Definitions:
On a day-to-day basis, Chris Lema works with teams across the country, talking about products and the target markets they’re trying to serve. He defines some of the most commonly used words in the industry as:
Membership Site:
A membership site protects content. There are people who belong and don’t belong, and the belonging is created for a purpose: content creation.
A Subscription:
This is focused on a financial arrangement, with the notion that you have to choose to pay regularly to receive the product.
Online Courses or an LMS:
Online courses feature sequential learning, support, analytics, and pre and post-learning. You utilize an LMS to power this course.
Choose Your Business Model:
When choosing which model is right for your business, Chris recommends focusing on these questions.
- Financial: is your payment one time or recurring? How are you going to collect money?
- Business model: how do you plan to make money?
- Features: do you need course prerequisites, analytics, emails, or certificates?
On Clarity.FM he answers questions on business models every day.
A niche focus is where he sees people succeed. You have to make sure that your customers show up to the sites and know immediately if your product will help them. He says that once you have this clarity, it makes it easy for people to find you, tell their friends about you, and buy from you.
“Maybe the real business model answer is not so much the notion of the model itself… it’s really, ‘Can you create a value exchange that is so targeted, that everybody in the value equation knows exactly what’s happening?’”
Niche Markets:
When you’re able to niche down, you’re able to experience the richness of that target audience and anticipate their needs in a way that sets you apart from the competition.
Chris says that metrics and engagement are pieces of the puzzle that often get overlooked. And it’s not just course metrics, but also cohort metrics. Are you tracking people who come through randomly, buy at a discount, or people who come through for certain promotions? Understanding these numbers will give you deeper insights into which customers are your target market.
Pricing:
Chris recommends shifting from monthly to yearly so that you have 12 months to delight a customer. Instead of sending invitations to renew their monthly subscription each month, you can really build a relationship with them so that at the end of the year, renewing is a no-brainer.
In addition, Chris shares the value of targeting one customer, instead of multiple.
“When you’re building out courses, the real trick is: can you stay with one person, and just solve all of their problems, and be trusted for that, so that the second sale, the third sale, and the bundle sale all together, are a lot easier than having to win them over to all these other courses.”
Email Metrics:
Chris also emphasizes the importance of integrating email systems that let you create tags, like ConvertKit. By tracking metrics and specifying your tags, you’ll serve your clients better.
Predictions:
Microlearning.
“Because our attention spans are tiny, we need to create digestible content and learning on our mobile devices in 1-2 minute spans.”
Advice:
Narrow in on who your target market is.
Contact:
Blog: Chris Lema
Leadership Notes: Leaders
Twitter: @ChrisLema
LiquidWeb Blog: Chris Lema
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