When starting a business, most entrepreneurs will focus almost all their efforts on sales, and for good reason.
After all, without a sufficient amount of sales, brands will struggle to get their business off the ground and profitable.
But when looking at a longer-term picture, building a community is absolutely crucial for repeat sales, loyal customers, and sustainable growth.
With that in mind, here are a few ways to build a community around your brand, setting it up for a long and successful future.
Short on time? Here are the key takeaways
Here are six ways you can build a community around your brand:
- Know your audience inside and out: Understand your target audience beyond basic demographics.
- Create content that speaks to your community: Focus on creating high-value content that addresses your audience’s specific needs and challenges.
- Optimize social media for community building: Choose social platforms that align with where your target audience is most active.
- Foster meaningful two-way communication: Make sure your community feels heard.
- Organize impactful events and experiences: Bring your community together, whether online or offline.
- Provide exclusive perks to your community: Build a loyalty program that rewards and strengthens your community.
How to Build a Community Around Your Brand
Let’s dive straight into six steps you can take to build a community around your brand, ensuring you develop more consumer trust and brand loyalty whilst also expanding your brand awareness with new customers.
Know Your Audience Inside and Out
First things first, you need to ensure you know your audience like the back of your hand. Without this, you will struggle to formulate a strategy that truly resonates with them, and the benefits will be significantly reduced.
When you’re in the thick of things dealing with all the daily aspects of running a business, it’s easy to forget just how important the customer is in everything they do.
After all, without them, you’re just undertaking a very expensive solo hobby!
To get to know your audience better, you can use things like customer surveys, social listening, and even data analytics from previous purchases.
Tools like ChatGPT can also be extremely beneficial for further understanding your audience. By simply inputting the data you have on current customers and feeding it some information about your brand, you can quickly develop audience personas and begin brainstorming ideas to engage them.
Create Content That Speaks to Your Community
Once you’ve identified who you should be talking to, and you know everything there is to know about their buying habits, daily routines, and wants and needs, it’s time to create content that speaks to them.
Focus on creating high-value content that addresses the specific needs and challenges of your audience, rather than getting caught up in what is currently “cool” or “viral”.
If your brand will benefit from providing customers with “very cutesy, very mindful, very demure” content, for example, then lean into that trend. But if your content has nothing to do with such viral trends, it’s best to steer clear rather than try to shoehorn it into your content strategy.
Try to map out plenty of weeks and months in advance whilst also baking enough flexibility into your schedule that allows you to adapt to relevant changes and advancements in your industry.
Optimize Social Media for Community Building
If you’ve been following this blog for some time now, you’ll know how important we believe social media is for startup brands.
Not only is it an extremely cost-effective approach to marketing, but it is also a brilliant way to bring your community together and put like-minded customers in touch with one another, as well as responding to comments and concerns in a timely and friendly manner.
Social media conversations are often much less formal than email blasts, and as a result, they also feel more personable, helping bring everyone closer together.
Creating private groups on platforms like Facebook is an excellent way to add an aspect of exclusivity to your brand, adding more value to becoming a paying customer.
Foster Meaningful Two-Way Communication
When building a community, it’s easy to fall into the trap of commuting to your customers rather than with them.
Sure, you might think that the processes and offers you are putting in place are the perfect ones for your customers, but how do you know if you don’t actually ask them?
Gathering and acting on feedback is absolutely crucial for building a trustworthy and engaged community, as it allows them to feel legitimately heard, rather than pandered to.
CRM software can be extremely beneficial for this, sending timely email, push, and SMS notifications to your audience to gather their feedback or answer their concerns.
Organize Impactful Events and Experiences
Another great way to truly engage your audience and improve the community feel around your brand is through organized events and experiences.
One great example of this Nike, who have an excellent ongoing approach to experiences and events, providing customers with organized runs and more advanced gatherings. They even have a page on their site dedicated specifically to experiences.
Of course, I’m not saying you need to achieve the same level as Nike, especially given the size and reputation of that brand, but everyone has to start somewhere! Digital events can also have a brilliant impact for completely remote businesses.
Provide Exclusive Perks to Your Community
Lastly, one way to ensure your community remains engaged and incentivized is to provide them with exclusive perks.
This doesn’t have to be anything too outrageous, but offering early access to launches, closer interaction with your brand, and even influence on future products can all be fantastic ways to provide exclusive perks that make your community stay engaged and push other customers to join it.
The trick here is to find the sweet spot where you offer your community enough exclusive content and benefits that incentivize them, without alienating those outside your community, or giving away too much margin on your products and services.
This might take a little while to perfect, but some of the easiest things you can try include member-only content, content that community members can access first as part of a pre-launch, and even exclusive additional discounts.
Final Thoughts
Community is one of the most powerful selling points of any brand, regardless of the industry.
When your customers become your biggest brand advocates, the potential growth for your brand skyrockets!
For more advice and guidance from successful entrepreneurs, be sure to check out the foundr+ platform. For just $1, you can get seven days of access to world-class instructors, over 30 courses and 1000 lessons, and proven frameworks that you can use to take your business to the next level.
Frequently Asked Questions About Creating a Community Around Your Brand
Why is building a community around your brand important?**
Building a community around your brand fosters customer loyalty increases engagement, and creates brand advocates who can help spread your message to a broader audience.
What are the key steps to start building a brand community?**
- Know your audience inside and out
- Create content that speaks to your community
- Optimize social media for community building
- Foster meaningful two-way communication
- Organize impactful events and experiences
- Provide exclusive perks to your community
What types of content are most effective in engaging a brand community?
Educational and inspirational content, such as in-depth guides, expert interviews, how-to articles, and interactive content like polls and challenges, are highly effective in engaging a brand community.
