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Building a community as a brand is part of the secret to creating long-term brand success. Brands have historically built their communities in a variety of ways over the years (centuries? millennia?!), but over the past few decades, social media has become both a preferred and an essential part of brand marketing strategies.
Just because it's preferred though, does that mean it's the best way for a brand to grow their community?
Like most things branding and marketing, the answer isn't so cut and dry.
Measuring Marketing Success as a Brand
For those businesses with smaller budgets, social media can often be the only marketing outlet that seems accessible. Social media, however accessible it seems, can often feel like a heavy lift for brands. Even though it's a low barrier to entry, it's something that requires attention, strategy, and creativity in order to grow a marketing channel that will actually become meaningful to your business. And that's not easy to achieve without lots of time, money, and resources.
I'm not suggesting that you take social media out of the strategy completely, I'm simply saying that good marketing strategy advice is the same as good financial advice: you have to diversify your investments. After all, putting all of your eggs in one marketing basket is never a winning strategy.
So, outside of social media, let's take a look at five different ways you can go about building a strong community for your brand.
5 Ways to Build Your Brand Community
Since social media is already the default marketing strategy for so many brands, I always spend time with clients brainstorming other opportunities when we put together their content strategy for the year.
By finding new ways to foster meaningful relationships with your audience, you can create a loyal brand community and also yield the best return for your marketing (or time) dollars.
1. Create Value-Driven Content
The key to any successful brand community doesn't lie in sales, it lies in offering value. Whether by writing high-quality informational blog posts (bonus points for SEO!), sharing inspirational stories or case studies, or launching a podcast (is a podcast worth the effort though?), creating value-driven content will bring new customers to the fold and give your fans a reason to stick around. Again, the goal here is not so much to sell or promote your products or services, but rather to consistently provide valuable content that aligns with your audience's needs and pain points will help you expand your brand.
2. Events
Whether IRL or via zoom, building a community that actually feels like a community can go a long way with your audience. The main goal here should be choosing or planning events that are useful or helpful to your target audience and also in alignment with your brand values and mission. From webinars to influencer lunches, there are plenty of ways to get creative with event planning despite your budget constraints.
3. User-Generated Content
One of the best ways to build community is to make your customers feel seen and trust that they aren't being sold a false bill of goods. The authenticity of user-generated content helps build that trust among potential new followers. By encouraging them to share their experiences with your products (through photos, videos, or reviews), you can turn your followers into brand ambassadors for you.
4. Email Marketing
Today’s consumers crave real connections with the brands they support. I've had so many bad marketing emails make their way to my inbox, and it all seems like they follow the same formula based on a numbers game. If you send enough emails to people, eventually they're bound to buy something. But to me, the goal of email marketing isn't just to get people to convert for you; it's a way for you to have another channel of communication with engaged customers. Yes, email is also a great tool for building out a marketing sales funnel and promoting new deals, but people get SO many emails these days that unless the content or deal is spectacular, you're probably going to remain unread.
5. Networking & Conferences
Networking is a stellar way to build a community and grow awareness for your brand. Not often associated with a marketing strategy, networking is actually a useful tool to not just grow your business, but to also amplify your message and in many cases improve your personal brand as well. Whether attending traditional networking events, acting as a mentor for up-and-coming business owners, speaking on panels, or being a keynote at industry conferences, networking with people who connect with what you do and with your approach can have a wide impact on growing your brand. After all, even if the person you're meeting isn't in need of your product or services if you are charming and memorable they are bound to recommend you when a friend or family member is in search of what you are selling. Rizz (as the kids say now) works.
Always Start With Strategy
No matter which ways you choose to build your community as a brand, having a solid plan for how you're going to allocate time, money, and resources towards achieving your marketing goals is always the best way to begin.
If you don't yet have a content strategy in place for your business, now is the best time to put one together. And yes, that's an evergreen now, because there's never a bad time to put a success strategy in place that helps you grow your brand.
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