The business world requires many other things besides good products and services. Consumers want to be connected with the brands they invest in. Marketing is a great way to create this association, and it can create space for your customers to interact with your brand and each other, strengthening loyalty, increasing engagement, and thus driving growth.
However, how do you architect a healthy community that helps grow your business and suit your customers? We’ll explore community-building powers and how they help you become a successful growth marketer.
Community Building for Growth Marketing
Creating a community around your brand is not a fad; it’s a strategy that taps into every human’s universal desire: connectedness and belonging. If your customers see themselves as a part of this community, they’ll be more involved with your brand, spread their experience, and be more loyal to it.
Deepen Customer Relationships
Community is a powerful tool for creating and maintaining relationships with customers. You’re not just another brand now; you’re a part of their lives, giving them a chance to share, learn, and grow.
- Two-Way Communication: In a community, you engage in meaningful customer conversations. It’s not just you talking to them; you’re listening, responding, and building trust.
- A Community in Engaged Building: Engaged communities are likelier to be brand advocates. The more a customer feels heard and valued, the more likely he will talk about your brand, which causes organic growth.
Community Loyalty by Advocacy
Building a community means belonging, which leads to loyalty. Once customers feel plugged into your brand and, by extension, its values, they turn into your brand advocates and stick around.
- Customer Retention is the secret of a great community that keeps your customers interested even long after purchasing. That means not only retention but also more business.
- Word-of-mouth Marketing: If your community is happy, they will share your brand with satisfied others, and organic word of mouth is essential to growth
How do you Build a Community Around Your Brand?
Community building is work, so it takes time, effort, and a strategy. The steps below are critical to creating a thriving customer-centric community aligned with your brand and growth goals.
Define Your Community’s Purpose
Establish your community’s purpose before you start creating it. Why does your community exist, and what value will it bring to its members? That purpose must align with your brand’s mission and customers’ needs.
- Common Interests: The community should revolve around shared interests, values, or goals for your target audience. Whether it is sustainability, fitness, or technology, the purpose of the community is to group people.
- Find the Problem and Solve It: Your community must solve a real problem to make members thrive. Imagine how your community can help to supply related solutions, support, or education for your audience.
Select the Right Platform
When you’ve decided what you want to achieve in your community, choosing a platform where the community can interact is best. Again, there are a few different ways to do this, depending on who you speak to.
- Social Media Communities: In Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, and Reddit, people freely share and discuss content while developing best practices for online community marketing.
- Dedicated Community Platforms: If you want some control, you can get it on a dedicated community platform. Some of the good dedicated community platforms that offer this are Slack and Discord; alternatively, you can customize your forum. This way, people can get immersed and have a personalized experience.
Engaging Customer Communities
When you have your community set up, your next step is to engage with it. We need you to participate, moderate, and create content to keep a healthy community alive.
- Nudge to Contribute Participation: Ask members for thoughts, experiences, and questions. Get people to feel comfortable as contributors and put them in situations to stimulate discussions about what matters most.
- Content and Events: The next thing you should do is continue to give your members value by offering exclusive content, Q&A sessions, and live events to keep your community alive and give your membership something to return for.
Growth Using Your Community
A well-built community can be more than just an environment of loyalty; it can also be a significant growth engine. Here are some ways to leverage your community to convert your marketing strategy.
Collecting Customer Insights
Your community is overflowing with information. It listens to what members say and doesn’t say and hears their needs, preferences, and pain points.
- Customer Feedback: Get feedback from your community on new products, services, and ideas. This will teach you what to market and even guide you as you refine your offerings.
- Testing New Ideas: Get your new product or feature to market with your community’s feedback so your customers get it. They can help you fine-tune your offering to speak to a broader audience.
Creating Brand Advocates
Most of the concerned group members will become your best advocates. Therefore, they will discuss your brand and draw in new members.
- Ambassador Programs: Create an ambassador program for your community’s most loyal members. These members can represent your brand, rewarding loyalty and expanding your brand’s reach.
- User-Generated Content: Empower your community to create and share content around your brand. Whether product reviews, testimonials, or social media network posts, user-generated content is a great way to gain the trust of your audience and even draw new ones in.
Measure the Success of Your Community
If it’s doing the job you’re supposed to do, community success will help ensure it’s doing its job. Here are some key metrics to follow:
Engagement Metrics
Engagement in a community is one of the most critical factors in a healthy community. However, you should monitor the number of members on your team daily.
- Active Members: The more active participation members you have in your community, the more you will get a sense of how well it’s doing. You’re probably going to have a better chance of keeping your active members engaged, engaging them, and getting them to give you value in your community if you have a lot of active members.
- Post Frequency and Interactions: Your community monitors engagement: if members post regularly and interact with each other, you know people are active in it. Keep track of how often the members post and respond to other members.
Growth Impact
Your business should gain from their input to your general business growth. See how this plays out regarding your critical metrics for retention, checks, and leads.
- Retention Rate: A sense of belonging will draw above-average folks to stay with your brand, and in a healthy community, the retention rate must be high.
- Lead generation: Find out how many new leads or customers you get from your community. This may come as a result of the referrals by the members, or people will join the community and find your brand.
Summarizing
The power of community-building marketing is much more profound in building meaningful connections between your brand and your customers. Beyond strengthening relationships, creating an engaged, loyal community grows business. Are you ready to leverage the powers of the community for your growth marketing strategy?
We’ll build you a space where your customers want to connect, engage, and thrive, and your business will grow.
