5 Best Practices for Community Marketing

From a B2B perspective, community marketing makes a lot of sense since it focuses on the customer. Through effective community marketing, your brand can tap into more than the customer’s mere interest – that is, a community focused around your brand can help fulfill the social and emotional needs of your customer. By associating their identity with the community of your brand, your customers are far more likely to be loyal as well as extend their continued support. The same principle applies even when your customers are other businesses.

Build a Community

To build a community around your brand, you can either try to connect with a pre-existing community or build your community by creating a meaningful connection between your brand and your customer. Community building around a brand requires you to initiate conversations as well as create opportunities for connection. The community you build may or may not use a digital platform – but using a digital medium/social media seems to be the most effective way to create groups and organize events. Community building is ultimately about establishing a relationship with your customer.

Focus on Community Success

Once you have your brand community, make sure that you strive for its success. To accomplish that, you will need to incorporate effective strategies. You may incorporate any tactics that suit the image of your brand, as well as help you connect with your customers more. If you are primarily dealing with other businesses, then your best strategies will incorporate the use of advocacy/ambassadors, organizing events, or even through the gifting of items related to your services/having your brand’s logo.

Run the Community Effectively

The most important aspect of running a community effectively is participation – on your part as well as on the part of your customer. Engagement with your brand’s community signals interest. The more interest you manage to generate, the more effective your marketing will be. When dealing with other businesses, your community marketing will need to focus on the product or the service you are providing. Businesses have problems and inefficiencies – and your aim should be on how you can help them with their efficiency and effectiveness.

Focus on your Core Value

Your community should be a reflection of ‘who’ you are as a brand. Community marketing relies on fostering a genuine connection – and to connect with your customers, you will need to rely on your identity as a brand. The community you build should share your core values with you. Your core value could be a virtue you want to project, such as honesty or transparency, or it could be something much more practical – such as focusing on the needs of your customers.

Use Segmentation for Reach

Segmenting your messages is an effective strategy when it comes to community marketing. For any marketing strategy to be effective, three key elements need to be in sync – the right message, the right people, and the right time. To make your community more effective and widespread, you will need to segment your community along the lines of demography, location, as well as behavior. This way, you build relevant communities. Irrespective of who your customer is, community marketing can be an effective strategy to build your brand. When it comes to B2B marketing, it is an often overlooked aspect of marketing – but can help your business grow when used.

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