Have you ever interacted with a brand community?
One good example of a brand community that I have interacted with is Sephora community. From my experience, it evidently serves the purpose of a brand community, which are facilitating marketers with:
distributed customer service as users can help to answer another user's question,
knowledge sharing of super users as users can share their best practice with the brand,
distributed content generation as users actively contribute to generating content,
shared product experience as users share their experience with the brand,
brand loyalty and retention as community owner can incentivise loyalty from their users, and
product innovation as users can share their feedback or new idea for the brand.
Getting started
Marketers can jump on the bandwagon by creating their own brand community. This brings more control towards conversations happening within the community and many activities can be done within the space. This also facilitates a long-term retention strategy. On the other hand, the cost may be likely higher and tend to have lower ROI.
Another way for marketers to engage with communities is by leveraging existing communities. Marketers can approach existing communities in their product category and contribute to the community. While the possible activities are somewhat limited and conversations can't be controlled, the starting cost would be relatively lower.
Maximising the output
There are some tips to take into account to make the best of brand community:
Facilitate consumers with value-driven community
One may argue that community serves to provide value to business. I believe this should not be the case; it is important to constantly participate in providing value in the community, for the reason that consumers are also seeking value through joining the community. Moreover, marketers have to constantly ask the reason consumer's participation in a community and think of how to facilitate their needs. To establish loyal advocates, marketers need to give their utmost effort in providing value, even to the extent of being indispensable that consumers are making the community into part of their lives.
Communicate your value
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, once said:
If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.
In many occasions, consumers want to know the value that the brand stands for. Maybe not so much for a heuristic type of purchase, but if they can resonate with a certain brand's value, it increases the likelihood to purchase that brand instead of others. Considering that consumers have already decided to devote their time to contribute to a brand community, marketers are given the advantage of their attention. In such a cacophonous world, brand community is the best space for marketers to effectively communicate their value that can emotionally connect consumers with the brand and to secure a space in the consumer's mind.
It may get tricky
Engaging with brand community doesn't always guarantee success. These are examples of when it may get tricky:
Amplifying WOM through brand community can be complicated as brand community stands on the basis of weak ties connections; it may only happen if members have strong trust and relationship with the community. Marketers have to think of strategies on how members can develop strong connections with the brand and other members.
Short-term brand community campaigns tend to have lower ROI. It is beneficial for retention, but it is quite hard to acquire new customers. Marketers have to acknowledge that building a brand community is a long term strategy that needs to be nurtured on and on if they want to yield loyal advocates for their brand.
Marketers may not be able to control the direction of conversations happening within the community, which might be a backfire if negative conversation occurs and not being handled properly.
Source: Marketoonist
Questions to ponder...
As a marketer, are you hooked with the idea of brand community? Will you incorporate that into your marketing strategy, and why?
Updated 20/09: Shortened the post.