Community building in 2021
We launched VOLUME in 2020 in direct response to the growing demand for building community among businesses and brands; from community-based marketing to developing community as a product or community-driven business models.
At the end of the year the team at VOLUME published a deck on what we defined as the Direct to Community Economy.
The report summarised and connected a number of emerging trends, and it struck a chord with lots of people,
Then the report was referenced by eConsultancy in their digital marketing trends for 2021.
As a result of all of this VOLUME won new business in 2021 in our core B2B sector, but also in the B2C space, including:
Developing a community-based brand & marketing strategy for a B2C finance brand
Developing a content-led community strategy, plus activation for a professional services firm
Leading the venture-building process for a new community-focused product
And as there are relatively few practitioners, consultants or agencies with hands-on experience out there (and in the spirit of community) here are a few empirical insights on community building to share from our projects in the first half of the year:
1. Primary interaction + major motivation - a professional services business had a successful events and content programme which they invested in to demonstrate their belief in and commitment to a better way of doing business. The Pandemic forced them to review the model, and the logic / ambition to pivot to a more continuous content and community experience made perfect sense.
The only issue was that, unsurprisingly, a lot of other businesses had the same idea. So how do you demonstrate distinctiveness? How do you build preference? The answer lies in focus:
Start with one primary or core experience or interaction you will deliver as a member benefit. Test it and build out from there with the input of the community; let them shape how the community experience evolves.
Use this to develop a deep understanding of the personal motivations (belonging? connections? status? learning? altruism?) that are driving members to come, join in and keep coming back - and deliver that experience above all else.
2. Community building = marketing redux - effective community-based marketing is simpler, more direct, and directly influenced by customers, or members, than modern, industrialised marketing. It removes the need for many of the norms that have become part of brand-building practice. We started out working with a crypto asset management platform using established brand-first strategy and comms frameworks to give them a distinctive narrative, a consistent voice and a strong foundation to build from, but the real breakthrough came from listening - really listening - to their fast-growing community to determine how the narrative, the messaging and the products should develop, with the brand following.
3. Nothing kills community faster than treating it like a ‘pipeline’- The team at VOLUME has analysed a lot of community businesses and business models this year and there’s an obvious truth about the most commercially successful ones (especially in B2B). By shifting the focusing away from pipelines and more on people - delivering genuine added value and building authentic community (without expecting an immediate sales response) - corporate brands can gain significant efficiencies in marketing spend and reduce lead-gen cost over time.
The template for success may be simple; build audience via super-relevant content in social, be visible & distinctive to build fame, drive to premium experiences and exclusive benefits in your own channels - content, connections, L&D opportunities - and deliver ongoing engagement, retention and growth for the business. But mindset, execution and member experience are critical for success.
By investing in authentic community and delivering genuine additional benefits for the members brands can indeed grow engagement and preference, gaining significant efficiencies in marketing spend and reducing lead-gen cost over time.
But nobody wants to spend time in a community experience that feels geared towards moving ever closer to the sale.