#4: Launching & Marketing The Spotlight Club

Kylie Kelly [00:00:11]:
Hello and welcome back to Low Ticket Membership Lab. A private podcast series all about the lessons that I learnt when I was creating my low ticket, high value membership, the Spotlight Club. Now a really quick shout out if you've made it this far. Please come and join us in the spotlight club. It is a membership aimed at helping you grow your email list fast without paid ads or social media. I would love to invite you in. The standard tier is just $19 a month and you'll be blown away by what you get for that price point. The link, of course, is in the show notes.

Kylie Kelly [00:00:41]:
Now this episode is probably gonna be my favourite because it's all about launching and marketing strategies for a low ticket membership. I wanted to talk to you about what I did when I was launching the Spotlight Club and how I built anticipation for it. And I also wanna discuss with you the ongoing marketing strategies to attract new members and what I'm doing now. So let's wind the clock back 12 months. Now I mentioned this a little bit in the first episode, but when I first launched the Spotlight Club, I decided to do it in a tiered approach. I'd seen a lot of people online that I follow and that I look up to in the coaching space do this with offers when they are preselling them. They would put them out there for a low amount, and then as it got closer to the actual live workshop or webinar date, the price will go up incrementally. And it created this beautiful incentive to sign up soon.

Kylie Kelly [00:01:26]:
It's like you're rewarding people, right, for jumping in and trusting you before you might have it already at the very, very earliest stage. So I love that idea because I feel like that sits really well with my integrity. It sits really well with my values. It's not like fake FOMO or some clickbaity deadline counter strategy. It's more like, hey. This is what I'm doing. The first 20 spots, it's this price, and then it goes up. And, of course, as a woman of my word, it always went up.

Kylie Kelly [00:01:53]:
Right? So when I first came up with the idea of the Spotlight Club, I put it out to my existing audience. Everyone was fairly excited. I had no idea what would be inside of it, but I was like, how can I really show these people that are wanting to invest at a founder's level that I really appreciate the trust that they have in me? So back then, my goal was to land at like $47 a month and just have the one tier the one membership $47 a month. So I thought, okay, well, let's start with a $19 a month founders rate. And the first 30 people can pay $19 a month and then it's going to go up to $27. And then it might be up to $50. And then when I get to 50 members, it'll go up to $33. And then finally to 47, which is where it will land when I'm ready to actually launch and there's content inside of this membership.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:39]:
So that was my idea, and I loved it. I loved the energy around that launch. It was really fun to promote it even on social. I jumped into my Instagram stories a little bit. I could count down how many spots were left at each price point. I could do the same with my email list. It was it was just really fun and I really enjoyed it and it worked really well. My membership grew really quickly.

Kylie Kelly [00:02:58]:
And then when I launched it officially at the $47 it felt good still, but I was kinda like, oh my goodness. How amazing. Now let me preface this by saying I'm a big fan of Liz Wilcox. I'm in a lot of low ticket memberships where people over deliver and they can honestly change your life for such a low ticket price point. Now that is playing then the volume game because as a business owner, if you have a $9 membership, you need a lot of members to actually feed your family off that, right, or to retire off that, to actually have a business with a significant income. So that is a volume game. So I spent some time reflecting. So I was sitting here.

Kylie Kelly [00:03:35]:
I had maybe 55 members. Some were paying 47. Some were paying 33, some were paying 27, some were paying 19. And I was like, this doesn't feel good anymore. What if what if I slashed it to 19 for everyone? Now that was a hard decision for me to make because it was giving money back. But as well, once I sat with that, I was like, how exciting would it be to send that email and be like, hey, no one does this but I'm reducing the price here. From next month, you're not paying 47, you're gonna pay 19. Like, no one does that.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:05]:
Name me a company that reduces their price. It always goes in the other direction. Right? So that felt really exciting. And then I was like, well, if that feels good in my gut, there's a reason it feels good. And I'm definitely learning. I'm not that woo woo, but I'm definitely learning to trust my intuition, especially with business decisions like this. And I think that has then helped me make these hard decisions where if you took out your gut reaction, your intuition, your spiritual nudges, like, whatever you wanna call it, if you took that away and you were just making it from an intellectual point of view, it's a hard decision to make because you're giving back money. Right? We are a business.

Kylie Kelly [00:04:39]:
We need to make money. And I contributed at least 50% to my household. So by me making money is how I look after our family. So to actually go, like, oh, here's some money back, was a big call. But I had this intuitive nudge that it was the right decision to make. So at that point, we were perhaps 2 months in, and so I emailed all the members that were paying more than $19 individually and said, hey, this is what's changing. You're still gonna get this amazing value, but I've decided to cut the price. And can I say, like, the gratitude and the thankfulness and the response I got from those members was incredible? And a lot of those members have stayed on to work with me in deeper capacities, to upgrade to the premium tier, to do all those things because they know that they can trust me.

Kylie Kelly [00:05:22]:
And what I've gotten to do now at $19 a month is really over deliver, is really give all the members that are at the $19 tier, make sure it is worth every single cent plus more. Give them those transformations. Give them those wins so that when they are ready to invest a little bit more, when they do have more cash flow, it's a no brainer to to invest it with me. Right? So, again, I wouldn't recommend going about it the same way that I did because it was a hard journey. Right? And definitely took some belief and some trust in myself to follow my own feelings, my own nudges, my own intuition with that call of reducing the price. But I would ask you, what are you charging? Do you have a membership at the moment? What are you charging? Or if you wanna start a membership, what do you wanna charge? And know that if it is a low ticket price, it has its pros and cons. Right? The pros being that you can build trust really easily. Like, it is an easier yes for people to come into your world.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:18]:
It will convert better if you do end up using paid ads or other traffic sources. There's a lot to be said for the low ticket, even the under $10 price point. However, in saying that, there's also some cons too. Right? Because as I said, it's a volume game. So you need to be willing to put in the time. It might take you 2 years to get to a place where it's actually a significant amount of money. It might take you 5 years. Right? It might not be as fast as you want it to be because you need the volume.

Kylie Kelly [00:06:44]:
So do you have an audience already that you can promote it to to get the volume quicker? Or are you willing to wait it out so that, eventually, you get the numbers that you need to make a significant amount of money? So pros and cons, as with everything. But I am a massive fan of the low ticket, high value business model. I think it especially in this day and age where there is so much out there that is kinda bullshit, right, that we might sign up for and be disappointed or we might get a coach on board that doesn't deliver or especially in the online space. There's so much smoke and mirrors. There's so much pain point marketing. There's just so much bullshit. So if you can offer something at a low price point that reduces the risk, that feels really good for you but feels really good for them as well, and show them through that purchase who you are, what your values are, over deliver, surprise and delight them, lead them to a transformation. If you can do that in a low price point, you're going to just garner so much trust and respect from them that they will invest more later on.

Kylie Kelly [00:07:41]:
But it is a long game. So, again, when you are launching something, I want you to think long term. I want you to think about, okay, so am I prepared to wait this out? Am I prepared to do the work knowing that I might not see the results for 12 months, 2 years, 5 years? Right? Sit down. Have a moment like that. If you're not, that's okay. But maybe a more higher ticket business model is a better choice because you need less sales. You need less people to convert to make the money that you might need. So really sit with yourself.

Kylie Kelly [00:08:09]:
What is right for you? Again, there's no right or wrong. It's what is right for you. Follow any kind of nudge or calling or intuition that you might have about this. The other thing that I wanted to say now so as I then created the membership, obviously, we have the $19 price point. I have, at the moment, about 140 members that sit at that price point. And I'm able to serve them really well. So for $19 a month, they get access to, what I call a Spotlight Insider, which is like an Airtable base that I'm filling out multiple times a week with new collaborations and list growing opportunities that they can actually apply for right now. So bundles, summits, podcast guesting, things like that.

Kylie Kelly [00:08:46]:
So they get access to that. They get access to all the trainings, obviously, that are in the portal. Those 9 trainings, the foundational ones and then the trainings about every different type of collaboration strategy they can choose from. They get access to an ever growing resource of library with workbooks, templates, and more. So there are things from our affirmation cards and planners to checklists to lead magnet templates. There's a whole stack of stuff in there. They get access to that. They get all the trainings in a private podcast.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:11]:
They can listen on the go. They get access to the Slack channel. They get monthly check ins with me to monitor their progress and make sure they're taking action. Once a quarter, I actually host a spotlight club bundle just for members. They get to grow their list through that every quarter. They get live quarterly planning parties with me to plan out their quarter 1, 2, 3, and 4. They get a monthly networking call to connect with me and all the other members so that they feel more of a connection. It's almost in person.

Kylie Kelly [00:09:38]:
Right? So we jump on Zoom. I put them in little breakout rooms. They get to know each other deeply, which is really powerful. And they get 2 live q and a calls a month for live support with me. So one is done in the US time zone. The other is done that's more UK and EU friendly. So that's for $19. So even if they were to join at that level, the membership, they're like, holy smokes.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:00]:
Look at this. They're going to sea winds. If they take action, their email is just gonna grow fast. That is the minimum. Right? That's the standard tier. To start with, I needed to know that as I grew the Spotlight Club and I had the volume coming in, was that sustainable? Right? So at the moment, I am a mum of 2 little boys. I have Spencer at school. I work limited hours.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:19]:
Most of the time, I'm working school hours, but we have short weeks. We have a lot of school activities. Like, things interrupt that as well. So I knew I needed to build something that was going to be sustainable for me to work 4 to 5 hours a day, Monday to Friday. Now I think it's bullshit when people say that they can work 3 hours a week and still create a business that makes a lot of money. I don't see how that's possible. And especially when you're getting started, it takes work. It takes a lot of work.

Kylie Kelly [00:10:43]:
So what I want you to be thinking about as you're building these things out is the sustainability. Right? Similar to that commitment about waiting if you're playing the volume game and being in it for the long haul. Right? So I want you to also think about, will this be sustainable in 2 years' time, in 12 months' time? Is what I'm giving them sustainable for me? Let's say you don't get you don't have a team. Let's say it is just you. Does that look like it will fit within the life that you're building? Because that is so important. Otherwise, it leads to burnout. Otherwise, it leads to resentment. Otherwise, it's not going to work.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:15]:
Right? You're not gonna love it in 12 months' time, and I don't want that for you. So definitely always thinking about that sustainability piece. And for me, this is sustainable. I am in Slack pretty much Monday to Friday, but I'll jump in at the start of my workday, make sure I answer any questions. The calls that are a part of the standard tier mean that I'm on a call 3 times a month, which again felt great. I was doing bundles anyway. I've got that down pat, so doing the bundle for the clubbers was an easy yes for me. Everything else is pretty much, self sustainable at this point with all the trainings already done.

Kylie Kelly [00:11:47]:
The resource library already done. I'm just adding to it. So super sustainable. Sustainable. So then I was looking at okay. So if I need to make a certain amount of money and I wanna scale my business, can I scale it just with this? And I also had a lot of members reaching out for more support. So it was almost a no brainer to add a higher support tier into the spotlight club so that the people that can afford to pay a little bit more and that want the extra support have it as an option. So, obviously, if they don't, $19 is still getting value for money.

Kylie Kelly [00:12:16]:
So many of my members have had incredible wins just paying $19 a month. But if they do want more support, then that option is there for them as well. So now for $97 a month, so that next premium tier, they get extra things. They get access to everything that's in the standard membership, but they also get a weekly coaching call with me. They can also submit copy reviews so that I can review their messaging and their copywriting for their emails, their lead magnets, their landing, and opt in pages. They also get a monthly design call with me so I can help them design or redesign their graphics or mock ups in Canva so they can see higher conversions on their landing pages. I've added this in because when I was hosting bundles, so many people, not just my members, but so many people submit really ugly graphics, and it impacts how many sign ups that they get. So that seemed like a really easy way for me to not only give them value and help them with these designs, but then also it's stepping them closer to the transformation because they're gonna see more wins because they have better graphics to enable that.

Kylie Kelly [00:13:17]:
And then I also added in a monthly email writing course. They can batch out 4 emails at the start of the month with templates and get that done. Again, that was a kind of a selfish thing to add because I really wanna do my batchings. So it means that I have accountability. I'm doing it with the club. I'm writing out the templates for them based on the emails that I'm sending my own list. I'm sharing it with them and then we're sitting down and writing together. So that has been a beautiful thing to add.

Kylie Kelly [00:13:40]:
And then the last thing that I do offer as well is the opportunity for them to be promoted to my email list of 6,000 plus female entrepreneurs to fast track their email list growth even more, and that's once a month as well. So there is a lot included now at the $97 a month price point, and it means that because they are paying more, they get more support. I'm still over delivering. I'm still helping them. They'll they'll see wins quicker. But it also enables me, because it's bringing more revenue in, to start to relax a little bit and just focus on the membership. Before, I was having to still supplement my income, right, through other offers and programs and other work so that I could make enough to support the family in the way that I need to provide for them. Whereas now with the 2 tiers means that I can just focus on the membership.

Kylie Kelly [00:14:26]:
This is my my sole offer, and I can just focus on that. A higher support tier. The way that I have done it is I released it to the members that I had first and I actually released it at $47 a month. Month. So I said to them, this is what I'm doing. I released it, I let 10 or so people enrol, and then I closed the doors. Because I, again, wanted to see, is this sustainable? If I have 50, a 100, 200 people in here, is this something that I can sustain with the standard membership that feels really good for me? So I did that. It felt great.

Kylie Kelly [00:15:03]:
I absolutely love the premium tier and the things that I'm including. I've had to tweak a few things here and there, but overall, super sustainable. So then I opened it up to the club once more and said, okay. This is gonna be the last chance. I'm going to increase this price point to 97 because of the level of support that you're getting. So if you wanna get in for 47, now is your chance. So now I've got 44 people that were all members of the club that have enrolled in the premium tier just so they can get more support. And now I've increased the price to 97, which is where it will stay.

Kylie Kelly [00:15:34]:
So, again, if you want to add a premium tier into your own membership, a higher support tier, think of how you can make it super appealing for your current members, how you can add a little bit of an incentive. Maybe it's not a price increase. Maybe you're adding a bonus or a 1 on 1 call or something else that's going to make them wanna jump in. Think about that strategy and then test it first. Make sure it's sustainable, that you can do both. I think what makes this super sustainable for me is it's the same trainings. It's the same portal. So I'm not having to create more trainings for the premium members.

Kylie Kelly [00:16:07]:
It's just more support, which means that I'm just on more calls. Right? I'm just giving them more support than I am the standard tier, but I'm not having to create more trainings or more resources, things like that. So I can create a training. They all get it. It's just the support is different. So think about how you can make it sustainable if you wanna introduce something like this into your membership too. Now the last thing that I want to talk about is the ongoing marketing for the Spotlight Club and how I am choosing to do that. So, again, integrity is a massive, massive value of mine.

Kylie Kelly [00:16:37]:
So I never want to market from a place of FOMO, of making people feel like they have no choice, of making them feel like this is the only opportunity, of being slimy and gross. Really. Right? So because integrity is such a huge value of mine, I always wanna market from a positive place, a place where I can paint the future for them. I can paint what the spotlight club could do for somebody instead of painting what they'll miss out on if they don't join. You can see the difference there. So the way that I've chosen to do this is actually close the doors of the premium membership. Like I said before, I want to make sure that it stays sustainable. And the way to do that is to limit the intake so that I can focus on the current members.

Kylie Kelly [00:17:16]:
So the doors are closed at the moment. The standard doors are always open. So somebody can come in, pay $19 and get in and it's always open. And then what I'm planning to do is then have, like, little events. Maybe it'll be my birthday. Right? My birthday is in June. Maybe it'll be my birthday. We'll be like, hey.

Kylie Kelly [00:17:32]:
Here's a flash sale. Here's a bonus. Come and join the premium tier, and I'll open the doors for 48 hours or something. So having little mini events, little flash sales, little flash opens Keeps the excitement going, especially for the members that are at the standard tier wanting to jump into the premium. So that is gonna be my marketing efforts to keep people coming over to the premium tier of the club. But then in terms of the standard club, because it's open all the time, I need to make sure that I'm always talking about it to my list, right, that they know about it. I've heard it said before that if you're not sick of hearing about something, if you're not sick of talking about it, you're probably not talking about it enough. And I think that is so true.

Kylie Kelly [00:18:07]:
I think they're we think because we send an email once a week and we mentioned it in the PS that it's enough. It's not enough. We get so many emails in our inbox. There's so much noise online that we need to make sure that we're talking about these offers, that we're actually sharing them with our audience as much as we possibly can. From the point of, if they don't know about it, we can't help them, and we wanna help them. Right? Again, talking about, for me, the standard tier of the membership, often with my email list, I also wanna do monthly live events. I just did, like, an email batch party. It is now premium tier.

Kylie Kelly [00:18:37]:
Right? But it was, like, kind of fun to be like, hey. This is the first time I'm trying this out. You can join us for $37 or come into the club for 19 and get it for free. So doing little events like that, I wanna do a lead magnet makeover coming up soon. So that'll be the same thing. Hey. Come and join us for 37 or 47 or you can get it for free if you join the club. So doing little events like that for my list with things that they really need help with or that I see are missing in my members' journeys, that will have two purposes.

Kylie Kelly [00:19:05]:
It will also look after my members and make sure that they they're getting it for free so they feel super valued. They feel like it's still worth the money to be a member. It's, oh my goodness. I can't believe that because I'm a member, I get to join this for free. As well as creating an opportunity for my list to be like, hey. If you wanna save money, come and join the spotlight club. And it makes it a bit of a no brainer. So I'm gonna be playing with those as, like, monthly little events.

Kylie Kelly [00:19:26]:
And then lastly, I wanna use bundles and tripwires and upsells really smartly. In that, I'm offering a special where I can for people to jump in for maybe it's, like, $9 for the 1st month. I did this a lot last year where I would do the 1st month at a discounted rate. I tried doing it free first and it didn't work because everyone just churned. Everyone just left. So through that experience, I found if they pay something, they're more likely to stay. So if they can pay 7 or $9, keep it under $10 for the first month, and then it goes up to 19. That's a really great way of getting people in.

Kylie Kelly [00:19:56]:
And then they see the content, then they see the value, and then they see the support. They're like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna stay. So that is the other thing that I'll be focusing on is making sure that I have these upsells, these opportunities when I host bundles, when I host summits. Also, when I have a resource, a freebie or a low ticket resource, having a tripwire so that they can then grab the standard membership at a discounted rate. So that's definitely something that I'm also working on putting together too. So that's a little bit about what it looked like when I first launched the Spotlight Club and where it is now. So, of course, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to either drop me an email at hello at kyliekelly.com or drop into my Instagram DMs, extra points if you send me a voice note.

Kylie Kelly [00:20:37]:
I love talking about this stuff, and I'm an open book with what's worked for me and what hasn't. I think the main thing to ask yourself is, does this feel fun right now? Like, does this feel fun for you? Does this feel good for you? How do you wanna market your membership? How do you wanna get the word out? How do you wanna create momentum and an incentive for people to sign up in a way that feels good, in a way that's full of integrity, source of getting people enrolling all the time. It's not so much a question of, like, the open doors or the closed doors or whatnot. It's what feels good for you because we can make any strategy work. But at the end of the day, if it doesn't feel good for you, if you're not excited about it, if you don't wanna talk about it, that's gonna be the deciding factor of whether it works or not. So again, I hope that was helpful. I'm so excited. We've got 2 episodes left.

Kylie Kelly [00:21:24]:
So in the next episode, episode 5, I'm gonna be talking a little bit about member experience and engagement and how I keep my members engaged. I'm also gonna talk about the churn rate, when people cancel, what the process is for that, how I've learnt to reduce that over the last 12 months, and then also a few success stories and testimonials from current members. And then in the last episode, I actually have some questions that my members have written in that I have gotten from my email list from my audience. And and trust me, nothing was off the table. So there are some really juicy questions. So we're gonna do a bit of a rapid fire q and a for the last episode, and I'm also gonna share with you my plans for growing and evolving the membership through the next year and beyond. So I cannot wait to share those with you. I hope you're enjoying this so far and I will talk to you again soon.

Kylie Kelly [00:22:06]:
Alright. Bye for now.