Remember how your grandmother would stick to the tiny shop tucked away in the bazaar to buy her spices? Or how your aunt would swear by a certain store for their silk saris? Their brand loyalty was among the greatest assets that these establishments enjoyed. Similarly in this digital era, there are lots of benefits to building an online community because the community has a proven record to promote meaningful engagement with its target audience.
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What Is Brand Community
Online communities are of two types: one is branded communities and other is public social networks. A brand community is a gathering of people who have an emotional connection with your brand. They have been your customers, and having liked your product or service, have signed up to be associated with your brand in a closer way.
Why Build A Community
- Building a community is the surest long-term way to securing a place for your brand in your domain. With time, given the consistency of your product or service quality, your brand community only grows in number and strength. Your brand will benefit immensely from customer loyalty and consequent marketing.
- Building a community demands a good understanding of human needs. A community is integrated by evoking what people appreciate and need in their lives, such as emotional support, holistic growth, and social responsibility, to name a few.
- Traditionally, sellers formed communities by maintaining a group of buyers over long periods of time. An old customer would be given greater discounts on products, and their mutual relationship would be personal.
- A community of followers is attracted to what a brand is associated with, more than the value of the product or service that it provides. You can also read our guide on why startups need a brand guide.
- For instance, Harley Davidson has outstanding brand loyalty. Their community of followers, Harley Owners’ Group, are bound together by a sense of brotherhood that the brand represents and endorses. Starbucks’ community has more than 150,000 members globally, who have contributed various suggestions and ideas that the company has implemented in the form of over 300 innovations. Even the community’s name, My Starbucks Idea, conveys belonging and involvement.
Benefits of Building Branded Online Communities To Your Business
The effect is compounded when brand loyalists come together as a community since they market the brand by playing the role of brand evangelists in their circles.
- Increase in sales: Having a dedicated and trusting following is one of the fastest ways to convert to sales. Advertising a sale in a newsletter can yield tremendous benefits in a very short span of time.
- A powerful marketing tool: Having a brand community means they speak about your brand in their circles. They act as very credible influencers, which is an invaluable asset for your business.
3 Reasons Why You Should Join an Online Community
- A community looks forward to benefits like discounts and loyalty points, additional support with repairs and maintenance, customized services, etc.
- Belonging to a brand community is sometimes a matter of prestige to a customer. Take Rolls-Royce as a brand. Owning a Rolls-Royce is an exclusive and prestigious affair. Membership in the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club is a coveted affair and was earlier limited to people who owned these vehicles.
- The community is a platform for members with shared interests. Additionally, members have access to updates, FAQs, the experiences of existing customers, or merely voicing feelings or concerns (and perhaps even disagreements!), communities enable a platform for expression. This is vital to the domain’s development, and also ultimately benefits the customer in the form of upgraded products and services.
How To Build A Community
To get started, build an email list with members who show interest in what you do. Email marketing through newsletters is a good starting point. Content marketing that is relevant and of good quality attracts more sign-ups. Social media marketing helps your brand gather followers fast.
In the digital marketing era, social media has proved to be one of the most successful ways to build a community. A best social media content calendar has consistently helped a lot in building brand awareness. The sheer familiarity can contribute to relationship building, and consequently, evoke brand loyalty.
3 Ways To Target Online Communities
- Purpose: Find their pain points and their needs. Generate relevant content catered to what they believe will enable an upgraded lifestyle.
- Customer-first: Serve their interests. An exclusive business building should take a backseater while building your brand community.
- Choose influencers carefully: Who would be the best figures to advertise and add credibility to your brand?
What makes a successful online community?
Everyone is building their online community. What should you do to stand out? Here are some tips that help you to make your communities stand out from the crowd.
- Treat community building as a corporate and not merely a marketing strategy for your business. This can be life-saving, as it proved for Harley Davidson. Their sheer volume of customer-centric activities such as positioning a community of riders, and outreach programs, made a huge difference in the way their brand was being perceived. Brand building should involve all departments of your company, especially the ones that interact with customers.
- Encourage the community to speak for themselves by creating an open space to voice their needs, concerns, and feelings. Allowing for conversations provides customers with a feeling of being recognized, validated, and respected. This will provide an added incentive to their participation in the community.
- Use the popularity and traffic of an existing platform by partnering with them, to direct traffic to your website. Not only do you benefit from the alliance, but you also get to choose the type of audience you would want to visit your website.
- Occasionally, use events to communicate directly with your audience. Webinars, online discussion panels, book launches, and even something as simple as a survey you post on a social media platform are engaging in compelling ways. They arouse curiosity and can be used as great indicators of customer behaviour.
4 Community Building Tools That Every Business Should Use
First of all, you need to find out where your audiences are most active and accordingly select the right community platform for your business. Here are some of the best platforms to get started on building a community
- Slack
- Circle
- Mighty Networks
- Tribe
These tools offer a plethora of options to build a community as per your customizations. They also come with a host of engagement ideas such as easy user interaction, gamification, content translated into multiple languages, a moderated interface, etc.
A loyal brand following is one of the most effective ways to long-term brand health. A community ensures a stable source of support, feedback providers, and popularity in your bank. Not to mention the bucks that flow in from an engaged community of buyers.
