Is Your Business Right for Community-Led Marketing Strategy?

While communities have existed for as long as human beings have, brand communities are a relatively new concept. Customers are now creating deep connections with fellow supporters of a specific brand, and even the brands themselves. The rise of brand communities marks a new opportunity for marketers to connect deeply with their customers.

Why are brand communities so powerful?

Brand communities are powerful because they tap into the social and emotional needs of human beings. They create tight-knit associations between a person's identity and the brands they choose to support.

One study on multiple “love” and “hate” brand communities shows that members of “love” communities “are more motivated by emotions, passion, and validation.” People use brand communities to express passion and have that passion reflected back through relationships with other community members. Brand communities are also powerful because of their self-supporting nature. Community members maintain active relationships with each other, often without the need for a brand to interject. Marketers have known that communities are a powerful source of brand advocacy, but creating them or connecting with them has been a difficult process. Community based marketing has risen from the need to have systems and principles that can help guide marketers to better connect with groups of dedicated customers.

What does community marketing entail?

Community marketing is the connection of a brand to a specific community, using a platform to communicate, exchange values and create mutual meaning. The platform does not have to be digital, and communities do not have to be started from scratch.

Brands can choose to work with established groups or create their own. Either way, community-building requires marketers to start conversations, establish opportunities for connection (like events or groups) and create meaningful traditions.

Community-building is a long-term process that requires care and consistency. At its core, it is about relationship building, and strong relationships require trust and time to flourish. It also requires marketers to relinquish control to their advocates, who won’t always agree with a brand’s ideas or point-of-view.

So, with much more straightforward, data-driven options like social media marketing and advertising, why should community marketing be part of the strategy?

What are the benefits and drawbacks of community marketing?

Benefits

1. Better customer experience

Put simply, brands that provide incredible customer experience see major boosts to their revenue.

Community marketing, when done correctly, gives marketers a better understanding of their customers and provides an extremely authentic touch point for a number of initiatives like handling customer complaints, gathering product feedback, nurturing advocates and much more. The insight of active community members can provide a treasure trove of information that helps brands figure out how to deliver the most well thought out experience.

2. More relevance and loyalty

Effective loyalty programs inspire customers to repurchase and build a consistent relationship with brands. For marketers, it's an incredible system that keeps acquisition costs down and builds brand equity. Unfortunately, building loyalty programs is not easy.

According to consulting firm Kantar, 71 percent of consumers now claim that loyalty incentive-programs don’t make them loyal at all. Incentivising customers to repurchase is no longer enough, loyalty programs need to be more relevant and varied, allowing customers other ways to build a relationship with brand.

For brands, that means maintaining a constant and timely symbiotic relationship. A strong community helps build this consistency as community members are interacting with each other and relying on each other for purchasing decisions. In the case of communities with online platforms, brands can also be quick to respond to questions or complaints, adding another layer of responsiveness that pushes potential customers in the right direction at the right time.

3. Word of mouth growth

72 percent of customers stated in a survey that they are willing to share good experiences with others (62 percent also said they would share bad experiences with others). Strong communities are filled with willing advocates that recommend products and vouch for a brand. Depending on the way a community is set up, they can also grow organically as members invite their networks to join.

Building great brand communities creates a channel that can lead to great market insight and organic growth through word of mouth.

4. Brand and customer humanization

A common theme mentioned throughout this guide is the importance of brand authenticity. Marketing often feels hollow or inauthentic when trying to make customers feel like their human needs are considered.

Good community marketing gets around this issue by putting the power in the hands of community members themselves. Members will share their honest opinions on products (for better and worse), post authentic user generated content and create their own unique relationships that cannot be replicated by a brand. The end result is a more human, authentic experience for brand fans.

Drawbacks

1. Unique skill set required

Community based marketing looks intuitive at surface level, but is incredibly difficult to do. Many of the principles of community-building are in direct opposition to traditional performance marketing. It is difficult to track the impact of communities, and it is difficult to create highly targeted messaging. Brands also must be willing to face negative reviews with honesty, speak frankly and work closely with members to understand their needs.

Marketers also need to be extremely authentic in their communication and constantly fine-tuning their approach based on how community members are responding. Members can quickly turn on brands that fail to sound authentic across any single touch point.

2. Long term approach

While not exactly a negative, marketers need to understand that a community strategy is long-term. Attempting to work with a community to boost sales immediately or launch an ad campaign can backfire quickly.

Community marketers will need to be prepared to focus on long-term brand building and customer experience, which can often mean foregoing short-term campaigns or targets.

3. High commitment

Similar to the need for long-termism, community marketing requires marketers to invest time into building or supporting community infrastructure, listening to members, taking in information and communicating constantly. Speed, personalisation and authenticity are major benefits in community-marketing, but they require a team's constant attention.

The Time Is NOW

The clarity of community marketing’s value in a modern and connected world is clear. What is still difficult to understand are the specific methods and tools that can be used to create and drive excellent brand communities.

1. Create advocacy and ambassador programs

Advocates and ambassadors are anchors of a community, driving conversations, setting up events and making newcomers feel welcome when they join. When tapping into brand communities, advocates are extremely important.

Brands need to be able to connect with these advocates and motivate them to contribute to communities, and this can be done in the form of an advocacy program or ambassador program. An advocacy program is a system that rewards and encourages customers to advocate on behalf of a brand. These programs are often set up as rewards programs, VIP clubs, or even paid/commission-based ambassador positions.

2. Online platforms

Online platforms like Facebook groups are an easy way to connect to communities that need a digital place to coalesce. Marketers can create this space and moderate it to start conversations, communicate offers and gather feedback. Once again, it’s important to understand the balance of control that customers expect. If brand activity overshadows community relationships, customers may turn against the brand or abandon the group if they feel it is becoming a one-to-many advertising channel instead of a space for people to connect and share.

3. Support a social cause (and mean it)

One of the most powerful tools that marketers have when it comes to building communities is the support of social causes. People naturally form strong bonds when it comes to supporting causes they are passionate about, something made evident by the global wave of climate protests that bloomed from a single activist in Sweden. Bonds like this aren’t just limited to other people—76 percent of consumers expect brands to have a positive social impact on the communities in which they do business.

Marketers can get behind causes in a number of ways, including sponsoring social organisations, hosting events or making charitable donations. The most crucial component of this method is for brands to prove themselves to customers. Pepsi, for example, was accused of being tone-deaf for producing a human rights themed advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner. Consumers quickly pointed out the advertisement’s lack of authenticity and spread the word throughout their networks.

4. Host events

Events are a straightforward tool for creating shared meaning and traditions within a community. Physical events are especially effective since they provide space for people to interact face-to-face and potentially meet the human beings behind a brand.

Events are typically neither easy nor cheap to plan, so it is important to first understand what would compel people to show up, and how to keep them engaged thereafter.

5. Gifting

Gifting is one of the tools that Lululemon used to to quickly grow out local communities. Local ambassadors would get gifts like yoga mats that could then be passed on to a fitness studio or instructor's clients. Gifting creates tangible value for a customer and boosts their sense of good faith. However it's no silver bullet, gifts are not samples—they should not be given with the expectation of a future purchase. Gifts should also be relevant to both the brand and the community to ensure the best match of value to community member.

How is community marketing measured?

The greatest barrier for marketers to implement a community based marketing strategy is the difficulty in measuring success. There are no industry established community marketing metrics that can quantify an initiative, and much of the value in community marketing is tracked through qualitative study and observation.

With that being said, the impact of community marketing can still be measured through standard goal setting and tracking technologies such as affiliate marketing platforms.

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