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Building a community for marketing is not unheard of, Web 3.0 brought about the revolution in community building as a marketing tool with telegram and discord communities showing the power of how communities can be crucial for SaaS marketers in creating awareness for their product or reaching their target audience in a channel they are most likely to be found. Not considering the pump and dump schemes which have given these communities a bad name, we take a look at how the Web 3.0 communities have set the path for communities in general to be considered a powerful tool for SaaS Marketers. Community marketing in general started rising with Web 3.0 where the idea of individual artists and creators and their fan communities using decentralized means of distribution for artwork or creations. As artists and creators moved towards building their fan community, marketers began understanding why community marketing can be a game changer for SaaS marketers.
What exactly is Community Marketing?
Community marketing is a tactic used by brands and businesses these days to enhance a brand’s presence by fostering a sense of community among the brand’s customers. Communities as a concept are not something exclusive to Web 3.0, communities and groups have existed in almost all social media platforms, from facebook groups to twitter communities to subreddits, message boards and forums, communities are everywhere online. While communities can be used to garner new customers, most brands use communities to directly communicate and interact with its customers. Community members are more vocal about what they want, or need from the product and in turn brands and businesses can respond to their customers. Community marketing in general is focused on customer retention than customer acquisition.
What are the benefits of Community Marketing?
Community marketing isn’t just a tool enabling brand growth through customer retention, community marketing can help brands skyrocket and expand their reach by:
- Improving customer experience- SaaS product marketers consider community marketing as a goldmine for improving customer experience. Due to the ability to gather insights from community members to further improve their products, services and community groups, marketers consider communities as an important channel through which they can learn firsthand what their customers need or want from them.
- Fostering trust among the community- In today’s digital world, trust and authenticity is crucial for businesses in order to retain their customers. Community marketing allows brands to build lasting relationships with their customers fostering authenticity and pushing customers naturally to trust your brand a bit more. A happy customer is most likely going to share their experience of your brand with their friends and family triggering a digital word-of-mouth promotion of your brand which encourages new members to join your community.
- Direct Communication channel- Communities serve as a direct channel of communication between businesses and their customers urging both to open a bidirectional conversation and communication thread where users can share their feedback about the product as well as express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with features. Users can also be made to try out new features on products which can be mobilised through APIs which can be used on discord servers.
Why should I consider building a community or community marketing for a SaaS?
Many founders have given this a thought sometime or the other as to whether they should consider building a community or undertake community marketing for their SaaS. In order to better answer this question, we lay down some of the pointers which should be considered while taking a decision around building a community or community marketing:
1. Enhanced Customer Loyalty: Engaging with customers on a deeper level tends to foster a sense of belonging and loyalty among the users. Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend the brand to others bringing you both direct and indirect revenue.
2. Cost-effective: Acquiring new customers can be more expensive than retaining existing ones, trust us when we urge our clients to focus on creating a stickability for new users so that they can become loyal users. Community marketing focuses on nurturing current customers during and post purchase, leading to cost savings in the long run as the customers are retained and one need not spend again to get them.
3. Authentic Feedback: A close-knit honest community provides brands with genuine feedback. Often brands have experienced that this feedback loop can be invaluable for product development, service improvements, and understanding market needs from a user perspective more clearly.
4. Word-of-Mouth Marketing: A satisfied and engaged community can become brand advocates bringing in new users. They can spread positive word-of-mouth digitally on social media, which is often more trusted than traditional advertising as people these days choose to go by others’ experience with a brand more than what the brand is trying to tell them..
5. Increased Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Engaged community members tend to stay with the brand longer, increasing their lifetime value and making them profitable in the long run.
6. Crisis Management: In times of a PR crisis, a strong community can act as a support system, helping the brand navigate challenges and rebuild trust. Community doesn’t just help get the word out but also helps in damage control or communication post crisis.
What are some of the types of community marketing ?
There are two different types of community marketing mechanisms in play these days. The first one consists of sponsored community marketing where administrators of the community leverage the membership characteristics to get paid for promoting a SaaS product across their community for the community members to use. Organic Community marketing consists of organic (non-paid) efforts employed by the SaaS product team, their users and brand advocates.
Sponsored Community Marketing works on two levels, one where the community moderators or administrators leverage their community reach and promote the product or app across their community members. Many hunters of Product Hunt platform use these communities to give the launches a push by charging a fixed rate for the collaboration. Be it across Discord or Slack or WhatsApp, community moderators can choose which SaaS to promote based on the charges. Apart from moderators, the second level of sponsored community marketing involves use of “chatterers”, accounts which promote your SaaS across different communities where your target audience might be present. These chatterers will try to pose as organic brand advocates for your product and talk your SaaS up in front of community members to drive traffic and create awareness about your product. All web 3.0 pump and dumps happened with support of millions of chatterers who hyped the coins up before the ultimate crash.
Organic Community Marketing works where customers interact about the product with one another without the brand’s intervention. Here customers may create discussion topics or interest groups centred around their shared experience of a brand. They can share their opinions and feedback. Organic communities formed out of mutual dissatisfaction for a brand may be a cause for concern for some brands if they are formed out of negative experiences. If not amended, this could harm a brand’s reputation, preventing existing and potential customers alike from coming back and ultimately harming the brand.
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