Reasons You Should Do Community Marketing and How To Do It | by Hana Annisa Firdaus | Mar, 2023

Influencing via Community Marketing

Community is much closer than you think. If we find out that our friends use the same product as us, it can be called community. The aim of community marketing itself is to convert people. It means converting non-users to users or convincing people who are hesitant to use a product to use it.

The higher the socioeconomic standing, the more difficult it is to enter the market solely through influencers. Community marketing is therefore required.

The Power of Community

Why is it called power? It’s because connecting users will be more easy action to give exposure to people who do not know about the product. They talked to each other about their current interest or even their experience in using a product.

The more genuine and honest a review people will be more interested and tend to follow. They craved authenticity.

The key of community marketing is communication. Therefore, a community person in a brand should make sure the communication between these people goes well.

Brands can reach new people if community activities go well, but if they are not managing their community well, the community can become a dangerous boomerang.

The pictures above are example of community activity by a well-known beauty brand in Indonesia. The event was a talk show arranged with a public figure becoming a speaker and telling her story to the audience. The targeted audience is a woman because the brand is known to raise the theme about woman empowerment

Users to Brand Evangelists

Brand evangelists are consumers who eager to share their opinions about the products they have used, not influencers. So, how to convert them from users to brand evangelists? It can be done by:

1. Activity

Always involve users in the brand’s event, so they constantly engage with the brand. In this activity, users will talk to each other and unconsciously tell their experiences about the product.

Examples of activities: new product launching, office visit overview to lead them to know more about the brand’s people, gathering with influencers, and webinar.

The picture above is an example of a product launched by a brand. The activity attended by several participants and 40 Female Daily Members. The participant received an invitation to come to the event and become the first one who tries the new product.

2. Benefit

The main reason people like being in a community is they feel a benefit from it. Conversely, if they feel no more benefits from joining the community, they will leave the community. So, it’s important for the brand community officer to consider the benefits scheme for their existing users.

Examples of benefits: affiliate marketing, referral discount, pre-release product and free trial, exclusive invitations to the event, discounts for purchase other products, and insider information.

3. Support

After-sales support is key to creating a sense of trust in the brand. Make users believe more deeply in our brand so they will be willing to promote brand to others. The greater the trust users have in the brand, the greater the chance of becoming brand evangelists.

Example of support: responsive when users have difficulty in using the product, and guide using products.

The aim of doing the three things above is to give a beneficial feeling to people in the community. If they do not feel beneficial anymore, the possibility of leaving the community will be high.

“Make sure that being in community is beneficial for them”

Community marketing not only can be executed for people who already become a user, but it can be for non-users. Therefore, it is called external communities marketing activity. If you want to go to another community, here are the three steps that you can try:

1.Seeding

Create awareness in the external community. It will be easier than in general audiences, because people in an external community already have the similarity, such as the same hobby. In that community, we can explain our product and make them interested and willing to buy. It can be done by giving them free samples.

Example: become a sponsor in external communities, joined their event, open a booth and give information about our product.

The pictures above are an example of external communities about beauty enthusiasts. It is called Jakarta X Beauty 2022 by Female Daily. There was a booth that allowed brands to promote and sell their products. During the event, there were a lot of influencers that represented a brand to attract people to come to the brand booth. Also, give several benefits to the people who came.

“The goal is to get their communities member attention towards our brand”

2. Growing

It begins after they become our users. Marketers should encourage them to share their experience of using a product. Invite them to become speakers at other events or even other communities.

Example: give them several benefits.

“The goal is to get the members to experience the product themselves”

3. Spreading

After the growing step is successful, the next step is the marketer should encourage users to spread information about products.

Example: getting a discount if posting the product on social media.

Power of community activity = the process of spreading awareness can be along with running conversion