In a highly competitive world, it is crucial to stand out and empower your brand’s presence. Today, there is a wide range of marketing tools that can be implemented into your business strategy. They will help strengthen your brand, boost sales and establish better communication with your audience. In our article, we would like to focus on a powerful marketing instrument – brand community.
It is worth mentioning that this marketing tool is effective in promoting both B2C and B2B companies. While the first gathers brand fans, the second one unites professionals from different business areas.
What is a brand community?
A brand community is a group of enthusiastic consumers who gather around their passion about a brand, or the values it promotes.
Why are brand communities important?
Gathering users around a product can be one of the most effective promotion concepts for a business – it doesn’t require a huge budget and creates an expanding circle of loyal customers.
The key idea of a community is communication between brand fans, exchange of useful information, a sense of belonging to something great and important, and maintaining a common lifestyle. For companies, such communities are an opportunity to convey their values and beliefs to consumers and gain a loyal audience.
Individual customers can even become brand advocates – they will recommend your products/service to close people and tag you on social networks. The word of mouth effect still works great.
Communities are created both online and offline. As for the digital world, these are usually social networks and forums where fans can chat with each other in real time and quickly exchange information. As for offline, these are most often some kind of events or clubs of interest where people come. The offline is just as powerful as online because face-to-face interaction creates a stronger emotional connection with other consumers and with the brand itself.
B2B communities are mostly created for professionals from different spheres. Their popularity is currently booming. On B2B online platforms they can network, exchange industry secrets and experience, and even create collaborations with each other. Not to mention the fact that in such communities, experts highlight industry problems and search for solutions.
Bright examples of brand communities
To get a better understanding of what this process looks like, let’s look at the examples of the greatest recognized brand communities.
The first one that comes to mind is Red Bull, famous for its energy drinks and one of the strongest communities. The brand created a separate universe with plenty of sports ambassadors and brand fans. They combine the power of social networking, sponsorship and WOM (word of mouth) advertising to keep their audience informed about different events they hold (including festivals and championships).
Another stunning example is the Walt Disney company. From the USA to Japan and everywhere in between, Disney fans are all connected by a deep love of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and others. This shared passion has led to a number of captivating traditions inside the Disney community that bring people together, including D23 Expo and cosplay meetings.
As far as B2B companies are concerned, there is a great example of high-valued leadership community – Fortune Connect. It is a membership community for executive-bound professionals. Its members attend livestreams, network, and visit events with executives from leading companies: Visa, Unilever, Salesforce, Accenture, and others.
B2B marketers should pay attention to the Exit Five community. It is a valuable group with different questions and advice from other members. If you have some trouble solving your working issue, you can immediately ask for help here. Besides, here you will find a lot of educational content that covers popular marketing topics, delivering smart and practical techniques for B2B marketers.
How to create an effective community
First, companies can’t leave communities without attention. The brand must interact with its participants – create and set topics for discussion, answer questions and receive users’ feedback.
Secondly, you don’t need to limit yourself to one interaction channel. Choose a social network where the majority of your loyal customers are located, develop a community there. Set up a forum on your website. Having created a strong online community, you can then gather an audience for any events outside the Internet.
Third, don’t forget to generate customer loyalty programs. You must make it clear to the audience that not only profit is important to you, but also the care and encouragement of your customers.
Finally, don’t forget to evaluate the results of your brand community. Investments spent on the development of interaction channels and content creation must pay off.
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