Managing Director TERRITORY Influence, a leading full-service influencer marketing agency activating 4 Mio creators for brands in Europe.
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Building a community of brand lovers can unlock sustainable growth and countless benefits for companies and marketing teams: From customer insights to the co-creation of new products or services, word-of-mouth recommendations, user-generated content, increased retention and customer advocacy.
In this article, I'll explore what brand communities are, why marketing teams should be interested and how to create a community of brand ambassadors.
What Is A Brand Community?
At Territory Influence, we are typically looking at the following three factors to evaluate a brand community: emotions, loyalty and advocacy. Members of your brand community are distinguished from your average customers by the frequency with which they buy your products or services, the consistency with which they interact with you and the way they talk about your brand to others. What differentiates a brand community is the passion these people have for your brand and the actions this drives them to take.
Why Should Brands Care About Communities?
Here are some reasons why I believe every brand should have its own community of brand lovers and ambassadors:
1. It is easier to interact with those who feel like a part of a community than with those who just casually buy.
2. Feeling like part of a community increases trust and loyalty in your brand.
3. Brands that build communities no longer just have consumers, but also have true ambassadors and brand lovers.
4. Brand lovers are often more inclined to share their love with friends and acquaintances.
5. One of the best ways develop or improve a product is to involve your community.
The Essential Elements Of A Brand Community
In my experience, there are some essential factors that you should always take into account when you're creating a brand community:
• Identity: A community cannot be called a community if the members do not have something in common. Therefore, do not try to bring in as many people as possible, but focus on attracting those who truly reflect your brand identity.
• Communication: Communities often differ from one another in the language and codes they use. Sometimes they have special terms for those who join or recognizable ways of greeting each other. Sometimes they use a particular type of slang.
• Emotions: Community members experience and share emotions. Whether it is the unique feeling of being welcomed, the enjoyment provided by the unique services offered or the pride in participating in special activities, make sure you trigger emotions.
• Appreciation: Make sure the members of your community always feel appreciated and special. The feeling of belonging depends on it.
• Rewards: A little healthy competition can fuel the fun. Gamification can help you thrill members and give them something to talk about outside the community.
How To Build A Brand Community
1. Put the brand at the center: Everything within the community should center around your brand, from the tone of voice to the community design to the interface (if it is a dedicated platform). The community only exists because of your brand. For this to happen, it is of course crucial that you know your brand, your goals, your mission, your personality and your values. And it's important that they are clear to anyone who signs up.
2. Choose the right channels: Where should your brand lovers meet, and how can they interact? There are a few options:
• Social media groups: There are many communities that exist entirely on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.
Pros: It is easy to create engagement and reach other possible brand lovers. Plus you can receive and share user-generated content in a couple of clicks.
Cons: Interactions between members primarily happen through comments. It is not always easy to gather your members' data and insights.
• Email lists and messaging groups: You could have members join your community via a form on your website or have people join a group on Telegram or WhatsApp.
Pros: You can collect some basic data, such as email addresses or phone numbers. Community members can also easily interact with each other.
Cons: If engagement is through the group (private), it may be more difficult to achieve the same result in public.
• Dedicated platform: Develop a dedicated website or mobile app to bring community members together, communicate with them, make them interact, and collect their insights, data and content.
Pros: It is arguably the most complete and unique way to create a community and collect insights and data. You manage every aspect and own all the data.
Cons: It requires a higher budgetary investment than the other solutions.
3. Engage and inspire: Regardless of the channel you choose, it is crucial that your community is inspiring for those who are already members and those who are interested. For that reason, you should:
• Drive engagement: Keeping your community engaged should be a priority. You can achieve engagement by creating exclusive experiences, a sense of fun, gamification and shared emotions. You can do this, for example, by providing exclusive access to events or information. Or you can do it by creating an ambassador program in which there is a reward after a community member performs a certain number of actions.
• Boost user-generated content (UGC): If engagement is high, people will likely want to share those experiences and their joy with their friends and family members. Hence, the spontaneous production and publication of content on social media (UGC) often flourishes in these situations. The brand should make it as simple as possible to share content and take care of re-sharing externally, and it should also celebrate UGC internally.
• Focus on community management: Your community members should feel appreciated, listened to and respected. It should be easy for them to express their opinions and communicate with the brand. This means that it could pay off to focus on community management, including answering any questions and reacting to comments.
Conclusion
Emotional connection, loyalty and engagement are what distinguish consumers from brand lovers. A brand with a strong community of brand lovers no longer has to spend all its energy talking about itself and to spread content across social media—the brand community is there to provide support. Hence, I believe every brand should invest resources in building a community.
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