Why Brands are Shifting From Product to Community Focused

Unlike in the past, when brands were primarily focused on selling their products, today they are shifting their focus to building online communities that foster loyalty among customers. With such communities, they can engage directly with their target customers and turn them into loyal brand advocates. 

This digital marketing strategy also enables businesses to connect deeply with their audience and encourage peer-to-peer interaction, making their customers feel valued.

What is a Brand Community?

A brand community refers to a group of customers who engage with a brand beyond simply purchasing its products. Community members typically interact with one another to share experiences, exchange ideas, and connect due to their shared passion for a particular brand. 

This differs from traditional marketing, which focuses more on selling products, as the brand community seeks to create an emotional bond between a brand and its customers. This encourages trust, brand loyalty, and advocacy, which can translate into a higher customer lifetime value.

A Harvard Business Review Study noted that brands with a community often enjoy a higher level of loyalty, are likely to see better customer retention, and experience higher engagement, as customers are typically well invested in the brand's success.

Why Brands Are Focusing on Building Communities

There are several reasons why building communities has become popular among brands. These include:

More Loyalty

Brand communities are shared spaces where customers can connect with your brand's mission, values, and story. This emotional connection enables brands to foster deeper relationships, resulting in a greater sense of belonging and exclusivity for customers. People emotionally invested in your brand are more likely to commit to it.

When you nurture a brand community, happier customers can become brand champions. This can result in more satisfied buyers and advocates promoting your brand, increasing its reach and influence. It's also about fostering good relationships that can withstand the test of time and keep customers coming back.

Enhance Brand Distinction 

We live in a crowded marketplace where each brand seeks attention, and an engaged community can help distinguish it. When you have a brand community, you have a ready audience who will always listen to you. It's a strategy that sets you apart from the competition. 

When brands cultivate unique connections and curate unforgettable experiences, it helps show their brand's distinctiveness. Such unmatched engagement can significantly improve your brand reputation, elevating it to new heights, and establishing your brand as a leader among consumers.

Encourage User-Generated Content

Brand communities are also drivers of authenticity and creativity, as customers discuss the brand in the same way the brand communicates with them. Brand communities enable customers to share their experiences, post reviews, and engage with the brand. They should, therefore, be key elements of social media and content marketing.

This means your brand will have advocates speaking on its behalf. It can benefit from user-generated content, which in turn, adds relatability and authenticity to your marketing. That means your customers will become your collaborators, making the stories a powerful marketing tool that resonates with your target audience.

Customer Service and Engagement

Customers often use social media to contact their brands and raise their issues. A brand community can enhance this experience by providing customers with a platform to seek help, offer feedback, and share their recommendations. Even when the brand's customer service team is unavailable, customers can still get tips from other community members on solving their issues, ultimately improving customer retention.

Great Insights from Customers

A brand community can provide customers with essential insights into customers’ behavior, pain points, buying preferences, and more. When they engage customers in testing their product and gathering customer feedback, it becomes easier for brands to refine their offerings and overall customer strategy.

Additionally, brand communities can foster a culture of co-creation and innovation, as devoted members can participate in product development. This can enhance the customer’s experience and the relationship between the brand and its customers.

Tips For Creating a Brand Community

Unlike what many think, building a brand community takes more than just creating a platform for customers to engage. You also need to ensure that you are fostering relationships, providing users with value, and engaging with your audience. For the brand community to thrive, there is a need for better planning, making regular improvements, and consistently attending to customers' needs.

If you are getting started with creating a brand community, here are the steps you need to follow:

Understand Your Goal

Before starting a brand community, ensure you have a clear end goal in mind. This could be something like:

• Increasing customer loyalty.
• Getting important customer feedback.
• Increasing word-of-mouth marketing.

You want to ensure the community reflects the brand's core missions and values. Since community engagement will require personnel, time, and resources, you want to ensure it delivers the desired return on investment (ROI). If hiring a community manager, ensure that this person aligns with your brand values, as they will also shape the brand perception and improve feedback.

Select the Right Platform

The platform you select can impact the trajectory of your community. For many brands, the most obvious choice of a platform is social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, due to their vast user bases. These platforms can be an excellent choice for niche targeting and hyper-targeting. However, hosting your community directly on your site is a growing trend. This comes with certain benefits such as:

• More control over the interaction 
• More user data
• Driving engagement to other parts of your site
• Consistent branding
• Increasing the time spent on site
• Higher conversion rate

Have a Cross-channel Promotion Strategy

A brand community shouldn't be limited to one platform. If your community is on your site, you can provide snippets of the community discussions on other platforms like Facebook. Similarly, when your users create user-generated content (UGC), you can showcase it on Instagram, TikTok, or another platform. This cross-channel promotion method can help drive the word about your community and brand and encourage more people to join.

Ensure Tailored Customer Experiences

You need to ensure that you understand your community’s needs so that you can provide them with a super personalized experience. For instance, if you are a fashion brand with a community, you can allow members to make their designs, shop from exclusive designer lines, and watch the design creation process.  

Ensure Real-world Engagement

Engagement doesn't have to be online alone. It can also be experienced in the real world through workshops, meets, and collaborations with exclusive brands. This can create a sense of community and make members feel more valued. For instance, the IKEA brand offers community members the opportunity to participate in workshops that they can attend with their families.

Have Easy Access to the Community

Ensure that the community can be easily accessed. If you are hosting it on your site, have a clear sitemap on the home page, check out page, and product pages, directing visitors to the community. This can ensure that members understand the community’s existence and its benefits.

Final Thoughts

Having a brand community comes with many benefits. From low-cost marketing to increased customer loyalty, you can gain a lot by having one. However, building one takes more than just a Facebook or Instagram group. It takes nurturing the community to become brand advocates, which you can achieve by following the tips above.