Marketing and Growing Your Recipe Subscription Product with Clubb

October 25, 2024
Ben Russell
Founder

Decided to take ownership of your audience as a food creator and to build a steady income stream outside of social platforms? Smart move! You’ve already taken the first step - next, you need to think about how to launch and grow your offering. In this article, we’ll provide guidance on how to communicate your offer, as well as growth tactics you can use for both acquisition and conversion for your recipe subscription with Clubb.

Whether you're an expert in growth or are just getting started, you should find something to help. We’ll cover some of the most important things to think about when growing a subscription product as a food creator:

  • Positioning and Messaging
  • Pricing and Promotion
  • Social Media Acquisition
  • Free vs Paid
  • Other Acquisition Channels

Now let’s dive into each one.

Positioning & Messaging

One of the most important aspects of launching a paid offering is understanding your audience, your content, and what makes you different. This will all play into how you position your Clubb in terms of what value people will get from it, and why they should pay for it.

Whether your audience is busy families, healthy meal planners, bakers or wannabe Michelin star chefs - thinking about what they like and the problems they have plays a huge part in how you communicate that to your audience.

Combined with effectively communicating exactly what you will be providing, you can craft a message that resonates with your audience.

Let's try to craft your offering

Firstly, try to be clear about what paid subscribers can expect from you - what is the product. Think about the amount of content, type of content, the cadence, and the platform you're offering.

Not only is your content unique, but Clubb also offers features that enable you to create even more value and craft a unique product. When it comes to clearly communicating the benefits, they can be both content based, feature based, or additional benefits outside of the platform.

Content-Based:

Think about your content style and what’s unique about what you do:

  • The size of your recipe library, e.g., “hundreds of recipes”
  • The simplicity of your recipes, e.g., “dinners in 20 minutes or less”
  • Meal plans and shopping lists, e.g., “stop having to think about what to cook and buy”
  • Content cadence, e.g., “new meal plan each week” or “2 exclusive recipes a week”
  • Skill-building, e.g., “hone your baking skills”
  • Easy-to-follow step-by-step videos

Platform-Based:

Highlight the benefits of the Clubb and what it offers to subscribers:

  • Save time with published meal plans
  • Create your own meal plans
  • Simple shopping lists
  • Focused cooking modes
  • Adjust serving sizes
  • Filtering and search options
  • Save your favourites
  • Nutritional information

Additional Benefits:

When people subscribe, even though their contact details and payments are handled through the Clubb platform, you can offer additional benefits outside of the platform. This is especially appealing if you add a premium annual subscription. Some examples might be:

  • Physical gifts
  • Priority access to ticketed events
  • Discounts on products
  • Exclusive recipes just for them
  • Private communities (Slack, Discord)
  • Have a say in what you create next

Now you're clear on the product, think about how you can communicate it, given your particular audience. You've already built up a connection with your audience over time, so lean into what they already know and love about you, as well as your offering. When communicating more practical benefits, try to communicate desired outcomes or how you solve your audiences problems.

This might be things like:

  • Save time
  • Keep the family happy
  • Take the stress out of cooking
  • Maintain a healthy diet
  • Getting creative
  • Become a skilled chef

You're making their lives better, so make sure that's clear!

When it comes to communicating your offering, remember there are multiple places you will be doing this.

  • Your homepage
  • Paywalls
  • Plans pages

You can adjust your copy for each of these in the Clubb dashboard.

Now, all of the above sounds like a lot to communicate so you're not going to put it all into your homepage and list of features at once! But you might use it elsewhere as you promote it to your audience in various places over time, so be sure to keep it in your back pocket.

Note: At the end of the day, creators can only truly commit to producing great content if they are able to generate revenue from it. Many of your supporters will understand this. A subscription can be a fantastic way for your followers to show their appreciation for the content you produce and support you in creating even more!

Pricing & Promotions

Once you've settled on your pricing for you subscription, think about what other tactics you have up your sleeve to convert more users. Two of the most obvious ones at your disposal are free trials and promo codes.

Free Trials:

Use free trial periods to let people test the product before committing to payment. A 7-day trial often works well, allowing users to experience the product without feeling rushed.

Promo Codes:

Whether for a launch, re-engagement, paid ads, or seasonal promotions, promo codes can be a powerful way to encourage sign-ups. Here are some ways to use them:

  • Offer a time-limited discount to people on your free mailing list who haven’t yet converted to paying customers.
  • Run seasonal promotions (summer, Christmas, New Year). Be careful not to overuse promo codes, as this can devalue your offer.
  • Offer additional discounts on annual plans to incentivize longer-term commitments.
  • Create limited-number offers to drive scarcity and encourage early sign-ups.

Social Media Strategy

Posts & Stories:

Getting your social media strategy right can be huge when it comes to driving users. Use your posts to tease content that’s available in full on your site, just like these examples. Make sure your posts have a clear CTA and people know exactly where they can find the link.

How Molly Baz uses recipes to drive people to her subscription

An example promotion caption from Victoria Minell

If you’ve previously shared recipes for free, you don’t have to move everything behind a paywall at once. Transition gradually by sharing a mix of free content and exclusive teasers.

Broadcast Groups:

If you have a sizeable Instagram following, a broadcast group can be a great tool to give sneak peeks into your product. Share updates on new content, engage with your audience, and get their feedback through polls. Broadcast groups can help you get more interactions within a platform your audience already uses daily.

Engage your audience pre, during and post production

Newsletter:

Even if people aren't ready to become a paying subscriber just yet, you can use a free tier and newsletter as an incredibly productive funnel into your paid products. People can sign up for free and receive valuable content without having to pay right away. Over time, you can gradually show them the value of switching to a paid subscription. Think about how you might split the tiers. You might offer one recipe a month that is available for free, and have certain newsletter content that is available to all subscribers, not just paid.

Free vs Paid

You might also consider offering a free tier as part of your funnel into paid products. Providing value for free is an excellent way to build a community and give people a taste of what they could get by switching to a paid plan. For instance, if you’re posting five exclusive recipes per week, you could post one free recipe as a teaser. Or if you’re using newsletters, send one out to everyone once a month or fortnight while paying subscribers get more regular content.

Similarly, occasionally posting full recipes on your social media can be a good preview of what's available (but much more of it!) within your subscription.

Don't always think about paywalling your best content. Sometimes, your best content might be a great way to show people that aren't yet subscribed the kind of value you offer. Written an incredible newsletter or created your best ever recipe? Think about sending it to everyone and getting it shared. It's a a great way for people to realise how great your recipes and content are and realise why they should pay for more.

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Other Acquisition Channels

Paid Ads:

Once you feel confident in your offering and your customers are sticking around, paid ads can help you scale. The goal is to acquire customers for less than their lifetime value. For example, if your average subscriber is worth $80 and you acquire them for $20, that’s a 4x return on your ad spend. Meta and TikTok are excellent platforms for running these ads.

SEO:

Write blog posts and recipes that can rank in search engines like Google to drive organic traffic. SEO takes time to build up but can be a powerful, long-term strategy. With Clubb, your posts and recipes are optimized for SEO, helping you get discovered more easily.

Conclusion

Building and growing a paid subscription as a food creator requires thoughtful positioning, a strong value proposition, and a well-rounded strategy for reaching your audience. By focusing on crafting an irresistible offer, using strategic promotions, and leveraging the right acquisition channels, you can establish a sustainable income stream outside social platforms. Clubb gives you the tools to create personalized, high-quality experiences for your audience, but the key to success lies in how you communicate that value and nurture your community over time.

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