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In recent years, near-instant communication and social tech has prompted the rise (and success) of an interesting strategy. Harley Davidson, Starbucks, and Sephora have examples of these, where consumers pull together to become part of something greater. Their cause – celebrating their favorite brands. The marketing strategy: building a brand community.
We’ve seen this phenomenon with entertainment fandom. Fan communities and cultures grow from mutual adoration of specific entertainers and forms of entertainment. These communities then drive positive brand recognition and big revenues through that shared interest and long-term loyalty.
But what are brand communities, and why would you want one?
Let’s do a deep dive.
Understanding Brand Communities
No matter the industry, you have a better chance of rising above your competition by adopting a wide range of promotional strategies. Building and growing a brand community is one of the most effective methods.
Through a brand community, you can improve engagement with members of your target market. Communities bring foot traffic and repeat sales, and acquire more word-of-mouth referrals. Ultimately, they increase customer loyalty, turning customers into superfans.
What is a brand community?
Brand communities form in the marketplace through both natural evolution and commercial promotion. People who share emotions and interest in a brand or its products, services or social responsibility efforts come together offline and online as a group. They might have met at a brand-associated event or in an online forum.
These customers care about more than buying products and services. They care about being part of a shared experience. Common elements of brand communities include similar beliefs, strong involvement and participation, and a sense of shared membership and loyalty.
Both positive and negative brand communities exist.
The former elevates a brand. The latter can destroy its reputation and even shut the business down entirely. Negative communities often develop around common customer service, product and other complaints.
Successful communities form because passionate, loyal “fans” actively and publicly promote what they love about specific brands. The associated businesses then support those efforts and even take control of the direction of the communities.
Why does having a brand community matter in your marketing strategy?
Many people feel used and taken advantage of by corporate culture and greed. -And who can blame them when iconic companies like Coke are showing unethical practices?
In short, consumers want to feel valued by companies. When they feel valued, you have a loyal customer base with people who love your brand and product. When customers love a brand, they want a place to connect to it and each other.
In a brand community space, you can also control the narrative. You can promote your business and improve leads, traffic, revenues and return visits. What does that look like to the bottom line?
It looks like higher customer spend and repeat purchases.
Enthusiastic customers don’t need you to push for purchases. They only need you to provide them opportunities to seek advice and answers to questions. They want to learn about new products and services, have fun, and share their experiences. These actions make them feel like you care about their loyalty.
3 Steps to Build a Strong Brand Community
1. Identify your ideal community members.
If you don’t know the traits of your target market, you’re far behind your competition. You can’t have a successful promotional campaign or achieve the highest possible volume of sales and return visits without knowing who in the marketplace is more likely to invest their time, money and long-term interest.
Similarly, you must know which customers are more likely to help you build a loyal community. You need to know their brand and outside interests and the types of challenges or obstacles they face that your solutions might fix. Online polling, surveys and focus groups can help you identify these ideal community members.
2. Create a real community experience.
In advertising and marketing, business owners used to be told that they must seem authentic to build relationships with their customers and foster loyalty. Today’s savvy shoppers need more than the impression of authenticity. They need you to be genuine and organic in your interactions with them.
Authenticity goes far beyond using unscripted responses to reviews. Hosted events must feel like a natural progression from shared interests. Your customers should feel like they’re coming together because they want to rather than because they were pushed via advertisements or other messages. Every interaction must give them the impression that they and their experiences in the community matter the most.
3. Build emotional connection and encourage brand ambassadors.
It’s not difficult to imagine why emotional connections are critical in brand communities, or why connections and brand ambassadors are paramount to guarantee success. When customers feel happy about a brand, they’re more likely to invest their time and money in repeat business.
High customer satisfaction leads to high-stakes word of mouth marketing and the rise of brand ambassadors. They happily share their positive experiences, and even attempt to convince others to interact with the brand.
Brand ambassadors, the most positively enthusiastic and outspokenly loyal customers, help create real emotional connections between your brand and the members of the public. Their testimonials and any supportive actions, such as posting videos of their experiences to social and video platforms, provide proof that your brand deserves fans, love and loyalty.
Key Elements of Successful Brand Communities
Build your user-generated content.
Some user-generated content (UGC) comes from ambassadors who might represent paid or volunteer support of your brand. However, you can make a community successful by encouraging other members to share their interactions on your website and their social accounts. You can also improve your chances by offering opportunities to top social influencers who aren’t in the brand community but have shared overall interests related to your industry.
Why is user-generated content so important for success?
UGC deepens the connections across the community and in public spaces, which strengthens loyalty among existing customers and engages and attracts new ones. People who share brand-associated personal content feel a higher sense of belonging in the community and a greater connection with the brand (lookin’ at you, OG sneakerheads).
Build relationships and improve customer loyalty.
Of course, successful communities don’t exist without strong relationships and loyalty. Businesses use various proven techniques to build long-lasting relationships with community members and cultivate loyalty.
Common community engagement strategies include:
- scheduling social platform Q&A sessions
- creating and distributing helpful videos about products, services or the industry
- hosting epic events that offer VIP access to new products
- free promotional swag bags or gift basket items
You might also provide members surprise discounts or access to deals, events and other exclusives with partner businesses.
Develop a clear purpose and vision.
Successful brands do more than understand their target market. They also take the time to understand the purpose of the brand community.
An unstructured community without purpose can fail to keep the attention of community members. The community must have a clear purpose that resonates with everyone in it. Every action to build and maintain the community must connect to your vision.
Use social media platforms.
We’ve touched on various ways to use social media to engage and grow your community. Social platforms are designed to create online and offline communities and a sense of belonging.
Numerous tools exist to use general platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, Tumblr, Bluesky, Reddit and sites and forums dedicated to specific industries for promotional purposes. You just have to learn which tools and strategies work the best.
Encourage member participation and interaction.
It’s impossible to explore every method available to encourage community members to engage with the brand and each other regularly. You might offer referral rewards to incentivize members to bring other members into the community. You can build a customer loyalty program with rewards for additional purchases, or special purchases. These methods (and others like them) encourage active participation, which ultimately helps build the community and spread its influence across the market.
Case Study: Harley-Davidson’s Strong Communities
Motorcycle riders and associated activewear lovers come together naturally in communities through their shared joy of riding the highways and byways of life. They share an excitement and interest in exploring near and far. Harley-Davidson created greater loyalty among fans by building their community via proven methods.
H-D organized offline and online themed rides, charitable competitions, and special events. They emphasized the idea that owning a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is a critical part of a rider’s identity and lifestyle.
Since its founding in 1903, the company has emphasized experiences over product ownership. Owning a Harley is about more than the purchase and use of a well-built machine by a trusted brand to travel from one location to another. It’s about imagining and creating specific experiences only a Harley owner can enjoy.
Harley-Davidson community members are never passive either. They co-create with the company by offering their product development ideas. H-D encourages these interactions and the idea that products are made by and not merely for customers.
Key Metrics to Track Community Growth and Engagement
Data analytics tools and important customer data metrics can help you gain valuable insight and guarantee that your community turns out as planned.
What metrics should you track at minimum?
It’s important to have a deep understanding of member demographics and related and unrelated interests. This data includes:
- details about members invited into the community by other members
- overall member growth
- traffic to both online sites and offline events
- the types and volume of user-generated content
- engagement rates
- recent trends.
You should also track successful and unsuccessful engagement methods.
Adjust your strategy for continuous improvement.
To stay competitive and continue to improve and grow both your brand and community, you need to make community adjustments by using metrics and customer feedback. If you fail to make changes, you can lose loyal customers to other businesses that offer similar products or services in the same market. When you use the data to make adjustments to your strategies and messages, you maintain relevance and continue to prove that you value your customers.
Conclusion
There is no doubt whatsoever that a business can’t survive in a highly competitive market without at least one brand community to support it. By building, growing and improving brand communities, you create a supportive environment that promotes long-term loyalty.
This guide is a jumping-off point to connect your customers to your brand, deepen their ties and transform them into advocates, draw new customers, and improve business reputational and revenue successes. Start creating a brand community today!
Need help? Contact Level343, experts in helping you with the marketing strategies and tactics you need to level up your business.
