Right, it’s time to fully nail my colours to the mast…
I believe that every single business could (and should) be community-led…
Because fundamentally, aren’t we all just looking to serve the needs of a certain group of people, understand their problems/desires and offer something of deep value to them??
If you’re running a business or part of an ambitious sales/marketing team, you’ll know that every single lead you have, every single member of your audience, every single customer who has bought something from you has been incredibly hard-won…
But most businesses leave money on the table by only activating their users once or simply treating them as a one-way customer list to spam with email marketing…
and even if you have a small percentage of repeat customers, what are you doing to make the rest of your users feel bought into you as a company, brand or beyond??
📈 BUILDING A COMMUNITY-FOCUSED BUSINESS IS YOUR WAY TO DE-RISK YOUR OPERATION AND 5X YOUR CURRENT SALES
Whether you run a tech startup, a coffee shop or a marketing agency, community tactics will help you win in the short, medium and (especially) long term!
Because by leveraging the fundamentals of community management, adding sprinkles of creativity and making our Community Rocket ideas your own, you’ll be able to not just activate your leads, but do it time and time again, helping you to better forecast revenue and extend your lifetime value from every single customer you serve.
SO TO BE A TRULY CUSTOMER AND COMMUNITY-LED BUSINESS, WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON:
1. BUILDING PROGRAMS THAT BRING USERS INSIDE YOUR OPERATION AND MAKE PEOPLE FEEL PART OF YOUR COMPANY.
Some creative ideas could include running a monthly AMA with your founding team, a monthly video release that gives a recap of the month behind the scenes, a ‘what’s coming next’ feature list vote and some product updates. It could include a shout-out to some of your best customers if you really want to turbocharge some competition between your customers and members.
Why not run a monthly physical event that transcends your product but offers value in your category. i.e. Run a CBD business? Why not run a monthly health event focussed on niche CBD education, but one that gets your customers super close to you as a person and brand?
2. DEVELOPING SYSTEMS THAT GIVE YOU TRULY USEFUL PRODUCT AND SERVICE FEEDBACK.
As the age-old saying goes, If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
Whatever the size of your email list, a call out for ‘ambassadors’ or ‘product feedback calls’ should be an easy way to get your customers in front of you giving you genuine feedback about your business, services and what they would like to see next. Be super scientific and gather your top customers from data, reach out individually and give them the VIP treatment. People like that kind of stuff 🥰
Bonus tip – don’t be afraid of leveraging customer service feedback – it’s full of potential problems that need solutions, plus the people who care enough to report it clearly have some level of commitment to what you’re doing!
3. TEST NEW INITIATIVES AND GET REAL ‘PRE-LAUNCH’ VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF THE PEEPS YOU WANT TO SELL TO – NOT TEST PERSONAS, ACTUAL, REAL CUSTOMERS!
Again, follow our above tips and rinse and repeat!
In your CRM, you’re sitting on a goldmine of sales data that can be easily leveraged. Look at who is buying, and how often they’re buying, and take the time to jump on a call.
Preferably your CEO and key stakeholders should be jumping on this call – just don’t outsource these key relationship-building opportunities to your junior staff and get poor-quality notes passed on…these relationships are the ones that will unlock so much valuable qualitative data for you and you can also offer a heavy discount on new releases to them to get more people surprised and delighted!
4. BEING SO GOOD THAT YOUR CUSTOMERS OFFER GREAT QUALITY WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING TO THEIR FRIENDS AND NETWORK…MEANING YOU HAVE A HIDDEN SALES FORCE SPREADING THE WORD OF WHAT YOU DO FAR AND WIDE…
This one speaks for itself and is all about being a combined culmination of your product and community program. Of course, you need a product that sells well because it’s actually…well…good…but if you really want to generate word-of-mouth marketing, it’s time to work on ways to make your customers fall in love with your brand, fall in love with the people behind the product and of course make them feel part of the top 1% of your customer base.
We’ll be digging deeper into how to do all this in upcoming newsletters so stay tuned as we go deeper into sharing our top tips for leveraging email lists, social media, events, customer onboarding, activations, and referrals, and for the first time sharing the winning strategies that we’ve learned from almost 20 years of community building for top-tier startups and household name brands.
Cheers,
Jonny
PS – Want to receive weekly community growth tips in your inbox? Please Sign up here