Don’t Build A Customer Base, Build A Community
Delivering marketing for two national membership bodies taught me the unique power of building a community among customers. Here’s what I learnt.
Become a community hero!
Each membership group operated in different sectors (automotive and property) but the conversion rates from marketing directed towards their members were similarly high; it wasn’t uncommon for events or products to sell out after just one email. Why? Members of a brand community are 53% more loyal than non-members, making them more likely to engage with the organisation they feel a sense of belonging to. The revenue they generate is also higher; community members spend twice as much per transaction compared to non-members.
A sense of community can be built without a paid membership model, and by businesses of all sizes. Termed ‘community marketing’, it’s a principle I encourage all my small business clients to adopt. It’s cost effective, boosts sales and keeps your customers loyal. Based on my experiences, this is how you can foster and grow a community from the ground up.
What Does Your Community Stand For?
Think about your business and decide what it is that connects it with your customers, and your customers with each other. People join communities for a shared interest or passion. What does your business stand for, beyond selling products? What lifestyle, belief, or aspiration unites your customers? If you can define what this is, you are on the right track to building a community. Here are some examples:
Bakery - You are a bakery with a passion for providing sweet, healthy vegan treats. Your community: Vegan foodies with sweet tooths.
Fruit & Veg Store - You specialise in exciting exotic fruits and vegetables from around the world. Your community: Experimental foodies who love to travel.
Yoga Instructor - You have a passion for helping customers practice Vinyasa yoga in a serene outdoor environment. Your community: Yoga-lovers who find their inner peace practicing in nature.
Doggy Daycare - You provide all your dogs with a stimulating, outdoor environment. Your community: Dog owners who love adventures in nature with their canine companions.
Think about what the meaning of your business is beyond your product offering, and build a community of individuals who share this with you.
Make Your Community Feel Valued
Perhaps the most important factor of community marketing is adding value without directly promoting your business. If you use your group to simply promote your business, any sense of community will fizzle out, fast…
Think about what you can offer your members without expecting anything in return. I worked on several member-only magazines that were created specifically for our communities. These were exclusive publications containing articles as well as member news, which our audiences loved receiving and reading. Going out of your way to provide something useful to those in your community without expecting anything in return is a great way to make people feel special, engaged and included.
Exclusive (branded) items that you may think about providing for your community include:
Handy Checklists – These can help your community out with tasks you know they need to do. For example, a garden centre could offer tips on how to tend to a root vegetable patch over spring.
Premium Stationary – Notebooks and pens can be branded and have the benefit of often being used for an extended period.
Pin badges or Cufflinks – Sophisticated personal items like these can be worn with pride by members of your community.
Calendars – These can be displayed and used all year round.
These gestures will help your members feel the love, remain engaged with their community and strengthen their brand loyalty.
Give Your Community Spaces to Connect
Now you have your community, how will they come together and interact? These meeting points can be physical or online.
Online Community
78% of consumers say interacting with a brand’s online community makes that brand more “top of mind” when shopping. It’s key to building inclusivity, especially if your community is geographically spread out.
Social media is a great place to start building your community. This relates to more than just your followers, however. Private Facebook groups can be ideal places for your community to gather and interact. Encourage your groups to discuss topics with each other, share pictures, or set up polls. It’s important to remember that discussions within these groups should be user-led.
At the same, you should still find ways to interact with members. Do this by:
Welcoming new members to your group through announcements.
Run competitions with the group, offering prizes or exclusive discounts to winners, and announcing the winners on your other platforms.
Ask for feedback or survey responses on a particular topic. It can get people talking while also giving you valuable business feedback. There are many ways you can get input from your community based on their interests, so get creative!
WhatsApp groups are also well suited as discussion platforms for smaller customer bases. At the automotive membership group, member WhatsApp groups were extremely popular, and many meetups were organised independently. These groups offer a convenient and real time discussion platform, too. Although they can run themselves, it helps to have some way of monitoring them, and to have the ability to reach out to the group when appropriate.
Member-only Discord threads or Reddit chains are other discussion platforms which can be set up and monitored.
In-Person Meetups
Community building can also happen in the real world. If it’s feasible, and you know many of your customers are located in a similar area, think about organising local meetups or events where your community can gather, socialise and do what they enjoy. Is it getting out into nature? Trying new food spots? In-person meets up can also fast-track relationship building.
Tone & Language
What words come to mind when you think of community? Likely trust, friendship and support. If you get your tone and language right, you’ll be halfway to instilling these traits within your own community.
Your tone and language should be key considerations from the outset when you are building and maintaining your community. This is because a community is not just group of customers, but a collection of people united by a shared passion, interest or aspiration. To engage and encourage their participation, keep your tone friendly and welcoming, and use language that will be familiar to them. Be mindful of limiting promotional language while speaking to your community, especially at the start.
It's also a good idea to introduce rituals and language which can further bond your community. These can be in the form of member names (‘Explorers’ could be used to address members of an outdoor adventure brand.) or hashtags (#TrailTuesdays could invite members to discuss their favourite hiking trails in Australia each week.).
Offer Guidance & Support
The main reason members chose to join the property membership body I worked for was because of the expert guidance they gained access to. It was exclusive, and unavailable elsewhere.
While you aren’t expected to get industry experts onboard, think about what you could teach your customers based on your personal expertise and business. I’m sure there are several areas that you are well qualified to speak about as a thought-leader. This guidance doesn’t need to be organic; you could create reports or booklets based on the results of surveys you have issued on social media.
Below are some useful formats for guidance that you may be able to offer your community for free:
Exclusive Books or eBooks – Example: A bakery offering a free, digital recipe book to tie in with a seasonal holiday.
Whitepapers or Reports on trends, case studies or hot topics known to your community. Example: An aquarium business authoring an informative booklet about the condition of the Great Barrier reef, and the fish species that are endangered there.
Tutorials, how-to videos, and behind-the-scenes exclusives. Example: A gymnastics instructor offering a video tutorial on a more advanced move.
Exclusive podcasts or webinars for members. Example: A rally car restorer interviewing some of the rallying greats.
Loyalty Programs That Go Beyond Discounting
Loyalty programs are more widespread than ever these days. It’s clear why; they’re successful at keeping engaged customers coming back. Research by McKinsey indicates that active loyalty-program members spend up to 25% more. Exclusive, loyalty-style perks can be a great way to help build community.
While exclusive discounts and money off vouchers are a good starting point, their promotional natures means they won’t necessarily help strengthen a sense of community. Think about what else you can offer beyond discounting, which would appeal to your group’s shared interests. For example, could you bring them together and offer them a first look at a new product through a product reveal at a physical location? Or organise a visit to a factory to showcase the craftmanship which goes into the creation of your newest product? Prioritising your community when you begin selling a new product also helps to build a feeling of exclusivity. Despite being more promotional, ‘loyalty’ perks like these can help customers feel special and bring them together.
Growing and Evolving Your Community
Once you have an established community, you want to grow it with more engaged members. One benefit of an engaged community is that they will likely be open to giving you positive, online feedback; 91% of consumers are more likely to leave a review because they belong to a community. Even better if they recommend the brand and its community to friends and family; 88% of us trust recommendations from people we know. More widely, encourage members to post Google Reviews and use social media to spread the word and encourage others to join.
88% of consumers believe it’s important to be able to share feedback and opinions with the brands they like; a community gives you the perfect platform to do this. Think about giving your community input on brand decisions through polls or test panels. Ask existing members to feedback on what you can improve. What do they want more of? What do they like and dislike? This gives you the double benefit of involving your members whilst giving your business valuable feedback.
Beyond this, paid advertising outreach trough targeted Google Ads or paid social posts can draw more people to your community.
Be A Community Hero!
Brand loyalty is dying out. 71% of Australian consumers are now less loyal to their usual brands. A large reason for this is that few of the big brands succeed in making shoppers feel like individuals.
On the other hand, 41% of consumers say their involvement in online communities will increase in 2024. This is because community marketing focuses on making individuals feel valued, connected and appreciated.
Communities aren’t defined by location or number. They can be created in neighbourhoods, towns, countries or even globally, and can be formed by anything from a handful of members to millions of people. Whatever their base and size, the key thing that community members share is a sense of belonging.
Small businesses can foster communities and offer a personal touch that bigger companies can’t. You just need to find people with a shared passion and have a brand that can speak to them, authentically.
68% of marketers plan to prioritise community-building over the next two years, demonstrating the prevalence of growing customer bases through community-building as a marketing strategy. Its impact is clear. Grow your community, and you’ll grow your business.
