Tribes and communities are deeply ingrained as important in the human psyche. By leveraging this fact, you can more efficiently increase engagement and foster loyalty among your customers, regardless of the type of product you’re selling.
This goes for almost all companies. That’s not to say that some types of products and services aren’t more or less suited, but except for a few specific niches, almost any can benefit to some degree from a community.
There are different ways of going about making your product social. Here’s what you need to know.
The Many Pros of Making a Platform Social
Making a product social and building a community can take a lot of effort, strategy, and time, but the payoff is often worth it all. Here are the main benefits you should consider before you decide to take on the endeavor.
It Increases Retention and Engagement
The obvious benefit of a community is that it creates a sense of belonging that keeps customers coming back. This increases retention, builds loyalty, and improves brand perception. By tapping into shared values, you can bond with your customers in a meaningful way that can be good for both your customers and the world as a whole. When customers know that what you’re doing aligns with what’s important to them, they’re more likely to be supportive despite higher prices or slower shipping times.
When people are lacking community, they really feel like they’re missing out. So, when you give them one, they’re not likely to want to leave.
One example is online casinos. While people used to look for community in other regular players at physical casinos, that aspect is often missing when playing casino games online. At many of the best new casino sites uk players can access, online chat functions are available to bring the social element back. For example, when playing at live dealer tables, players can type messages to the dealer and other players at the table, who can all respond in real time.
It Gives You Valuable Feedback
Starting a conversation with your customers isn’t just about them feeling like they’re being listened to – it really is about listening to them. By getting your information straight from the horse’s mouth, you can get a clearer understanding of what your customers want, what they’re lacking, and what they’d like to see next.
It takes a lot of the guesswork out of things when you can find out what people think directly, instead of speculating or asking a more general audience.
It Can Infuse Creativity Into Your Business
Related to the previous point is that by working with your customers, you can come up with ideas you never would have imagined on your own. These are people using your products or services in the real world, and as such, they’re likely to see things from another perspective that’s very valuable to the business.
By paying attention to what your customers are telling you as well as what they’re talking to each other about, you can infuse some much-needed inventiveness into your products.
It Can Lead to Lower Marketing Costs
A passionate community is the best marketing team you could possibly have. Even in today’s digital world, people trust and value word-of-mouth recommendations, and having customers who talk about your brand can be incredible for spreading awareness and creating a positive public perception.
All of this can mean you don’t actually need to spend much on direct marketing.
This is not only beneficial in terms of saving your company money, but can also make your brand appear more genuine and likable, as even the best and most effective ads are often seen as annoyances.
Should All Companies and Brands Have a Social Element?
While many products and services, especially ones people keep coming back to, can benefit from a so-called brand community, not absolutely all businesses will find it worthwhile to build a community.
Rather than mentioning all types of companies that can have a social element within entertainment, education, work, or anything else you can think of, let’s try covering the ones that aren’t so suitable.
This would be any product or service that promises anonymity and integrity, and that people generally can see as private, embarrassing, or shameful. While people can sometimes find comfort in confiding in each other anonymously, it should be possible to completely avoid interactions and stay invisible for any customer who wants to. In any case, most people won’t go around recommending these types of products, meaning the free marketing perk is lost.
Other things would be in cases where people only buy the product because of necessity rather than choice.
For instance, a product like toilet paper or toothbrushes isn’t likely to need a community. Since people seldom take an interest in who provides toilet paper, have trust issues regarding it, or want to file complaints, building a social media presence is also not likely to be a very rewarding effort.
Different Ways to Create a Layer of Sociability
Let’s talk more concretely about what a business can do to create a strong and loyal community. Below are some ideas; most will find that a combination of some of them is the ideal strategy:
A social media presence. The most obvious way of starting a conversation with and among customers is through a social media presence. It’s important to be careful about your social media strategy and make it authentic rather than cliche; many a business has been burned by seeming phony on social media, decreasing their popularity and perceived trustworthiness.
Competitions and co-creation. By hosting competitions for new designs or ideas and then acting on them, you can quickly and easily involve customers as well as get interesting ideas from your target audience. It’s a perfect way to do market research while bonding with your customer base.
Events. Hosting special events brings people together and gives them something to get excited about.
A newsletter. Keeping people up to date in a newsletter – while also offering them exclusive perks, like bonus codes – can be a good way of ensuring the brand stays on their mind. Allow them to become part of the conversation by inviting them to vote in polls about future decisions and the like.
A forum. A forum can be more powerful than social media because it’s a dedicated space where the focus is on the community. People come here specifically to talk to the community, not consume content. The forum needn’t be exclusively about the brand, but can cover the whole niche and related topics.
Related courses and tutorials. A good way of creating goodwill is offering quality courses and tutorials that genuinely add value to the customer’s life and let them meet other like-minded customers.
Creative branding and inside jokes. Create inside jokes and myths with your customers by planting Easter eggs in advertisements or on product packaging. Introducing information in a series of packaging can ensure people keep buying from you to get the next piece of the puzzle or story.
Communicating shared values. Finally, one of the most important things you can do to give customers the feeling of being part of something bigger than themselves is communicating shared values, both in actions and in words.
Keeping the Community Alive in the Long Term
If you want to create a community together with your customers, it’s not enough to just launch a forum or Facebook page and then call it good. No – like any other marketing strategy, you should expect to put in regular work. Even if your brand community comes alive straight away, you need to keep stoking the fire to ensure things stay lively and exciting.
How you go about enlivening the community is going to depend on both your strategy and the demographic of your audience. Younger audiences might, for instance, expect more regular social media content and love to see giveaways and online competitions, while a more mature audience might prefer organized real-life meetings and once-a-month polls and forum discussions.
It’s also going to depend on your specific brand image and the values it communicates.
In any case, there is no right answer, as each situation is different. But what is important is to have a plan for how your company is going to keep building the community. You might need to experiment, and don’t forget to communicate directly with your customers to find out what they’re really interested in seeing.
At the same time, you want to stay flexible. Some of the best ideas and opportunities are often unexpected, and it’s only by keeping your and your team’s minds open that you’ll spot one when it comes along.