Introducing Biggerplate PRO!
Goodbye Business Club… hello PRO!
This week you may notice some changes on Biggerplate.com, with the ‘Business Club’ label being replaced with a ‘PRO’ label throughout the website. This is part of an exciting evolution of our membership structure and strategy at Biggerplate, so I thought I’d outline the thinking behind the change, and give a sense of what’s to come for Biggerplate PRO members!
First things first: for existing Business Club members, this change makes NO difference to the resources you can access on Biggerplate. If you currently have an active Business Club membership, you still get all the same benefits, but your Business Club membership is now called a Biggerplate PRO membership instead… simple!
Why the change?
Business Club breakthrough
We launched the Business Club back in November 2016, and it has been an extremely successful addition to the Biggerplate world, both for our members, and for our business.
For members, it has provided access to a fantastic range of mind mapping webinars, in-depth tutorials, software discounts and more, all for the bargain upgrade price of $29.99 per year! As stated previously, nothing changes there, except that all these benefits now come under the new Biggerplate PRO branding.
For Biggerplate as an organisation, the ‘Business Club’ has been a breakthrough in our thinking, planning and execution for an ‘upgrade engine’ to sit at the heart of our online business. After testing a number of different upgrade approaches over the last 10 years (yes we have been online 10 years), I’m delighted to say that with Business Club, we feel we finally found the right model, and could now focus our efforts on refining and improving it, both for our members, and for our business.
So, all in all, there was certainly nothing ‘wrong’ with Business Club! However, as we worked to ‘improve and refine’ the model over the last 12 months, a number of considerations lead us to believe that changing Business Club to Biggerplate PRO will provide us with a clearer proposition for more of our members, and a better foundation on which to build new features and benefits!
Here are 3 key considerations that we have working through over the past few months to lead us to this change…
1. Am I a ‘business’ person?
A key question we have asked ourselves over the last year has been whether we were intentionally or accidentally ignoring or excluding members of our community who may feel the ‘business’ label does not apply to them...
This point was perhaps most effectively reflected in some of our mind map training and consulting clients, which includes professionals working in Government, Healthcare, and Education, among other ‘non-business’ sectors.
While these individuals and teams find the content contained within the Business Club invaluable, very few of them would actually identify themselves as ‘business’ people, and as such, have suggested the label may be off-putting or misunderstood by others. A key point here was also that the ‘business’ label is perhaps doing a dis-service to the content available within the upgraded membership. For example, a fantastic webinar on Mind Mapping for Project Management will be just as helpful for a PM in government or healthcare as it is for a product manager in the software world, but those in government or healthcare may not recognise themselves in the ‘business’ label, and therefore never discover what lies behind that Business Club badge.
In the end, we concluded that the ‘business’ label may be making great content and benefits invisible to people who don’t associate themselves with the business world, and therefore largely ignore this label. A different label that can indicate a premium offering, but without such a narrow focus may hopefully serve to interest a wider group, and better reflect the broader diversity of what is provided within the upgraded membership.
2. What’s our education offering?
Certainly linked to the first point, but significant enough in itself to warrant serious consideration is the fact that over the last 12–18 months, we have seen increasing numbers of people registering on Biggerplate from the education sector, which seems to be largely driven by high school/university-age students, and people in teaching and/or education administration roles.
The results published in our 2018 Annual Report really brought this point home, by showing that 21% of our 1,000+ survey participants identified themselves as being from the Education sector, making Education the largest participant sector for the first time in 5 years of our survey.
Clearly, we had a (growing) member population from the Education world that we would not be serving particularly well with our current ‘Business Club’ offering, and as we discussed how to provide improved/tailored content for these individuals, there were a number of options.
The front runner solution was the creation of a ‘Teacher’s Club’ to mirror the Business Club. Although it might not help the growing student population on Biggerplate, at least we’d be doing something education focused… right?
The Teacher’s Club idea remained the working plan for some time, until we began planning this into the existing Biggerplate site and membership structure. As we worked through the planning, we had a growing feeling that there was a high risk of duplication, complexity in how to construct and communicate the two different propositions, and an overall sense that we were missing something (apart from the students). Then we realised what we were missing… what about those non-business, non-education clients we mentioned earlier? Where would they go? Would we need other ‘club’ structures just for them? A ‘Lawyers Club’, a ‘Healthcare Sector Club’, a ‘Not-for-profit Club’, and a ‘Government Club’? And what if someone wanted a mix of content from more than one club? We got tired (and confused) just thinking about it…
It became clear to us that the time, effort and investment required to build and maintain multiple ‘Club’ offerings and membership types would quickly escalate, and without particularly clear benefits for either the members, or our business. We paused on the concept of additional ‘Club’ options, and stepped back to consider what it is we really wanted to provide for our members… which takes us to consideration 3…
3. Learning across disciplines
Perhaps the concept that wrapped all of the above (and more) together in our thinking was the simple idea that learning about mind mapping use in any real-world situation might help you improve your own use of mapping, even if the use case is from a totally different area/type of work to your own.
It only takes one practical tip, one gem of an insight, or one map template/example to unlock an improvement/innovation in your own understanding and use of mind mapping tools and technology, and why does that necessarily need to come from an area that you are familiar with? In fact, perhaps there are more innovative, game-changing leaps to be made by exposure to radically different uses of mapping to your own?
In our delivery of Live Mapping services for events over the years, one of the most interesting (and unintended) consequences for us has been exposure to and learning about a wide range of subjects that we would never normally encounter in our normal day to day work. We have provided live mapping support for events and meetings over the years that have covered a vast and diverse array of topics, from Smart Cities, to the impact of global drug policies on vulnerable women, to the challenges of global climate change!
While it is sometimes hard to say what exact idea or learning from these diverse events we have been able to directly translate into our own work, we are very much of the view that this random mix of topics provides a different type of stimulus for creative thinking and innovation. There is no doubt in our minds that exposure to many different topics is every bit as valuable as heavy exposure to one particular topic or area of specialism.
And yet, here we were, planning the next evolution of our upgrade engine, and (accidentally) coming up with ingenious ways to silo and divide up learning and knowledge transfer for our members based on largely arbitrary lines (Business Club, Teacher’s Club, etc). Not only would our intended plan totally ignore the overlaps that clearly exist between these fields, but it also seemed destined/designed to prevent any cross-over or cross-pollination of diverse and disconnected learning and ideas between these disciplines/sectors/mindsets.
Oops… time for a rethink.
The Conclusion? Biggerplate PRO
By now you probably (and hopefully) see where this was heading, and where we have arrived: A single Biggerplate PRO membership where members can be exposed to all of the same great ‘business’ stuff that existed in the Business Club structure, but now with a whole lot more in addition.
For example, PRO members can look forward to a calendar of live webinars that will continue to feature great business-focused speakers and sessions, but which will now also feature presentations from mind mapping experts, practitioners and innovators in education, healthcare, government, and more!
For members, we hope this change to PRO creates a clear and uncomplicated membership choice: you can opt for Basic (free) membership for unlimited access to the mind map library, or you can upgrade to Biggerplate PRO to access the mind map library plus a HUGE (and growing ) range of extra resources and content to help you get more from mind mapping!
For the Biggerplate team, the decision to restructure things under the PRO banner has served to focus our efforts immensely, and already unlocked a number of exciting projects and opportunities that will be developed for PRO members over the coming months, where previously we had agonised over which member ‘types’ would most benefit from a particular new feature, and who should (and should not) get what features.
We now view (and plan to develop) PRO membership as an all-you-can-eat option, where we intend to pack as much extra content and value into this single upgrade, rather than splitting different benefits and features across numerous different membership types. We hope that a simple A/B choice will help people to more easily understand what they need/want from Biggerplate, and of course, by packing a ridiculous amount of good stuff into the PRO membership, we hope that most people will choose option B…!
As an example of PRO already unlocking a feature idea that had been (stuck) on the table for some time, eagle-eyed (PRO) members may have spotted a new tab within the My Account section on Biggerplate where you can add your own mind mapping videos to your profile… just saying…
We feel really excited to have arrived at this PRO conclusion, and to have avoided what we now realise was an alternative route fraught with potential technical and philosophical problems! This new single upgrade will cater for a much wider section of our member community, and allow us to better showcase the amazing range of insight and expertise that exists within that community, in addition to providing better resources and guidance that we are developing in-house, and with our software partners.
So, what’s in a PRO membership?
Since you asked (kind of), here’s a quick outline of the current benefits of a PRO membership at Biggerplate, all of which is included for $29.99/year:
Live PRO Webinars
Access a regular calendar of live webinars featuring speakers from around the world who share insights into the practical use of mind mapping in a range of different contexts in business, education, and other fields.
View Live Webinars
PRO Webinars On-Demand
Access more than 50 hours of previously recorded webinar content, available to view on-demand any time as part of your PRO membership.
View Webinars On-Demand
PRO Tutorials
In-depth software tutorial videos from the Biggerplate team, to help you get the most out of your favourite mind mapping software.
View PRO Tutorials
Software Discounts
PRO members can access a range of fantastic exclusive discounts from our mind mapping software partners.
View current offers
Image Library
A selection of 100 great images to download and to your mind maps!
View image library
Extended Profile
Add website and social media links to your Biggerplate profile, and (new) add mind mapping videos from your own YouTube channel too!
Still here?
That’s it. Go check out the new PRO Membership page if you’re not already a PRO member… it’s about to get even more interesting!