In this episode, I’m sharing why frameworks are one of the most powerful tools you can use to design a stronger membership. I break down how frameworks act as the backbone of your community, helping members understand where they are, where they’re going, and what to do next. I also walk through a real example of how a friend redesigned her entire membership around a framework and saw massive growth, plus how I’ve applied the same thinking inside my own programs. If your membership feels overwhelming or hard to market, this is where I would start.

Links I mentioned:

• My guest episode on the Aggressively Human podcast
• Tamara's PMM Camp
• Our 7-Figure Connected Community Model Framework
• Connect with Charlotte Crowther – Framework expert!
• Book a free discovery call here

Let's be friends:

• Connect with Becky on Instagram or LinkedIn
• Read the newsletter at beckypierson.com
• Learn more about Affinity Collective

So recently I've been on a podcast tour, so I've been guesting on podcasts and doing, like, longer interviews on other people's shows, which has grown this show.

So first of all, if you're a new listener, I just want to say hi.

Thank you for checking out the show.

The idea is that it's a short voice note from your smart friend telling you some kind of community membership program strategy that's going to help you grow your membership, make it more engaged, high, higher retention, less churn, less cancellations, all of that.

And yeah, I share a lot of, like, behind the scenes of what's working with our clients, what's working for myself, what's working in the industry that I'm seeing amongst my friends, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that today.

So I was recently on the Aggressively Human podcast, which is a great podcast.

I really love it and it was a lot of fun.

And one of the topics we talked about was frameworks and the power of frameworks.

And I love a framework to build a community from.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about this.

And if you don't have a framework, definitely listen to this because I'm going to talk about why you should.

And I'll talk about at the end, I'll.

I'll kind of get into, like, here's like, the first steps in creating one.

Um, and if you do have a framework, I want you to listen to this because this is going to help you understand how you should be thinking about your framework.

Really, like, powering your community.

I love when our clients come to us and they say, hey, we're building a membership.

Or maybe we have this program or we have this service offers and we want to, you know, package it differently, whatever, and they have a framework that we can work from.

This is especially why I love our author clients.

Because a lot of times there are frameworks within books and we get to build from that, which just makes everything so much easier, because when you have a framework that automatically gives you this, like, backbone of your community.

Frameworks help members understand where they are, where they're going, and what to do next.

And if you've been listening to the show for a while or followed my work, then, you know, I care a lot about designing strong member journeys.

And that's how we really start to, like, build, build habits, drive engagement, drive member success, because they're actually doing the work and following the steps.

And so no matter what you're helping people do, giving them frameworks, tools, resources, all of that is really helpful in doing that.

But instead of saying like, hey, here's a ton of resources, figure it out.

We're giving them like a step by step map that they can follow that doesn't feel overwhelming because it's in this like digestible framework form.

I want to talk about my friend Tamara who runs PMM Camp.

So she's a product marketer, runs a community for other products, product marketing leaders.

And she has been working really hard on developing her framework.

She launched it, I think in January or maybe the end of last year.

And her framework is all about how to be a product marketing leader.

It has five modes of PMM leaders and it's really like these five different areas so that people can measure their strengths and their weaknesses and really like dive into the area that makes the most sense for them to dive into.

She has an assessment that she developed that is an incredible lead magnet for her.

I'm sure what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna link her website in the show notes so you can actually like dive in and check it out.

So like, if you go to her website, like the second section on her marketing homepage currently is like an an overview of the framework and that's how like present it is in the community.

And since she has launched this framework, what she's done has she's updated her member journey, she's updated her marketing and she's updated her programming.

So what I mean by this is like she's really designed her entire, redesigned her entire membership around this framework and taking people through these stages and giving them something where it's like a really measurable way to see where their strengths and weaknesses are, what they need to work on and how they can really like dive in and establish their like growth areas.

Right.

And so it gives them this really clear roadmap.

So she made these updates to the member journey and then she designed the programming throughout the year that really like aligns with this framework in general.

And then her marketing aspect, like you'll see it's on the second div of her of her website, she has her assessment, which is a great lead gen tool.

She's sharing a ton of infographics on LinkedIn that all kind of like tie back so the framework.

So it's kind of like we drill down into it and we're getting really into the details, but at the end of the day it all drills back to like the high level framework and it's super easy to digest and understand.

Um, and her growth has never been better.

I'm not going to share numbers because I don't know if I'm allowed to.

But I will say like her growth has never been better.

She's in an amazing place and it's all because she's made these shifts and really oriented her membership around her framework and her model.

And so I want you to just kind of like have that in the back of your mind.

I've done something similar with the collective, the, the membership for my affinity clients where we have our seven figure connected community model that we use as our back backbone framework in our services.

This is like what we use.

It has resources and sops and everything tied to every single stage of this framework and we've used it with our clients one on one and now we're scaling it and using it amongst the membership as like our backbone curriculum and it's driving our programming in really similar ways that I just described for Tamara.

So I really believe in this so much that I've done it for myself is what I'm getting at.

One of the main things that I think is valuable that I like kind of glossed over so I just want to hit it home again is that with a framework your progress feels way more trackable.

I think one of the challenges with memberships or programs is like people come in and then we have these like baseline numbers, right?

Like this is where they're at today, this is where they want to be and we can collect that data.

But actually showing them like here's where you're at and then giving them the opportunity to kind of like reassess later and see what their growth looks like, it's super powerful.

And this is stuff we see in like grade school and it's stuff we see in corporate environments where it's like your scores are getting better, you're getting better at this task or this thing that you're doing.

We can actually build that into our programming for memberships and programs as well, which obviously can have so many positive impacts, especially on marketing.

Because if you're able to say like, you know, the, the product marketing leaders that join our membership have XYZ growth and then this is how that impacts their career, that's a way higher compelling message than like, hey, join our community, you're going to mark to get to network with other product marketers, like that's going to attract some people, but not like a lot of people and not the right people probably.

And so the more you can be specific about the growth trajectory and how you're actually serving People and helping them reach their goals and helping them do whatever it is like the practice that you're leading, the more likely they are to buy and then stay retained.

Frameworks also create this like shared language.

Like with tomorrow she can say like, you know, oh, you know, the five modes of PMM leaders and start talking about what it means to be the activator and her members are really going to understand what that means.

And so you're creating this like shorthand or reference points or like inside language that your members share, which is super powerful because it can be really helpful with culture building and your word of mouth marketing because people are speaking in this like separate language and especially with AI and everything, like it makes it a lot easier to stand out.

I think that this is a huge differentiator opportunity.

And in today's climate where it's like this is this shared language that I've created for my people that I can market and talk about and you can consistently talk about your framework and your marketing because as we've all been taught and it's hard to practice, so we should be repeating the same things over and over and over.

So you know, always leaning, coming back to like your framework and using that language again and again is going to be really important.

And so it's kind of why I will say things like, oh, we're going to talk about architect, you know, the architect stage of building your community and like really working on your foundations.

And that's something I repeat over and over.

And I've, people have started to say to me like, oh, Becky helps you like with your architecture or like the architecting of your community.

And it's like, yep, that is a word that is in my framework that I've been using.

And now people are starting to repeat it back to me.

Okay, so if you don't have a framework yet and you want to create one, what I want you to do is start it.

Start to notice the patterns of everything that you are using with your clients.

Clients, either one on one or in group setting.

But what are, what is the general process that you're taking people through?

What are the tools and resources that you're using?

What are the, the frameworks that you already use that exist?

Like for me, I remember I had something called the transformation membership model.

And I talked about how, and I talk about this a lot, like what actually drives engagement?

You have a backbone roadmap.

That's why people buy, you have programming, that's why they engage.

And then you have connection, which is why people Stick around.

And that builds community.

So this is like this framework that I've been using for a long time.

But what I learned from my friend Charlotte Crowther, who helps like, you know, huge, huge creators and authors build their frameworks, she taught me that we have a primary and then we can have secondary frameworks, but our primary framework should encompass everything and should it should encompass all categories across our work.

And so you kind of have to like put everything on a whiteboard or put everything in a big pile and like sift through it and organize it in a way that makes sense.

Like what is the actual journey and stages that you take people through and what are the resources that you use at those different points.

And then you can start to sort of like affinity map this and decide, okay, these are the three to five key areas that we take people through.

And then you can start to have fun with like the naming and structure of it.

But you have to do that background work to like collect the things and create the patterns first.

One of the exercises I've given clients that has been helpful in the past for framework work is like imagine you're working with one, a client one on one, or a member one on one, and you want to take them from A to B, the general transformation you help serve and like, what is the step by step process you take them through and what tools are you using along the way.

And that exercise has been really helpful for me and also my clients in deciding, like, what should member journey look like?

Of course there's nuance and so we want to build that nuance in.

But generally speaking, that's like a really good place to start.

So collate all of the things that you have, all of the resources that you use.

Try this exercise of like a step by step process for one client and see what you start to come up with if you're interested in working on this together.

I do.

We do some of this in our strategy sessions where we'll work on like member journey specific to frameworks.

And when people come to us and they say, like, hey, my membership's working in a lot of ways, but like, I really don't have a strong member journey, then sometimes we like really drill into the framework piece.

So if that's something you're interested in, book a free discovery call with my team.

There's a link in the show notes.

So in the show notes, I'm going to also include the link to Tamara's PMM camp so you can check it out.

Because I just think it's an incredible example and I also will include a link to walking through our framework so you can see an example and like how we work with clients and then yeah that discovery link is there if you would like to book a call with my team to talk about how we can help you do this.

So I hope you enjoyed this one.

I hope you have a framework or you're working on a framework.

Launching my framework and my business in the past year has been hugely beneficial in helping me create stronger offer suites, stronger products and services and a strong membership for my customers which has been awesome.

So okay this is a long one but I think it's like a really important topic and I'd love to know what questions you have and maybe I'll do a part two on frameworks because I know this was a lot and DM me and you know share this episode with a friend as well if you it really was helpful for you.

Okay thanks guys.