Building a community goes beyond transactional marketing; it focuses on cultivating meaningful relationships and shared experiences among users.
While marketing to an audience can generate short-term results, a connected community offers long-term benefits, including increased loyalty, advocacy, and a deeper understanding of your customers' needs. These benefits are all highly valuable to a business seaking to grow in a competitive market.
- Brand Loyalty and Advocacy
- Valuable User Feedback
- Co-Creation and Innovation
- Reduced Customer Support Burden
- Market Insights and Research
- Emotional Connection and Trust
- Resilience during Challenges
A community provides a dedicated space for customers to engage with one another and form personal connections with your brand. These relationships are built on shared interests and experiences, creating a deeper emotional bond. This often results in increased brand loyalty, with community members more likely to be repeat customers and recommend your offerings to others. Word-of-mouth marketing from passionate community members can be highly influential and cost-effective.
In contrast, an audience is often more passive and are unlikely to have the same level of loyalty or advocacy.
Examples
: Harley-Davidson has a passionate community of motorcycle enthusiasts who share a strong sense of camaraderie and identity around the brand. They organise events, rides, and rallies, fostering a tight-knit community that supports the brand and serves as brand ambassadors.
Nike has built a thriving community around its brand by focusing on creating a sense of community among athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Their Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club apps provide tools for users to track their workouts and connect with other athletes, creating a social fitness experience that enhances brand loyalty and encourages users to keep coming back to the brand.
Communities enable ongoing interaction between your business and its customers. This facilitates valuable feedback, suggestions, and insights directly from the users. Understanding their needs and pain points can help you improve your products or services, enhancing customer satisfaction and retention. Users feel more empowered to express their opinions, knowing they are part of a like-minded group. In an audience-centric approach, the interaction is often limited to one-way communication, such as receiving marketing messages, making it harder to gather genuine feedback.
Examples
: Adobe maintains a user feedback portal called "Adobe UserVoice," where customers can submit and vote on ideas for product improvements across various Adobe software products, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.
: HubSpot, a marketing and sales software platform, has an online community called the "HubSpot Community," where users can seek help, share knowledge, and suggest improvements. HubSpot encourages open discussions and gathers valuable feedback to enhance its platform.
In a community, users often become co-creators and participate in the development process. They may suggest new features, share ideas, and create content. This collaborative environment can lead to innovations that align more closely with what your customers actually want because they feel able to express their ideas, knowling they are amongst other people who care about your product. In an audience approach, product development is generally driven by the company without as much direct user input.
Examples
LEGO, the iconic toy company, engages its adult fan community (AFOLs - Adult Fans of LEGO) in product innovation through its "LEGO Ideas" platform. Users can submit their original LEGO set designs, and if a project garners enough support from the community, it is reviewed by LEGO for potential production as an official LEGO set. This approach allows LEGO enthusiasts to contribute to the creation of new products, and successful sets become part of LEGO's official product lineup.
: IKEA, the Swedish furniture retailer, has a "Ikea Ideas" platform where customers can share their own IKEA furniture hacks and modifications. Customers can showcase how they've repurposed or customised IKEA products to better suit their needs. IKEA regularly features these ideas on their website, in their stores, and on social media, incorporating user creativity into their product offerings.
Notion users actively share templates, workflows, and best practices with the community. This collaborative approach enables other users to learn from each other, adopt new techniques, and optimise their workspace setups. The shared templates foster co-creation by inspiring users to build on each other's ideas.
: GoPro has built a community around its action cameras by encouraging users to share their adventurous videos and photos on social media using the hashtag #GoPro. This user-generated content creates a sense of community and showcases the capabilities of GoPro cameras, leading to increased brand awareness and loyalty.
An engaged community often includes members who are knowledgeable and willing to help others. User-to-user support can alleviate the burden on your customer support team, leading to quicker issue resolution and cost savings. In an audience-centric scenario, customer support is typically handled directly by the business, which might create a higher support burden.
: Apple hosts online support communities where users can ask questions and seek help from other Apple product users. Knowledgeable community members often step in to provide answers, easing the support burden on Apple's official support channels.
: Fitbit, a fitness tracking device company, has a "Fitbit Community" where users can interact, ask questions, and find solutions to common problems. Experienced community members provide assistance and support, reducing the number of support tickets that need to be handled by Fitbit's official support team.
Experienced and knowledgeable users, known as "Community Helpers," actively participate in discussions, answer questions, and troubleshoot issues raised by other members. This peer-to-peer support model means that many routine queries are addressed by the community without the need for involvement from official customer support teams. Giffgaff incentivizes active community participation by rewarding members with "Payback Points." These points can be converted into cash, airtime credit, or donated to charity. This system encourages members to engage with the community, creating a self-sustaining support ecosystem.
Your community can serve as a valuable source of market research. You can observe discussions about preferences, trends, and pain points to gain insights into the needs and preferences of your target audience, helping you stay ahead of the competition. The conversations in a community setting are often more candid and authentic, offering deeper market insights compared to traditional market research using an audience as your research group.
Example
Microsoft Tech Community is an online platform where IT professionals and developers discuss Microsoft products and technologies. Microsoft actively participates in discussions to understand user needs, challenges, and feature requests, which helps shape their product development strategies.
A connected community allows for authentic interactions between users and the brand. It helps humanise the business, making it easier to build emotional connections and trust. When people feel connected and trust your brand, they are more likely to remain loyal and forgive occasional mistakes. An audience-centric approach might struggle to achieve the same level of personalization and trust-building as users can’t see the interaction between the brand and other people to know if they should be trusted.
Examples
Lululemon's Sweat Collective is a community program that brings together fitness instructors, coaches, and trainers. The collective members receive benefits, share experiences, and interact with the brand's products. Lululemon's connected community fosters a deep emotional connection, as these fitness professionals become brand ambassadors who embody Lululemon's values and message.
Patagonia's community of environmentally-conscious customers deeply connects with the brand's values and mission. The emotional connection is fostered through the company's commitment to environmental sustainability, which aligns with the community's values.
Etsy's community of independent sellers and buyers creates a sense of connection and trust. The platform encourages interaction, feedback, and personal connections between sellers and buyers, which can foster emotional bonds and repeat business.
A community that genuinely cares about your brand can become a supportive force during challenging times. Whether it's defending your reputation online or providing encouragement during difficult times, a loyal community can be a powerful ally.
In contrast, marketing to an audience without a community focus may result in more transactional relationships. An audience might not have the same emotional connection or willingness to actively support the brand so while it can still drive short-term sales, it might be harder to maintain long-term customer loyalty and engagement.
: Etsy is an online marketplace that connects sellers of handmade and vintage goods with buyers. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions to many businesses, Etsy sellers, who are often small businesses or individual artisans, received immense support from the Etsy community. Customers actively sought out and purchased from these sellers to help them stay afloat during the economic downturn.