How Community Can Fuel Your Marketing Efforts
Marketing and community industries are merging – You often see community marketer roles these days, as well as communities being placed under marketing within organisations. If you’re new to this concept, you might be asking yourself: How can these two groups work together? What can our community do to support marketing, advocacy and growth narratives? Here are a few:
Stories of individual progression and successes
The first way in which I started to weave community into marketing was through members’ stories. When they get value from a product and share a great review, or are able to progress and/or resolve a problem through community collaboration, we can create wonderful stories of success that resonate with a wider audience. Make what you do real for your prospects through the tales they share.
Referrals and affiliates
Consider creating a conversational referral approach. Talk to your members about why they love and stay with you, as well as what would make them refer others to you. You’ll learn about potential marketing adjustments, as well as encouraging your members to refer people organically
Larger & group community impact stories
Being a community-centric organisation is a great selling point for new & unsure members. Find ways to show the impact made by your community through PR articles, blogs across your network and in media interactions. We often get leaders & sponsors involved in this process too – to show a united front of community value & importance
Social-good impacts
In many of our communities, members naturally connect and start to collaborate on social-good projects; Beach cleans at Airbnb, Coffee mornings at Richemont, addressing loneliness at Benenden Health. While these are not related to any products and services, they’re wonderful stories about humans connecting and making positive change. Celebrate these impacts – You made them happen by creating your community and show the world how proud you are of that.
Creations and produced material
A lovely way to connect marketing and communities is through creative collaboration. We ask members about marketing narratives and if they make sense, making adjustments from what they say.
We also involve members in graphic design, logo choices, and in some cases, core brand marketing value consultations. One of our partners, Yerba Madre does this brilliantly and of course, giffgaff over the last 10 years (They even give members marketing resources to create their own stuff that they can use for their own referrals).
Direct quotes
Your community is probably full of posts that could be turned into marketing quotes that will attract others. Peer-led recommendations will very often win over curated campaigns and outputs, so take a look through your community or ask your community team to help (A key tip for all CMs out there too; Record any & all posts that you think might be useful down the road for other teams – You’ll have a library of quotes and content to use, as well as being able to onboard CMs with better context on key members).
Each of these approaches takes CM time and dedication. You’ve also got to be transparent about your objectives when working with your members. We try to reward contributors too, although often, the joy of creating and being recognised as such is a reward in itself :).
If you’d like to dive into any of the above in more detail, reach out to myself or Standing on Giants
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