Marketing Through Communities.

This Post first appeared on the Retail Hive Site. It was the result of a discussion I had the priviledge of moderating on the topic of what it means to market through communities.

When considering this topic people come to it with several different definitions of what a Community is and what marketing through that community means.

So, what do we mean be community. Generally, there were three different definitions discussed on the day

• A Brand’s Social Platforms
  
  • For some brands they have multiple Facebook or Twitter accounts and these platforms are well animated and active and this is what they consider their community to be
    
• Join an Existing Community
  
  • Sometimes there is an existing community where people sharing a passion and interest in the general industry area or market that you service. For some brands their approach is to seek out these communities and then become a resource and a giver to that community
    
  • Overt selling and pushing sales messages to this type of community will generally not be successful. Brands have to earn their right to be there by supporting the needs of the community not the brand
    
• Create a platform or space for customers and stakeholders to come together
  
  • Some brands have created that space for their customers to congregate and share experiences or questions. Like a Bricks and Mortar ‘Community Centre’.
    
  • There are platforms like www.lithium.com that allow you to set up branded Forums and Blogs where you can invite your existing customers to come and hang out often seeded by your existing eMail database.
    
  • Here Brands can feed questions to the community for their reaction and response but more importantly they can unobtrusively hear the conversation about their brand and help customers with issues (often taken offline from the community)
    

When considering marketing in this context it is important to realise that there are two different concepts being discussed.

• Marketing to the Community
  
  • If you use social or other means to identify a community and you use traditional marketing methods to push a message to that community this is not really marketing through the community more like marketing to the community. In this case the community is maybe more accurately described as an audience
    
  • There is nothing inherently wrong with this so long as you understand that this is what you doing and act accordingly.
    
• Marketing Through the community
  
  • Where the community takes on the role of sharing the Brand message and promoting it organically
    
  • This is something of a Holy Grail for Marketer’s currently. It seems easy but it is not
    
  • All activity needs to be focused on what the community needs and not the brand needs. Generally it is service and support led as the most important thing to the community is often how they experience the brand and every single touchpoint with that brand
    
  • It is generally an ‘All of Company’ play not just marketing in order to be successful.
    

  Word of warning – Do not mix up these two approaches.
  

Having decided to engage with your community or with a relevant community to your brand what approach should you adopt.

1. Do you lead?
   
2. Do you react?
   
3. Do you moderate?
   

In truth the answer to this question depends on the first two questions and particularly what type of community you have but in general the following principles seem to apply.

• You can choose to moderate but this must be not be heavy handed as this generally has the result of killing off the community
  
• User generated content can be very valuable coming from these communities but is it a challenge for brand to manage particularly images that may not be on brand or up to a reasonable level of quality.
  
  • You can encourage the right level of quality by ensuring early contributions are of a sufficiently high standard that it sets the bar
    
  • Competitions and gamification works to gather content that then you can decide to just publish the winning entries or a subset
    
• You must give to the community. Where customers are looking for help that has to engaged with and provided – even if it is messaged that you will take the conversation offline
  
• You can provide questions to the community and request their feedback. It just should not be a one-way street. Community members want to see their feedback acted on and listened to
  
• Like being at a party don’t be a pest. Listen respectfully and suggest a direction.
  

For some brands the prospect of getting involved in a community activity seemed scary and it can be. You may not like what you hear. However, the principle is people will talk about your brand online anyway, it is much better that they are talking about you in your house where you can hear it and help them in a positive way. Once you get over the initial concerns the outcome can be powerful.

And finally, after all that how do you measure success should you have KPI’s for this.

• The general feeling was that creating KPI’s and measurements in this space can very often lead to the wrong outcomes or drive the wrong behaviour – so be careful.
  
• For some brands their community responds well to promotions and it is something of a sales channel but this tended to be the exception.
  
• It is alright indeed important to measure size, engagement etc. to determine if your community is alive and growing or dead and dying but after that tread carefully
  
• There is huge insight to be gained at a very cost effective rate by using your community to
  
  • Test new products
    
  • Find areas that need improvement
    
  • Provide Feedback on support and service. Community members often provide support and help to each other more effective than the brand
    
  • Explore new areas of interest
    
• All these areas might instead have cost market research or consulting budgets to determine and should not be missed in terms of real value delivered to the brand.
  
• So it’s not just about sales KPI’s People convert and buy based on the entire end to end experience with the brand and if you can use your community to help drive and improve that then that is hugely valuable
  
• There is a frustration that getting community feedback into product development cycles is generally really difficult and not timely
  

In the end success in Community is based on ‘Giver’s Gain’ if you are less than committed or authentic then your ‘Community Initiatives’ will be found out and can have detrimental effect. The rewards and returns for doing it right are certainly there but not without time effort and commitment.