Memecast #13: Subscribers Buy Benefits

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The reason we even have this meme is because too often, companies think, ‘Oh, I need to go subscription.’ </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They want to transition from a traditional business model to a subscription business model.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And they often think of it as a payment plan. ‘Oh, I used to charge this. Now I'm going to charge this divided by 36 each month. And that gives me a three year payback.’</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And even if the math works out, it's not the right way to think about it. </span></p> <p><strong>“Subscribers buy benefits, not products, they don't take ownership.”</strong></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">- Mark Stiving</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What you want to think about is, what's the stream of benefits my customer gets when they buy my product, because what you really want is for them to get that stream of benefits month after month after month. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They're happy paying you month after month after month, because they're getting those benefits. If you can think through clearly what are the benefits that you deliver, then you might be able to restructure your product so that you can deliver those benefits more visibly more easily more readily. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And then you can think through what are the detriments of the way you sell your product today? And is there a way we could overcome some of those because we go for a subscription. We want easy detriment is instead of giving you all that money upfront, I get to pay you a month at a time. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And by the way, if I don't like your product, if you're not delivering value to me, I get to churn out and I get to unsubscribe, so it gives buyers or customers the ability to try our products without committing huge amounts of money. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-