is great, and you should be using as many engagement strategies as you can. Well, guess what? A mobile meeting app can accommodate all these things and more. You can create more value in terms of your attendees’ experience. For instance, you can include a social media feed within your mobile meeting app. Essentially, the mobile meeting app can be configured in such a way that it can pull posts from social media that are associated with a predetermined hashtag. This means that every time someone mentions something about the event, every attendee will be able to read it. Not only will this give the attendees a sense of togetherness, but it will also enhance the social experience of your attendees. We know that word-of-mouth is highly effective. Several attendees might decide to go see what the fuss is about at booth 134 when they could have easily overlooked it otherwise.

Saving on Printing Costs

Printed schedules have some constraints. Aside from not being suitable to inform people of last minute adjustments, there’s the financial matter. The more involved your event is, the more information will need to be printed. The more information that needs to be printed, the more pages you’re going to need. The more pages you need, the more expensive printing several programs will be. Then, there’s the weight, the size of the paper, the graphics, etc. You get my point. The more sophisticated your printed schedule is, the more costly it will be. A mobile meeting app doesn’t change price, no matter how large you build it and no matter how many people download it. In some cases, a mobile meeting app can come with Membership Management Software. It’s certainly the case for MemberBoss.

If you’re ready to say goodbye to printed schedules and start incorporating mobile meeting apps for your events, feel free to try out MemberBoss’s Mobile Meeting App. If you’d like to learn more about MemberBoss, feel free to Book a Demo and don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more helpful tips for you and your members.

There’s a multitude of Membership Management Software on the market, and choosing one that fits your organization perfectly can be a daunting task. In a previous blog article, we discussed what factors to consider when looking for the ideal Membership Management Software. Today we’ll look at what to avoid when searching for Membership Management Software.

Depending on Listed Features Alone

A list of features is a very good place to start when looking for Membership Management Software. However, a simple list of features does not tell the whole story. The listed features might even be unintentionally misleading. The best way to know if a feature is actually beneficial for you or, better yet, works the way you’d like it to is to try and test the feature out for yourself. Aim to see a demo of the Membership Management Software. Have someone do a walkthrough with you. Depending simply on listed features is a surefire way to choose a product that may not be up to your standards or worse choosing a software that is completely wrong for your organization. Avoid this by requesting a demo.

Expecting the Same Work Process

Having worked with the same software for a long period of time, it’s only natural to be familiar with the same exact process to run your membership. Chances are you know every single detail about your software, along with its capacities and limitations. Nevertheless, being attached to the same process may be hindering you from choosing the proper software to serve your needs. It’s only normal to want something that doesn’t deviate from what you are used to, but keep in mind that there is a reason you can’t use your current platform anymore. You might need features that aren’t supported by your current software or you may need to accommodate a larger membership. Regardless of the reasons, you should expect remarkable differences in the work process. Keep an open mind and be willing to learn the new process. It may not be easy at first, but in the long run you will have adapted and might even find the new process easier, faster and better.

Forgetting About User’s Perspective

Though the task of choosing a better Membership Manager Software may be upon one person in your organization, everyone who will be using the platform needs to be taken into account. The person making the decision on which software to adopt may or may not be someone who will be using the platform on a regular basis. If you’re not careful, that can create a chasm between what your staff members expect and what they end up having. When deciding which Membership Management Software to utilize, every user’s perspective must be considered to the best of your ability. If feasible, invite them to the demos. The people who are actually going to use the platform are your best source for evaluating the functionality of the new software you are contemplating. If having them be part of your demos is not a possibility, at the very least ask them what they like or don’t like about the current software. Find out what your staff members really need. Zero in on this before you even think about shopping around.

There are a lot of things to consider when shopping for new software. No need to reiterate how important of a decision this is. Not only does it require financial commitment, but also a substantial amount of time for your staff members to learn the new system. It is by no means a decision that should be taken lightly. Hopefully, now that you know some of the things to avoid when looking for Membership Management Software, you’ll be able to pick a winner like MemberBoss for your organization. If you’d like to learn more about MemberBoss, feel free to Book a Demo and don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more helpful tips for you and your members.

One of the principal activities of a member-based organization is to organize meetings, conferences, expos, webinars, etc. They can be monthly workshops or as elaborate and complex as an annual expo spanning days and filled with multiple sessions. Every organization, every association, every industry is quite different and requires different configurations for their meetings. Managing these meetings with the proper tools to suit your needs is very essential. In the video below we discuss the benefits of using meeting management tools and more. Enjoy !

Meeting Management Webinar