Businesses need more than effective advertising campaigns that yield their desired results. Gone are the days when hanging banners and flyers was sufficient for promotion.
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Today, customers want to support businesses that offer value and build a deep connection with the customer.
The concept of loyal clientele is about nurturing your customers at every stage of their buying journey and ensuring they have a positive experience shopping from your store.
This leads us to a question: What is branding, and where does the “community” fit in this concept? How do you create a brand community? Let’s find out.
What Is a Brand Community?
A brand community is a group of customers who follow a business on all social platforms, enjoy its content, share its posts with others, and produce consumer generated content.
People who’ve bought something from your store once but barely follow your business on any digital platform are not part of your community.
People in your brand community will generate maximum business for you. They won’t only repeat-purchase from your store, but they will recommend your products and services to others.
They participate in your promotional campaigns and help you grow your brand. Simply put, a brand community is where people with a deep connection with your brand collaborate.
Why You Should Have A Brand Community
Brand loyalty is key to achieving customer retention and is a significant part of the branding of a business. Selling your product once to each customer won’t bring the best results for your business in the long run.
Your focus should be instead on building a solid community of like-minded people who support your brand, follow you on social platforms, and vouch for the quality of your products.
It’s the easiest and most effective marketing tool for businesses. Think about it—you have a team of people who actively engage with your brand, respond to all new updates, give feedback, and participate in new product testing before its release.
This community has people who interact with each other and spread awareness about your company to others to make your team grow bigger and stronger.
That’s why building a solid brand community is necessary for all businesses. Fortunately, having a community is not a challenge, especially in today’s social-media-driven world.
Your brand community is already on social sites. All you have to do is find them, interact with them, and build their trust in your brand to make them part of your community.
How To Build A Successful Brand Community
A brand community is much more than a few sales. It’s a long-term marketing strategy that creates a perfect space for your customers to share their thoughts, appreciate your brand, engage with your posts, and spread awareness to others. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building a solid community. Here are some steps that may help.
1. Define Your Brand Goals
The primary purpose of creating a brand community is to inform people about your services and how they can benefit them. But, most businesses have long-term objectives. List the goals you’d like to achieve through this community.
Tracking metrics throughout the process will also help you make customer-driven decisions. Ask yourself how you are keeping the people in your community engaged.
How is this community going to help you achieve your corporate goals? What methods you’ll use to track conversions from the brand community? And so on.
2. Choose A Community Platform
An ideal community platform may vary from one business to another. Social media is the perfect place for most brands to build a large, loyal customer base, keep them engaged, and spread brand awareness.
- Forums: These are pretty effective in building a community. Take Spotify’s community, for example. They have built a space for their fans to discuss music, playlists, favorite artists, and other music-related stuff with other users.
- Social Media: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook offer another excellent opportunity for brands to build a space for their community. You can use hashtags to have people support your idea or Instagram stories and posts to build user engagement. Asking questions about your audience, their likes and dislikes, and their recent purchases can help you gather basic details about them.
- Reward Program: The best example of this community platform is Starbucks. It allows users to place orders through its app, which earns them several points. Once the points rack up, registered users get free coffee and drinks. You can also create a reward program for your loyal customers. Ask them to share your product’s referral link with their friends, and the more people join your community through these links, the higher the points they will collect.
3. Build User Trust and Engagement
Bringing them to your Instagram feed or forum is one thing, but keeping up their engagement is another. You need to discuss new things with them regularly to build their engagement.
Interact with them, respond to their questions, and let them participate in your giveaways and other events.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is The Role Of Community In Branding?
A community is a space for your customers to interact with each other and get access to special offers. It’s an excellent marketing strategy for a business of any size and nature.
What Does Brand Community Mean In Consumer Behavior?
Customers tend to be emotionally invested in a brand when they become part of a brand community. They promote your brand, buy from your store repeatedly, and engage with your business.
Why Are Brand Communities Important?
Brand communities create a loyal customer base for your business that buys from you and spreads awareness about your brand to others.
How Is Brand Community Different From Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness refers to sharing information about your brand with the audience. They know your brand exists and may or may not do business with you. A brand community is a group of people that engage with your brand and interact with you regularly.
