Can Community Marketing Boost Your Brand?

In an era where selling products or services online is no longer enough, where competition is increasingly fierce, and where consumers are losing trust in brands, implementing a community strategy could well be the key for companies looking to stand out! Trustt tells you more about the impact of community marketing and the benefits it can bring to your brand. Let’s get started!

A closer look at the characteristics, evolution, and functioning of CBM or Community-Based Marketing

Definition of community marketing

Community marketing or tribal marketing is an approach that consists of identifying groups of users by affinity to deliver specific messages to them.

We talk about a community when consumers are grouped around an influencer or a brand.

Within these communities, we find individuals who share common ideas, interests, values, or who support a particular cause.

A brand will be adopted by a group or tribe because it aligns with their identity.

The notion of community necessarily implies that there is a place of “exchange and that the members who compose it dialogue and interact with each other. In the” digital age, many communities form around brands on social networks. These are called virtual communities.

The Changes Brought by Community Marketing

Community marketing or tribal marketing responds to the evolution of consumer behaviors following the digital transformation and the rise of social networks. Unlike a classic marketing approach based on customer segmentation by gender, location, or socio-professional category, which is currently becoming less relevant, community marketing serves to connect consumers with each other and provide them with an experience.

Internet users who are constantly overexposed to advertisements have developed a stance of distrust towards brands.

The development of the Internet now allows them to be more informed and to find information on their own. This completely disrupts the relationship that brands have with their customers.

Today, consumers no longer hesitate to share their purchasing experiences, whether positive or negative. Customer reviews are multiplying everywhere on the web: on Google, on brand product pages, or on social networks. Thus, all the information they need before making a purchase is now available through the experience of other customers. According to a Nielsen study, 92% of consumers trust suggestions from their peers more than an advertising campaign.

It is in this context that communities have naturally emerged. Digital technology has allowed internet users sharing the same affinities, interests, and concerns to easily group together and exchange with each other.

These profound changes are pushing brands to reinvent their relationships with their customers around a more community-based approach in order to sustain their activity and stand out from the competition!

Community Marketing: A Win-Win Strategy!

Building a community and creating engagement requires daily involvement on your part. However, in the Internet age, managing to build a community of consumers around your brand is an essential strategic issue and one of the most powerful tools for your company. From the consumers’ perspective, joining a community addresses several of their deep motivations and what they expect from your brand.

The Benefits of Community Marketing for Consumers

• Being Part of a Group

The main motivation for consumers when they join a community is the desire to be part of a tribe, with specific codes and rituals. They wish to create social connections, share, and gain recognition from their peers. They want to feel a sense of belonging.

• Being an Actor

Consumers want to become proactive consumers by being on an equal footing with brands. They are taking an active approach and want to feel understood and heard. According to a Supper / Opinion Way study: 78% of respondents feel that brands offer them products they don’t need, and 72% of them feel products are unnecessary or poorly designed (49%)! Today, consumers want to collaborate with brands to help them develop better products.

• Participating in Something Bigger

Consumers want to support brands that are committed to making the world a better place! According to the Earned Brand 2018 study: 65% of consumers in France choose to buy from or boycott a brand based on its stance on issues. The younger generations in particular are extremely sensitive to societal, environmental, economic, and ideological issues. As a result, more than just a high-performing product, these new consumers expect brands to commit to important issues so they can get involved alongside them.

The Benefits of Community Marketing for Your Brand

Successfully building a community around your brand is a real opportunity that allows you to:

• Get closer to your audiences and create a privileged relationship with them;
• Improve your customer knowledge and better understand their expectations and needs;
• Maintain constant contact with your consumers to succeed in retaining them;
• Transform your audiences into brand ambassadors who will talk about your products or services to their circle whenever the opportunity arises;
• Have a panel of users to submit your ideas to, have them test your products, or even co-create new products with;
• Obtain feedback from your customers after using your products and services to continuously improve them;
• Multiply the chances of success when launching your new products or services thanks to a solid fan base;
• Recruit new customers and increase the conversion rate of your e-shop.

An Example of a Successful Community Strategy: Nidé.co, a Brand That Co-Creates Its Products with Its Community

What is the concept proposed by nidé.co?

Nidé.co is a clean cosmetics brand, free from harmful or controversial ingredients, born in September 2018. Nidé.co presents itself as a 100% collaborative beauty platform.

The young brand’s starting premise is to do nothing without its customer community! Thus, each of the products it offers on its website is co-created by beauty enthusiast consumers.

Rather than launching its products on the market and in a way imposing them on its customers, Nidé.co does the complete opposite! The brand gives voice to consumers and starts from their needs to build cosmetic products with them that truly meet their expectations.

How does the brand co-create its products with community members?

Anyone with an idea can easily submit it on the brand’s website. The project owner fills out a detailed questionnaire to explain their concept and beauty issue. Nidé.co carefully studies each idea according to numerous criteria. If the project is validated by the brand, it is then submitted to community votes on the platform to verify its viability.

If the project reaches 2000 votes over a 3-month period, it goes into development! The brand then selects 200 target people from its community to test the first version of the product. Nidé.co takes into account all the feedback from the selected targets and optimizes the product accordingly to launch the best possible version on the market.

For each co-created idea, the brand obviously compensates the project owner, because as they say so well, “co-creating is not stealing!”

What are the ingredients that make Nidé.co’s community strategy successful?

Here’s how they do it:

• Nidé.co is committed to healthy consumption of cosmetic products and advocates a return to essentials;
• The young startup constantly relies on its community. It gives voice to its consumers, listens to them, and is committed to finding solutions to address their daily challenges;
• The brand offers members of its community the opportunity to co-create its products, thus responding to consumers’ needs to be active participants in the life of brands;
• Its communication is based on transparency, sincerity, and authenticity;
• The brand uses all the data, opinions, and user feedback it receives to continuously optimize its customer experience;
• Finally, the creative brand is very active on social media and offers rich and truly useful content centered on the needs of its community members.

Thanks to its community strategy, the startup has managed to win the hearts of internet users and establish itself permanently in the market in just a few years!

Trustt is a SaaS (Software as a Service) that helps brands develop their proprietary community through the implementation of an ambassador program. Trustt’s mission? To guarantee the commercial success of consumer goods brands by bringing them closer to their consumers and enabling them to build and retain proprietary communities behind each of their products.