How Can a Brand Community Help You Develop Products Expected in the Market?

According to the Brand Utility Barometer 2018 (Opinionway Supper), consumers are increasingly demanding towards brands and the quality of products or services offered to them. Now, customers no longer hesitate to give their opinions and wish to actively participate in the creation of products or services from their favorite brands (62%). Trustt explains how community co-creation can help brands design best-selling products or services that align with market needs and expectations.

Brand Community: Definition

The concept of brand community has largely developed with the emergence of the Internet and social networks.

A brand community is a space or platform for exchanges between a brand and its customers, such as an ambassador program or social media accounts, for example. Exchanges can take place both between the brand and its consumers and among customers themselves.

The objectives of creating a brand community can be to:

• Promote its offer;
• Reach new target audiences;
• Sell its products or services;
• Co-create products or services;
• Conduct marketing studies;
• Manage customer relationships;
• Retain existing customers.

Capitalize on Community Members to Co-Create Products or Services

Rather than launching products or services on the market and, in a way, imposing them on customers, it is interesting to start by giving a voice to consumers. The objective? To start from their needs and expectations to build products or services that are truly anticipated in the market.

Several marketing techniques can allow brands to collect feedback from their audience:

Social Listening

In the digital age, consumer insights are omnipresent on the social web and available in real-time: online product reviews, appreciations on brand websites, search engines, comments and interactions on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…)… They are everywhere and present throughout the customer’s purchase journey. The study of raw social listening results complements market research and allows the brand to identify new consumption trends, which are difficult to perceive through more conventional studies.

Concept Testing

Before launching a product or service on the market, it is essential for a brand to analyze the opinion and degree of interest of its target audience. Indeed, these concept tests with a panel of target consumers allow brands to have a better understanding of market expectations and what their customers want. Concept tests help measure the viability and potential of each product or service and thus avoid the risks of commercial failures.

Usage Tests

They allow brands to obtain valuable data on the performance of products or services. These concrete and authentic user feedbacks on all aspects of the product or service offered – from its effectiveness to its ease of use – can be quantified and exploited by brands to continuously optimize their offer. This allows them to always stay in line with market and consumer needs.

Ambassador Programs

The idea is to place consumers at the heart of the brand’s product or service creation process. To do this, brands invite members of their community to become “accomplices” in their creations through the implementation of an ambassador program on their website… The panels of consumers, rigorously selected for their affinities with the brand and its offer, will be able to interact on different successive stages: analysis, design, development, manufacturing, and marketing of the product or service.

This proprietary data, highly segmented, fresh, and customized, allows companies to:

• Refine their targeting strategy;
• Understand and anticipate the needs of their target audience;
• Identify the most important criteria for consumers regarding each product or service: price, packaging, distribution, size, practicality, texture…;
• Create products or services that exactly match the requirements of prospects and customers;
• Launch successful and long-lasting products or services on the market;
• Stay one step ahead of competing brands.

Collect consumer insights at each stage of the product or service lifecycle

Consumer information is an essential resource for brands. To endure, companies must continuously collect proprietary data – first party – at every stage of the product or service lifecycle.

The lifecycle of a product or service corresponds to all the stages involved in the process of manufacturing, distribution, acquisition, use, and disposal of the product or service.

Collecting information about its products or services from its target audience at each stage of the lifecycle allows the company to guide its strategic approach and marketing mix, to evolve its offer and thus, to better manage its product or service portfolio.

Companies therefore have every interest in calling upon their brand community to test their concepts and offers at each phase of the lifecycle.

Thanks to the feedback from their community members, brands can continuously upgrade their product or service offering. These modifications and evolutions can allow an existing product or service to have a second life in the market.

Through the analysis of consumer feedback, a new version of the offer is thus proposed in total alignment with the new needs of existing customers.

Moreover, implementing a community co-creation approach throughout the lifecycle of products or services can help a brand define or adjust the different versions of its concept. Thus, it is better able to identify the main features and additional benefits that can push a customer to choose a superior version of the offer they already own.

Finally, analyzing the feedback and feelings of community members, as well as the user experience of products or services, serves to continuously optimize the user experience of an existing offer to make it always better.

The SaaS solution developed by GenericProductName helps companies and brands collect fresh and authentic proprietary data to enable them to develop products or services totally in line with market expectations.