A well-built brand community is invaluable. Increased brand loyalty. Stronger customer retention. A place to test betas, get feedback and share ideas.
But building a viable community that can flourish over time is harder than it looks. If you’re thinking about starting a community for your brand, use these 6 strategies as your guide.
1. Build a Clearly Defined Brand Identity
We could write a book on brand identity. It’s an incredibly complex topic that thousands of brand strategists and academics have approached from all angles. For this article, though, you need to know just one thing: a clearly defined brand identity is essential for building a community.
Re-read that sentence. Not optional. Not important. Essential – as in, you can’t have a community without one. If a random person approached you right now, could you tell them your brand positioning? Could you explain your values without resorting to generic, table-stakes words like ‘integrity’ or ‘client-centrism’? Can you say who you’re for and who you aren’t? Could you point to perspectives that your brand holds that competitors might disagree with? Would your executive team come up with the same answers as you?
If you answered ‘no’ to any of the above, your brand isn’t ready for a community. Work with a brand consultant to iron out your ideal identity, tweak your company and your comms to get your communicated and actual identities in line with that vision, and then come back to this article.
2. Reorient Your Approach
Too often, communities are formed with the wrong intentions. Some executives see them as captive audiences, mobs of buyers so enthralled by a brand that they’ll buy almost any offer tossed in front of them. They community-build to drive revenue.
If that’s your approach, stop. It won’t work. To survive and thrive, a community must be for its members first. Measure success with metrics like net new members and churn rate – the focus should be on growth and member satisfaction.
You can even separate your community-building function from your marketing function. It’s not a novel idea. Just like Marketing shouldn’t own brand strategy – how can one department own an organisation-wide function? – some organisations deliberately split off community building to avoid an improper focus on marketing metrics like pipeline and revenue.
3. Choose a Substrate
You’ve ticked all the boxes. You’ve built a strong brand and your leadership team is committed to creating a true community. Where do you go next?
In science, a substrate is the surface on which an organism lives or grows. Your community is a living thing – more on that in a minute – so it needs a substrate that will nourish it properly. For some brands, that might be a physical location like a brick-and-mortar building or an outdoor venue. For others, it could be a digital space like a Facebook group or forum.
The easiest way to identify your community’s substrate is to work out where your ideal customers like to spend time. Are they big LinkedIn users? Then build a group there, not on Facebook. Are they sick of digital noise? Then organise in-person meetups.
Don’t overextend yourself. Establish your community on just one substrate to start with. Once your roots are firmly entrenched, spread to a second substrate as needed. (And don’t be afraid to pivot if it’s clear your first choice isn’t working.)
4. Make Your Community Organic
A community isn’t a program. It isn’t a machine. It’s an organism – like a plant. So treat it that way. Choose the right substrate. Put in support structures. Give it the nutrients it needs to grow (ongoing promotion and value addition). And then get out of the way.
If you try to over-regulate your community, you’ll stifle growth and, ultimately, drive members away. Just look at the many official subreddits and Facebook groups run by brands that enforce unreasonable rules – members get fed up, leave, and start unofficial communities that quickly overtake the originals in size.
One of the most common reasons this happens: executives see members complaining or venting, become personally offended, and then order that the members in question be banned or otherwise punished. Look, for example, at popular VoIP platform 3CX. The CEO has a history of monitoring the 3CX subreddit and terminating partners who raise legitimate product complaints – an approach that’s damaged 3CX’s reputation among MSPs.
Don’t try to squash dissent. You’ll just add fuel to the fire. Instead, treat each complaint and frustrated rant as free customer feedback. What could you change about your offering or service? How can you improve? Is there a way to address member concerns through marketing and comms?
5. Create Layers of Attraction
Many communities are about creating exclusive value for members. But designing a closed community can be risky – gating is a big barrier to growth. Instead, create layers of attraction.
Think of these layers in 3 ways:
- Outskirts: There’s no access friction and some value added. A good example is a brand social media page or a community subreddit.
- Suburbs: There may be some friction, but access should still be free and fast, like becoming a member of a Facebook group upon admin approval. The value gained here is greater than the value available in the outskirts.
- Songhold: The stronghold is gated in some way, such as by time in the community. (The key is to make access I, not pay-to-play.) The value available here should be exponentially greater than the suburbs. Also consider that stronghold members will be the most invested in your community – they’ll be the people likely to promote it and take on various roles and responsibilities.
You don’t need to have layers of attraction for every community, but it can be a good way to balance exclusivity with growth.
6. Design for Value Addition
Communities only work when the value gained exceeds the investment required. No, ‘investment’ doesn’t just mean fees or other financial costs – it also means time, energy and attention. When you build a community, you aren’t competing against other brands. You’re fighting Netflix, doom-scrolling, legacy media, your members’ family and friends, and all the other things that we devote personal time to. You must have a compelling reason for your ideal buyers to spend time in your community instead.
One way to do that is to provide immense value. If members want the benefits your community delivers and would struggle to get them elsewhere, you’re in a good place. Keep the friction low and continue refining that value, and it’s likely your community will thrive.
Support groups – where members ask and answer product-related questions – will form naturally for certain products once your customer base reaches a certain size. The products in question tend to be higher-ticket and more complex (think, for example, tech products or timeshare).
If you can’t find a way to add immense value and your products/services don’t fit a support group-style setup, try building around something your ideal buyers would be doing anyway. That could be anything from networking or exercising to mum-and-bub meetups. You still need to give members a reason to choose your community over competing options, but, by stacking it on top of another activity, you’ve massively narrowed the consideration set.
Need help designing, building or refining your brand community? Schedule a consultation with us.
