Community Marketing:
10 Tips for Successful Community Marketing
- Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive conversation with prospects and customers. While marketing communication strategies such as advertising, promotion, PR and sales all focus on customer acquisition, community marketing focuses on the perceived needs of existing customers.
- There are two types of community marketing:
- 1) Organic or natural marketing happens without the company’s assistance. Organic marketing is word-of-mouth marketing and is one of the most effective marketing methods.
- 2) Sponsored community marketing is promoted by the company through activities such as investing in local community improvement initiatives or corporate social responsibility.
- An online community is a bit like a construction project. You provide the building blocks and mortar to create the environment where your members will live. Once built, however, you need a plan to bring people in. The traffic you attract—or fail to attract—will be the measure of your success or failure.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- 1 Community Marketing:
10 Tips for Successful Community Marketing
- 1.1 What is Community Marketing?
- 1.2 Why is Community Marketing Important?
- 1.2.1 1. Don’t Rush, But Proceed Strategically
- 1.2.1.1 1. Develop Your Strategy
- 1.2.1.2 2. Identifying Key Stakeholders
- 1.2.1.3 3. Engagement Is What You Need
- 1.2.1.4 4. Soft Launch
- 1.2.1.5 5. Promote Your Community
- 1.2.1.6 6. You Are the Boss
- 1.2.1.7 7. Know Your Demographics
- 1.2.1.8 8. Set Some Rules, But Don’t Be Too Strict
- 1.2.1.9 9. Listen to Your Community
- 1.2.1.10 10. Don’t Let the Haters Get You Down
- 1.2.1 1. Don’t Rush, But Proceed Strategically
- 1.3 Conclusion
Typ |
Zielgruppe |
Aktivitäten |
Kosten |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organisch | Kleine Unternehmen | |
Niedrig, erfordert aber viel Kreativität |
| Natürlich | Große Unternehmen | |
Sehr hoch |
What is Community Marketing?
Community marketing is a strategy that involves building an engaging brand presence to interact with a community of existing customers. This type of marketing takes place in venues such as Facebook groups, online message boards, and Twitter accounts. These communities give members a place to make their needs known, and they give companies the opportunity to respond and make them feel as important as they are. While other areas of marketing—such as advertising and public relations—typically focus on acquiring new customers, community marketing emphasizes the relationship with customers a brand already has. According to Frederick Reichheld of Bain, “For a company, acquiring a new customer is six to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one.” By focusing on the needs of their existing customers first, companies can avoid spending money on advertising to attract new customers.
By building and nurturing connections and relationships with existing customers through in-person or online communities, everyone benefits. Companies receive valuable feedback on their products and insight into their interactive online presence, while customers feel valued and are more likely to express loyalty to the company.
Kiehl’s, a global high-end beauty and body care company, has been in business since 1851. In all those years, the brand has never advertised to new customers. Instead, Kiehl’s relies on community marketing aspects such as word-of-mouth, active employee involvement in the community, free product testing, and a deep interest in customer needs to remain the successful brand it is today.
Why is Community Marketing Important?
Community marketing is an especially important tool when combined with social media, as modern consumers expect more than an impersonal, one-way relationship with the products and services they use. They expect customer service that is available to answer their questions and address their concerns. By implementing an effective community marketing strategy, companies can provide exactly that. Community marketing removes the distance between brands and their customers, leading to a more loyal customer base and a stronger overall reputation.
According to Mindjumpers, although almost every major nonprofit and university in America has a Facebook presence, fewer than 60% of Fortune 500 companies do. Establishing a community marketing presence on Facebook or another platform, however, leads to:
- Increased feedback and identification of customer concerns
- Improved customer-focused product development
- Reduced communication barriers
- Optimal positioning for damage control if needed
- Enthusiastic word-of-mouth marketing
- Valuable transparency
There are two types of community marketing: organic and sponsored. In an organically formed community, customers will begin interacting with each other without the brand’s help. This means customers may set up their own brand-focused message boards or interact via Twitter accounts and other forums. This can take the form of a monthly “John Deere Tractor Owners Happy Hour” or a public message board set up for Milwaukee Tool maintenance advice. Customers can connect, ask questions, give feedback, and form their own perceptions of the brand. While encouraging, this can also be worrying. If customers are unhappy with a product, both the product and the brand can suffer exponentially. Given this, it’s important for companies to monitor discussions about their brand so they know when a product isn’t meeting public expectations.
A sponsored community marketing initiative developed by the brand itself involves creating the right social media platforms that allow customers to interact not only with each other but also with the brand. By monitoring and valuing customer interaction, responding to questions and concerns, and providing your customer base with valuable information, you can gain loyal customers who view your brand as an ally. Both forms of community marketing, when applied correctly, will connect existing customers with each other and with the brand, fostering interactions based on loyalty and satisfaction.
Harley-Davidson, the legendary American motorcycle brand, saw the loyalty, passion, and camaraderie of Harley enthusiasts and decided to cultivate it. Over the past decades, the Harley community has grown into an expected institution, consisting of the world’s largest motorcycle club, online forums, cafés, travel services, riding gear, and more.
1. Don’t Rush, But Proceed Strategically
An online community is a bit like a construction project. You provide the building blocks and mortar to create the environment where your members will live. Once built, however, you need a plan to bring people in. The traffic you attract—or fail to attract—will be the measure of your success or failure.
Ideas can be as simple as including details about your community at every “touchpoint” you have with customers, such as outgoing email signatures, voicemail messages, or printed materials. Research and discover where your customers currently reside online—it might be Twitter or Facebook—then build your presence there. But be sure to funnel them back to your own community.
We’ve tracked hundreds of communities founded and then turned into ghost towns because the fundamentals of member recruitment were missing. If you’re unsure whether to launch a community, test the waters with a decent blog. When you start getting a good level of comments, that’s a strong indicator your customers are ready to talk.
1. Develop Your Strategy
Customer communities can form organically on their own, or it’s up to your company to lay the foundation for a community and bind your customers to it. In either case, companies are responsible for developing and maintaining the appropriate brand image in each community.
First, a company must decide where to bring its customer community together. Depending on your product’s demographic, different platforms make sense. For example, a community of teenagers or twenty-somethings may gravitate toward a Facebook or Twitter–based community. A group of web developers might be more inclined to participate in a straightforward programming forum. Older consumers with limited internet experience are more likely to attend an in-person meetup in their city. Choosing the right venue for community marketing will encourage participation.
Next, it’s important to decide exactly what you’ll offer customers through this interaction. Will this community be a place to receive special offers, get troubleshooting advice, share stories with fellow enthusiasts, or all of the above? This desire for mutual benefit should be one of the main goals of a community marketing campaign, and everything should be delivered in the right brand voice.
Community marketing campaigns are one of the best ways for a company to develop its brand voice. Because communication within a community is two-way, the brand has numerous opportunities to interact with customers. Through these interactions, the brand can accurately assess how it’s perceived and adjust accordingly.
2. Identifying Key Stakeholders
Once you’ve determined the need to form your community, the next step is identifying your company’s stakeholders. You can consider three categories of stakeholders:
- Those who will manage the community. In external communities, this group may include the community manager, the marketing department, and/or customer support. Stakeholders can vary widely for internal communities.
- Those who will be affected by the community. In an outward-facing community, marketing is generally involved because the answers you seek have the greatest impact on them. If the community provides feedback on product improvements, product management may also be included.
- Senior management. This stakeholder is the person accountable for the community and everyone affected by it. Usually, this executive might be a COO or CMO overseeing all digital experiences.
Another way to identify stakeholders is to link the role of the community manager with that of social media management. Your marketing team, operations department, customer service, or even a dedicated unit may be tasked with launching the community. In that case, each department will likely focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) relevant to them.
Marketing KPIs:
- Market share
- Customer sentiment
- Mobilization of influencers and advocates
- NPS – Net Promoter Score
Operations:
- Operational efficiency
- Reduced support costs
Customer Service:
- CSAT – Customer Satisfaction Score
- NPS
Product Management:
- Product testing
- Market research
- Beta testing
- Customer feedback
Typically, just one person is tasked with launching the community. However, by leveraging resources, community marketing expertise, and other talents within your company, your launch can be less stressful and more successful. Here’s an excellent example of a community marketing video from Encinitas.
3. Engagement Is What You Need
Building communities takes time and commitment to make it happen. If you’re confident your community marketing strategy is right, stay the course. For every community I’ve seen fail due to lack of traffic, two others were abandoned for a perceived lack of progress.
To make your community a success, you must nurture it. Allocate resources to community marketing, especially in the early days, to support growth. The SellerDeck community is amazing because it has so many experts—but it wasn’t always that way.
4. Soft Launch
Once you’re satisfied with your community’s features, it’s time to prepare for a soft launch. The purpose of a soft launch is to ready your community for its full public release. A great example of a soft launch is Big Fish Games’ introduction of their new game: Dungeon Boss. While preparing for launch, they listed their app as part of community marketing in the Apple Canada Store and drove users in a closed, private environment to their community forum. They received a lot of customer feedback, some of which was incorporated into the Dungeon Boss game title. When they went global, it became one of the most downloaded games.
A great example of a soft launch is Big Fish Games’ introduction of their new game: Dungeon Boss. While preparing for launch, they listed their app in the Apple Canada Store and drove users in a closed, private environment to their community forum. They received a lot of customer feedback, some of which was incorporated into the Dungeon Boss game title. When they went global, it became one of the most downloaded games.
5. Promote Your Community
Once you’ve set your date, it’s time to spread the word to your target audience. The best way to do this is to leverage the benefits of community marketing on your existing online presence. Promote your launch as a community marketing strategy across your website, via email communication, and by having your sales and customer service teams inform existing and potential customers about the launch.
Here are some additional tips for effective community marketing to help you attract your first 100 members:
- Invite your contacts. No, it isn’t always fun to bombard your family, friends, or professional connections about something you’re working on… but it works.
- Talk to everyone, everywhere. Get comfortable speaking with people wherever you go, especially if your community revolves around a product or service of broad appeal.
- Enlist help from new members by making it a game. Ask your growing early group to help expand the network by inviting their friends, colleagues, and digital connections. You can encourage this with contests or reward systems built into your platform.
- Collaborate with influencers. Partnering with a related, complementary brand can be an effective community marketing tactic to promote your new community and welcome new members who like both products and services.
- Ensure all your Google and webmaster tools are configured properly. Provide a sitemap and make your community discoverable. Once these steps are complete, your chances of a successful online community launch are high.
6. You Are the Boss
Communities need leaders—it’s a tough role because many hats must be worn, including politician, preacher, and even police officer. You must define how you’ll approach each role, but consistency is key. Leading in a community is about engaging and inspiring others. Constantly ask yourself: “Am I doing a good job?” If not, ask for help. Good leaders will help set the tone for the rest of the community, so it’s important to get it right.
7. Know Your Demographics
We recommend dividing community members into three camps: beginners, casual users, and hardcore fanatics. While it sounds clichéd, it’s true. These camps typically play different roles: newbies ask questions, fanatics answer them, and casual browsers move the needle—or get bored and go elsewhere.
Be very careful about getting too cozy with the fanatics: although anyone interested in your offering is valuable, they probably make up only a small slice of your community pie. The trick is to work with the most dedicated posters to facilitate interaction with casual browsers. Your goal is to build a community, not chase the whims of a small minority, no matter how tempting that might be.
8. Set Some Rules, But Don’t Be Too Strict
If you want to build a successful community, you need rules. These rules must be the cornerstone of your community’s existence. Without guidelines governing how your community is run, prepare for chaos. Trust me, nothing devalues a brand more than customers airing grievances in your public space. The real purpose of a community, however, is to empower your customers to speak as part of community marketing. Don’t stifle conversation just because it’s directed at you or exposes a potential weakness in your offering.
We all mess up sometimes; what matters is how we respond when we do. Be honest and transparent with your community. This gives you a chance to learn what your customers really think. Listening to feedback and engaging with criticism shows you’re proactive and committed to creating better solutions for your customers through community marketing.
Here’s an example of basic rules from a large Telegram community, a well-known messaging service.
What to Do When Your Rules Are Broken?
While some users will adhere to your rules, others will inevitably break them. When that happens, don’t immediately bring down the ban hammer. Instead, be gentle and courteous with new offenders. They may have had a bad day or simply didn’t know the rules. Issue a polite warning and make sure they understand what they did wrong.
If you find the same person repeatedly breaking the rules despite warnings, then impose a strict penalty. This will make your community better for everyone.
9. Listen to Your Community
Your community consists of your members, not the founder. Pay attention to topics your members bring up. If something negative arises, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist or delete the concern. Respond kindly and work to resolve the root of the problem.
You’ll often find members returning to retract, edit, or apologize for their initial negativity once their issue has been resolved.
Not every member is great at communication or needed for community marketing. Here’s an excellent example of how to treat your community members and answer their questions.
10. Don’t Let the Haters Get You Down
At some point, you’ll have a good run—whether deserved or not. Because of the disconnected nature of online communities, people behave differently than they would face-to-face or even on the phone.
Here’s an example of professionally handling criticism in community marketing:
Managing aggressive criticism while respecting freedom of speech requires a delicate balance, so never respond poorly in a public space. It can be humbling. However, if your efforts to engage with customers are undermined by abusive members, you must act. Exclude that person if they persistently ignore your requests to moderate their behavior.
Conclusion
