Why Your Membership Needs a Sharper Value Proposition Before it's Too Late

Welcome to Scaling Deep, the podcast that dives beneath the surface of entrepreneurship, where vision meets clarity and real success comes from the inside out. My name is Lisa and I unravel the strategies behind thriving memberships so you can turn your expertise into recurring revenue and finally scale with confidence. Last month inside the Scaling Deep Society, I hosted one of the most popular workshops that I have done yet. Guess what it was about?

It was the membership USP workshop. Now the reason why I hosted it was because I'd been in a lot of conversations with members lately where people were questioning their marketing and even more than that questioning their membership offer itself. But as soon as they posted their purpose statement or attended a live coaching call in the society and told me about their membership, I realized that they were not experiencing a marketing problem, nor did they have anything wrong with the value of their membership and the delivery that they had inside.

What it came down to is that they suffered from one of the biggest problems with online businesses and the reason why most businesses in general fail. And that is they had a very unclear, indistinguishable value proposition, which if you don't already know, value proposition is just another word for USP, which is unique selling proposition. And a good value proposition makes or breaks your overall brand because it tells everybody what they can expect to achieve or experience or benefit from right from the outset.

And it makes it easy for people to decide that this is going to help them, that this is the best option and that working with you or joining your program is going to be their next best step. And this is actually what I'm going to be breaking down more deeply in my live training next week, the 2026 membership pivot, because this is making the biggest difference in the market right now. So make sure you sign up for the workshop at scalingdeep.com forward slash live.

It's on April 15th and you won't want to miss it. The reason why value propositions are very difficult to get right is because most of us are too close to our offer, our delivery, our brand to see that our messaging isn't communicating the value that we know from an experiential level. When you've worked with a number of clients, maybe even over years and years and written on it and spoken on your topic, you know how powerful it can be. And you've seen the transformation in people who you've worked with.

However, saying that in a distinct couple of sentences, enough so that the person who doesn't know much about you can see all that value, all that experience that you have is very difficult to do. So what we end up doing is making some mistakes in how we describe it. And that's where no one can really see that this is an excellent solution. people need to see some really clear specific things that are going to capture their attention and also make them see themselves in that so I want to talk first about the three mistakes that I see the most when it comes to talking about your value proposition so people actually get it so the first mistake is that your problem is not clearly articulated and this is important because part of your value proposition is based on where your ideal member is right at this very moment.

Your transformation is only going to work for people who believe that you actually are right for them for where they're at right now. We're all on different journeys and we're not all starting from the same place. For example, if you're talking about beginner problems, but you really want to attract a more sophisticated user, you're going to end up turning off the sophisticated ones because they're going to think that what you're offering is too basic for them. So mentioning the problems that people might have and could be experiencing is going to help them see themselves in what you're describing.

If you don't have that, they're just not going to believe that you can get them to that huge transformation level, like fixing your life or getting that body that they want, having them have no worries or financial stress anymore. They're not going to believe that unless you can articulate to them that it possible to get there from where their starting place is right now So while that might feel a little bit uncomfortable listing out a problem that not everyone might have, it's definitely going to resonate with those who either have that problem or they just had that problem or they didn't realize they had that problem and now they know that this is actually the right phase for them to get started with, that you're capable of helping them at their starting place.

So I'll give you an example of a recent member who posted in the Scaling Deep Society. She had written a purpose statement because every single one of my new members comes into the society and posts their purpose statement and I give them feedback on it and I help them work on it until it is more clear. Her first purpose statement started out with something like, I help women 30 plus who feel overwhelmed reconnect with their own insight so daily habits become easier. That's just part of it.

So let's stop right there. As you can see that women who are over 30 who feel overwhelmed is pretty general and it doesn't really cause anyone to stop in their tracks and think, oh, I'm over 30 and I'm overwhelmed because what woman or even man doesn't feel overwhelmed at some point over 30 or at any age really. It's general because overwhelm is something that we all experience from time to time. It may not be our burning issue daily.

So that might just exclude us from that. But even if it is, that feels like a huge pool of people. And no one really wants to jump into a support pool that's huge, because we're a little bit afraid we're going to get lost in that sea. So that felt really indistinct.

So we went back and forth. And eventually, this part of her purpose statement had changed from helping women over 30 who feel overwhelmed to helping neurodivergent women over 30 who feel overwhelmed create a personalized, flexible system of micro habits. So what she did right there was talk about neurodivergent women. And that is a smaller pool by all means.

And she's putting neurodivergent together with overwhelm, because that's the timing factor that's going to make sense for people to join. And then she goes into talking about her solution, which I'll talk about next. So that made a powerful shift. She just added one word in this case, but this really made a difference to making what she's talking about relevant to more people.

So mistake number two, this is often when the value that people are talking about is just too general. When people are talking about, I will help entrepreneurs grow. I will help you create a six-figure business, things like that. It's pretty general stuff.

And while that might sound slightly appealing, unless they have been stalking you for a while and they know who you are and they trust you and they believe that you're the only person that who can help them, they're not going to be wowed by those types of phrases. The challenge that you might've been experiencing is that you have been listening to all these big gurus and been on webinars and been on sales pages of people who are fairly well known, who can say things like that.

And that goes a long way because they already have a relationship with people, the people who are looking at them, or if you're looking at them, you've seen them for many, many years and their message has been pretty consistent. So they're saying something very general is enough to get you paying attention because you're already paying attention to them. The cooler the traffic, the more distinct the value needs to be, the more specific. So I'll use my own example.

I used to have training that was all about helping people build a six-figure membership. And while a lot of people really want a six-figure membership, it does not seem believable anymore because it's too general. And of course, if everyone's promising that, who does any kind of business support, then that does not stand out at all. Whereas now when I talk about memberships that aren't selling properly and people who want to get new members every single month, that is a much more narrow field of value of what I'm actually going to help people with.

And that's actually what I help people with on a day-to-day basis inside my membership and with my private clients. If people can see themselves in 10 different programs that all sound similar, they're not going to feel urgent about choosing yours. So this distinctness really has to stand out People right now aren joining things just to try things They were five years ago and they just simply not anymore You need to believe 100 right now is this for me specifically and is this going to make a measurable difference?

They do not have the bandwidth to start things that they might get something out of and a lot of people don't have the extra profit margin. Unless your market is focused on trending topics or targeting people specifically with a lot of extra discretionary income or revenue that they are happy to invest in what you've got, you're going to have to make sure that your result really is going to make a difference, especially as the market is now in its mature phase. And people have already taken so many courses and they're really familiar with the online world.

Even if they don't have a business of their own, they've definitely bought some things and they've probably not even finished a lot of those things. So they want to make sure that this one is going to be good enough to keep their attention. All right, so mistake number three. When the outcome isn't clear or immediate, this is where people will decide to pass on what you have to offer.

When people are saying, this sounds great, but I don't know when I could ever get around to doing this. I don't know how long it'll take. I don't really know what the method is. So what if I don't find it resonates with me?

Again, those people have experience buying things. So they're going to know that how you do it matters. And I'm not saying you need to give away the how, but you need to be very clear on the what and, and give them a taste of the how. So, you know, you're attracting people who are willing to do the work.

As soon as they can see themselves doing the work that you are proposing, that's when you'll get them to buy. I know when I've opened the cart for the Scaling Deep Society, I've ended up with very committed people who are doing the work to learn how to better sell their membership. And the people I'm getting in now over the last six months have shown up more than ever before, more consistently, and they're actually doing their homework. And that is because I made the value more distinct of where they're going to get to and also indicating that it's going to be through the positioning of their membership, the value prop of the membership, through learning how to build effective sales funnels and focusing on the right things, not doing more content if the content's not leading to more sales.

So that has made a huge difference and that's where a lot of people aren't giving enough of that away. So let's go back to that original example that I shared with you on the 30 plus year old women who are overwhelmed. Well, when she first wrote the statement, she said, I help women 30 plus who feel overwhelmed, reconnect with their own insight. So daily habits become easier.

When she landed on her final one, her final for now one, because these can change. It was, I help neurodivergent women, right? We talked about that specificity. 30 plus who feel overwhelmed create a personalized flexible system of micro habits so they can move through daily life so she added in the how the personalized flexible system of micro habits so if anyone knows or has any insight to the fact that if I had slightly better habits but if they were flexible personal not one size fits all formulas not for other people completely specific to what I need and they're micro, like they're doable.

They're not going to be a ton of work. I don't have to start working out for two hours a day at the gym. I can just do what I need to do. That is where people start to believe in it and think, you know, I can actually see myself doing this.

I think I need this. So whether or not they have that awareness of a microhabit or whether they've just heard of this for the first time, they're starting to see themselves be able to do the work. And I think that's where more people are actually going, can I do this right now? I'm not going to join something to think that I might do it someday, because I know that if I don't need it right now, it's not worth buying.

So making sure that you make a case for all of that in your business is going to make a difference. The clear problem of where people are at, the specific value they're going to get, and a more narrow selling proposition, which is really that unique part, and then that distinct outcome that gives them the what they're heading towards and a little bit of that highlight of that how so they know they can do it Those are going to really help So how does strong value propositions show up in your business I wanted to touch on this quickly because they might be in different places and you might be thinking is this just all about a purpose statement?

Well, no, it starts with a purpose statement. And I have training on that inside the Scaling Deep Society. And I like to help everyone with that. However, when you have a strong value proposition, here's where it's going to show up and make a huge difference in the quality of leads you get, the type of people who join your program and help you convert with a way bigger profit margin because you are attracting the right people in the first place.

You're getting more of them to say yes, and that's where the magic happens in business. So first, it shows up invisibility through attention grabbing posts. This is where you're first going to notice. If you've had a vague value proposition and put out some general stuff either in ads or in social media posts, you might notice that there's a somewhat of a response rate or sign up rate or show up rate and it's a little bit flat, but it's okay.

But when you actually nail those hooks, you'll start to see people pouring in. You will have hard hitting headlines in your ads or first line of your reels or overlays that really stop the scroll. And when you start naming something, that's something that somebody really recognizes, you're going to get way more traction from way less effort. Number two, when you're nurturing people in your emails and events that people engage with, this is all about creating that connection to people long-term on topics that people actually need using those hooks and those phrases and those words we talked about that come from the purpose statement in your subject line so that they get opened ideas that connect quickly to people and also getting people to sign up for your sales events whether or not you're just doing flash sales and you're checking out your sales page or you're doing webinars or workshops or speaking you name it they're going to actually show up when they believe there is value for them and it's really going to help them solve a specific problem and get them one step closer to where they need to go.

And then finally, on your sales page, having a really clear promise, making sure that the offer is going to be everything that it needs to be to get them to where they need to go. Your promise needs to be clear. People need to understand what they're getting. They need to see the logic of buying in the right order.

And your pitch needs to be very clear and direct no smoke and mirrors here. At this point, they already get it. Your job is to just help them really connect the dots logically and emotionally and feel really good about taking the next step. Essentially, when your value proposition is strong, sales stop feeling like you're persuading people or you're begging or hoping and it starts feeling like you're confirming that you really have the right offer for people.

And that should also be followed up with the people who join showing up and getting a ton of value out of your program. And that does fuel your excitement to keep working on the whole cycle. So when your membership isn't converting the way you expect, it's usually one of these three things at the outset. Your problem doesn't feel urgent.

Your value is too broad and vague and or the outcome doesn't feel clear enough or quick enough. And none of those get fixed by more content or more features or just more marketing out into the void. What it actually means is that the right person sees themselves immediately. They understand what changes for them and they feel like this is exactly what I need and I need it right now.

Not this sounds interesting or I'll think about it, but this is for me. So if this is something you're seeing in your own business where things feel like they should be working and you know they've worked in different circumstances, but they're just not converting the way you expected. This is exactly what I'm going to be breaking down in my live training next week. The 2026 membership pivot, I'll show you how the market has shifted, how to sharpen your positioning and how to actually sell your membership in this environment.

To sign up, head on over to scalingdeep.com forward slash live. See you there. Bye for now.

Thanks for tuning into Scaling Deep. I hope today's episode helped you see your business and your growth in a new light. Remember, scaling isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters most. I'm Lisa Prinsic, and this has been Scaling Deep.