B2B communities are some of the most profitable types of memberships to create.

You can charge more as you're helping people grow their careers. And if you build a sizable membership in a specific industry, you'll get a lot of interest from brands who want to promote their products and gain access to your members.

A common question we get from our B2B customers is this: what's the best pricing strategy for B2B communities?

We've helped hundreds of successful B2B communities grow including directly working with Mindbody (a B2B SaaS platform for gym and salon owners), Fortune (which offers their community as part of a premium membership), Kahilla ( a B2B professional network for working women), and many more.

Here are 3 pricing models to consider for your B2B community.

Tiered pricing

A popular pricing model for our B2B Hosts is using a scalable tiered pricing structure. With a tiered pricing model, the average price we see is around $10,000 for 50 member accounts, and then it goes up from there.

Many of our Hosts (that's what we call our customers) are drawn to this pricing model because as their communities grow, it becomes very cumbersome to only offer individual memberships for potential customers.

Our Mighty Pro Host, Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR), provides innovative approaches to training HR professionals.

They use individual memberships for their B2C customers offering a one-time or monthly payment option for an annual membership and then for their B2B customers they use a tiered pricing model that scales upwards as the number of members increases.

This is more enticing to their B2B customers who may want to have a large number of their employees join the community.

Flat-rate pricing

Another option you could use for your paid B2B membership community is a flat-rate pricing model.

A flat-rate pricing model is great if you are still looking to offer multiple membership licenses to some of the businesses you work with while also keeping it simple in terms of how the process works.

The PIN Community is an example of a paid B2B membership community that offers both individual membership plans and flat-rate membership packages for those interested in learning about digital capital and business education.

They offer an option for businesses to pay $10,000 for 50 member accounts in the community, in addition to a wide variety of bundle offers for individuals who want to join.

One downside of using a flat-rate pricing model, however, is that you’re most likely leaving money on the table and not maximizing your revenue potential.

Some organizations might want to have a whole team or department join your community. In these cases, having a scalable model like a tiered pricing approach allows you to make more money for the content, products, and services you’re providing.

Another option you can do is take a one-time fee outside of your community platform for a certain number of users through an invoice and then provide your B2B client a number of user accounts that way.

Individual membership pricing

Finally, another option to consider for your B2B organization is charging for individual memberships. With this pricing model, you simply charge a monthly or annual membership fee per member account.

This approach doesn’t have the scalability of something like a tiered membership pricing model, but it does allow you to target more exploratory or career-growth-minded individuals who care a lot about professional development.

Depending on the kinds of content and experience you offer this is a great way to start your paid membership community, develop the best content, and then expand your pricing options when you have a solid foundation.

An example of a B2B network that is using individual membership pricing is Kahilla. They are a professional network helping women progress their careers. They keep their pricing model simple by only offering the individual membership plan.

There is a wide range of how much you might charge for your individual membership plans. For instance, Kahilla charges a $50/month membership fee. In my experience, B2B organizations charge a minimum of around $50 a month for an accessible membership fee and upwards of $2,000 a year for a high-end membership. Some programs will go even higher, between $10,000 to $20,000 if they are serving C-Suite professionals.

Two factors to consider for determining your pricing

Packaging Your Offering

Think about how you are packaging your membership offering. In addition to offering your base membership, you can get creative by bundling it with online courses, certifications, events, or products that you offer.

A great example of this is what PIN Community is doing. Not only do they offer access to their community on an individual or enterprise level, but they also have plans such as their “Investors Pitch Corner” which offers the community as well as an exclusive opportunity to work through your investor pitches with industry leaders.

Additionally, think about what AIHR is doing with their enterprise offering for tiered pricing. While they do offer a cheaper plan for smaller teams, at their enterprise level they bundle additional services which make the offering more enticing.

What’s Exclusive?

When you’re thinking about how to market your paid membership community to different clients, ask yourself” what are your exclusives?”

It’s easy to get caught up in thinking about what you offer in a static fashion that appeals to the largest demographic of your potential customers, but what is an “exclusive” benefit could change depending on who you’re trying to persuade.

You could create exclusive offers to specific B2B clients that appeal to one of their business needs. Another way to tackle this question is to think about how your paid membership community is different from others on the market.

The possibility space for creating exclusive offers for potential B2B clients is large and wide-sweeping. You could offer tailor-made trainings, exclusive community spaces within your network, additional support services, or something else entirely.

If you’d like some more examples of how B2B organizations are pricing their memberships, book a call with our team.

We can show you, specific models, in your industry and examples of how to assemble all of your offers into a Value Journey which is an effective way for members to progress from an individual membership to your premium packages.