Module 2: Structure Your Membership

Branding your membership

Branding your membership is a small but important detail. Now that you have some key information about what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to, you can start to create a meaningful brand around it.

Your membership branding could be very similar to your existing business branding, or if you’re just starting out or are looking to rebrand in general, we’ll share some tips and resources to help with that.

In branding your membership, you’ll want to consider:

The type of membership product you’re creating — is it a single, standalone product, or will it ultimately be a combination of multiple membership products?
Your topic area and any considerations to keep in mind there
Your target audience, and the specific colors, imagery, or messaging that appeals to them
And your pricing — if you’re creating an expensive and comprehensive membership, you might want to create a logo that you can use on all the materials associated with it; whereas you might not need that level of detail for a smaller offering

Choose a name

The first step in branding is choosing a name! You may have one in mind already, but if you don’t, here are some tips for naming your product:

Start by brainstorming without judgement. Just write down whatever comes to mind, including simply words that are in your topic area. At this point anything goes, we’ll cross out later!

Consider your target audience and the language they actually use. Incorporate terms they’ll recognize and connect with.

Try to craft a transformation with your name, if possible. If your name can clearly express what people will get out of your membership, and how they’ll be better off because of it, that’s ideal.

When you’ve got a list of options, work through them, asking the following questions and crossing out names that don’t meet the criteria:

Does it clearly infer what your membership is about?
Does it match the tone of your membership? You’ll want to toss out names that are too playful for a more professional membership, or too serious or bland for a more lighthearted membership.
Is it available? If you want to trademark the name, there are different legal considerations you’ll need to make. But even without that, it’s good practice to do a quick search to determine if someone else is already using the name or something very similar to it.
How well does it fit with your brand name? You’ll likely be saying or writing them next to each other quite a bit. Make sure they work together and flow well!
And, in the same vein, can you say the name over and over again easily? If it ends up being a tongue twister, it might not be the best fit.

Plan your URL

Because your membership product will be sold online, you’ll of course need a home for it on your website.

It’s possible to create a new website specifically for your membership, but you certainly don’t have to (and it’s not advisable unless it’s a massive membership that you anticipate will take on a life above and beyond your business name).

Just ensure you have a reasonable URL slug in mind for your program. For example, this course is memberspace.com/courses/membershipmax. That’s the name of the course, and that’s where people can go to learn about it and enroll.

You can choose essentially anything for your URL slug, but you’ll want to keep it simple and easy to remember, as well as closely related to your membership name.

If your membership name is How to Start a Successful Travel Blog on a Small Budget — that’s pretty long and not user-friendly on a keyboard, so you may want to choose a simpler URL slug, like /travel-blog-training.

Build your branding

Logo

You don’t have to create a logo for your membership product, but you can. It can be a good idea for larger or more expensive products because it can help to professionalize your product and tie together different aspects of it. For example, the Membership MAX! logo is on our website, slides, handouts — it’s used in a bunch of places to confirm that this is all part of and referring to the same course.

Canva is a great design tool to use for creating a logo. They have a free plan that’s perfectly sufficient for many small business owners. They also have thousands of templates, so you can easily create your own professional-looking logo without hiring a graphic designer — a huge benefit for a lot of small businesses.

Colors

Your brand colors are some of the most recognizable aspects of your overall branding. You can use the colors from your existing branding (if you have it), or develop unique colors for your new membership product. Of course, if you’re just starting out, you have a blank slate.

How many colors you choose is up to you, and can depend on your specific business identity. For example, if your brand is modern and sleek, you may want to stick to more minimal use of color. But if your brand aesthetic is bright and cheerful, you may want to incorporate multiple complementary brand colors.

When choosing your brand colors, you’ll want to document and save your color codes, which are specific alphanumeric codes that tell computers how to properly display the color. We’ll work with Hex codes, which are made up of six characters following a pound sign. For example, #000000 is black, and #C63882 is the color of the hyperlinks on this page.

Useful tools for choosing your brand colors:

ColorPick Eyedropper is a free Google Chrome Extension that tells you the color code of anything you hover over in your browser. It’s useful for pulling color codes off specific imagery, if you have something you’d like to use as inspiration.

Coolors.co is a free color palette generator that can help compile potential colors and create a complementary palette. You can also browse top color schemes compiled by other users if you want some inspiration.

When choosing your colors, it’s important to consider the psychology of color. We naturally associate certain colors with certain feelings or values. For example, yellow symbolizes happiness, warmth and friendliness, while black draws upon things like formality, power, sophistication. We wouldn’t really use black to convey happiness or yellow to elicit power and strength. So, the colors you choose impact how your brand, and therefore your membership, is perceived.

Fonts

Font is another important element of your branding. Different fonts can be perceived as playful, modern, classic, feminine or rustic.

If you already have brand fonts for your existing business, you could simply incorporate those fonts into your membership product branding.

Or, if you want to create unique branding for your product, or you’re starting from scratch, here are some guidelines for choosing your fonts:

In general, it’s best to stick to just 2 fonts, 3 at the most.
Having some differentiation of font, whether using a different font, or different styling in the same font, is helpful to break up text and provide emphasis throughout your materials.
However, you don’t want to go crazy, it’s best to use as few font variations as possible to accomplish this.
Just like color, keep in mind the psychology of fonts and how they influence the way a prospective customer sees your brand. If you’re a financial advisor, you might want to choose a bolder, more stable font to symbolize security. If you’re developing a membership about finding balance as a new mom, you might want to choose something that feels calming and uplifting.
And, if you have existing branding, it’s a good idea to include at least one common font for consistency.

Your website, if built on a CMS (e.g. Squarespace or WordPress), generally comes with access to hundreds of free fonts. And, Canva provides access to just as many. If you’re looking for something more specific, Creative Market is a great source for purchasing custom fonts. These can be easily uploaded to Canva, as well as added to your website.

Work through the branding worksheet, which you can use to outline and document your brand guidelines, so you can easily refer back to them as you create your content and marketing materials.

Continue Module 2