Community Building For Marketers: Finding Your Why

This edited extract is from Neighborhood Constructing for Entrepreneurs by Areej AbuAli ©2025 and is reproduced with permission from Kogan Web page Ltd.

There are a lot of totally different ideas of what a neighborhood is, and varied definitions.

Exterior the context of promoting terminology, the phrase “neighborhood” is primarily related to native areas or neighbourhoods.

The idea of neighborhood as a marketing or growth tool is one which solely actually started to achieve traction within the Twenty first century.

Once I first launched my very own neighborhood, Ladies in Tech web optimization, which I’ll discuss with as WTS, I didn’t use the time period “neighborhood.” I used phrases like “group” or “community,” however neither time period felt fairly proper.

Because the language round community marketing grew to become extra widespread, I noticed that this was, certainly, what I used to be creating – this phrase felt like a way more pure match.

What Does A Neighborhood Look Like?

There are many totally different focal factors round which a neighborhood may be constructed.

The secret is that sufficient folks care sufficient about that factor to need to join with different people who additionally care about it, and to speak to them about it.

In 2022, Allie Volpe wrote an article in Vox on “Why neighborhood issues a lot,”¹ and referenced the analysis on “Sense of Neighborhood”² completed by David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis, which suggests {that a} neighborhood is outlined by 4 standards:

• Membership – to really feel a way of belonging by means of shared identification, goal, or purpose for being within the group.
• Affect – to really feel such as you make a distinction to the group and that the group makes a distinction to you.
• Integration and fulfilment of wants – to really feel like your wants will probably be met by different group members.
• Shared emotional connection – to really feel that you just share historical past or related experiences.

In case your neighborhood members don’t really feel any of this stuff, then your neighborhood breaks down – primarily you don’t have a neighborhood in any respect.

In neighborhood advertising, the model exists largely within the background.

Convening a neighborhood round a selected matter establishes you as an knowledgeable and chief on this space, and varieties an in depth relationship with the neighborhood members, who’re more likely to be members of your audience.

However a relationship will not be one-way – it’s best to every get worth from each other.

What Is Neighborhood Advertising?

Neighborhood will not be a synonym for purchasers. In building a community, you aren’t merely gathering collectively a bunch of individuals that you could promote to.

A few of your neighborhood members could also be prospects, or might go on to turn into prospects, however others won’t. A few of your prospects won’t ever be inquisitive about becoming a member of your neighborhood.

Whenever you entice a buyer, you’re looking particularly for somebody who needs to purchase your services or products, and also you then attempt to nurture a long-term relationship with them the place they proceed to purchase from you.

Whenever you entice a neighborhood member, you might be inviting somebody to turn into a part of an ecosystem of which you might be only one half. They are going to join with you and the opposite members of the neighborhood.

They could share attributes in widespread together with your goal buyer, or they might be linked in different methods together with your space of focus.

As counterintuitive as which will sound, the aim of a neighborhood is to not flip members into prospects. The worth of a member will not be in whether or not they spend cash with you.

They could turn into advocates for you, recruit new neighborhood members, and assist new folks get to know your model.

They could present helpful insights to you and your members, or they might turn into companions with whom you’ll be able to collaborate.

You most likely have already got outlined personas of your very best prospects. However, on the subject of neighborhood advertising, don’t fall into the entice of pondering these are the personas you need to entice to your neighborhood.

Contemplate the broader surroundings you need to create, and who would need to be a part of that. Who may make a beneficial contribution?

With advertising, we create blogs, movies, social media posts, FAQs, e-mail newsletters, guides, and sources that our goal prospects merely devour.

With a neighborhood, then again, we’re constructing interactive relationships. This feels rather more personable, and also you join together with your members on a extra human degree. You get to know them as actual folks.

To get to that time, although, requires dedication. A neighborhood marketer must be regularly serving their neighborhood, and always interested by how one can enhance it.

You might want to perceive what your members need from the area and from you.

What are their wants, their issues and their frustrations, within the context of your neighborhood matter? The place are you able to assist them, and the place are they at the moment struggling to get assist from you?

Whenever you present your members that you just care about them, you exhibit that it is a actual neighborhood, not a gross sales platform, and an area the place they’ll belong.

Advantages Of Neighborhood For Manufacturers

So, with all this effort concerned, why is it value investing in neighborhood constructing?

At a time after we’re all working laborious to construct social media followings and e-mail lists, is that this simply one other platform to must attempt to develop?

Not like your social media followers and e-mail subscribers, your neighborhood members are in an in depth relationship with you.

They’re rooting for you, brainstorming with you, serving to you to uncover concepts and alternatives, and keen you to succeed.

Neighborhood members will typically be the primary to share new services that you just launch – they actively amplify and promote your model for you as a result of they really feel as if they’re a part of one thing.

They may also be actively looking out for potential prospects whom they are going to knowledgeably persuade to hitch you, even serving to to onboard these folks for you.

They supply beneficial insights into what new options, merchandise, or providers it is advisable create and the place sure components may want refining or adjusting. They are going to be your beta testers and troubleshooters.

They enable you to perceive how one can craft your messaging as a result of common conversations together with your neighborhood will allow you to see how your potential prospects discuss your product or your business and what they’re on the lookout for.

When you might have direct entry to a neighborhood, it may possibly take minutes to get insights, versus requiring large-scale analysis initiatives which will take months to extract beneficial info out of your goal prospects.

“For too lengthy we’ve seen consumerism push manufacturers into unsustainable progress fashions,” says Pete Heslop, Managing Director of Steadfast Collective.

For the previous decade, Pete and his staff have constructed bespoke platforms that allow community-led manufacturers to thrive. Pete believes that neighborhood is foundational for regenerative enterprise progress.

“We’ve taken accountability to offer another,” Pete says. “Steadfast Collective believes that individuals thrive when gathered in neighborhood; that generative locations, areas and platforms are the place communities develop.”

The Digital Neighborhood Leaders Survey Report³ states that communities assist people, organizations, and society thrive by enabling data sharing, collaboration, and the cocreation of worth.

The report goes on to spotlight that digital communities play an more and more important function in Twenty first-century lives, organizations, and societies. They have an effect on enterprise outcomes.

Right this moment, manufacturers “earn loyalty and progress” by collaborating in them. The report additionally highlights that communities “reduce reliance on pricey advertising campaigns and conventional buyer assist strategies.”

And that “empowering prospects inside on-line communities cultivates a sense of possession, resulting in user-generated content material, beneficial insights, and peer assist.”

The report additionally states {that a} majority of 70% on-line communities have grown during the last 12 months, and a number of the elements driving this progress embrace:

• The shift to life on-line.
• The normalization of content material creation and sharing.
• The will for manufacturers to entry buyer suggestions straight.

Neighborhood goes far past brand awareness or engagement – it’s the following degree of retention and loyalty.

“Neighborhood offers you a aggressive edge. It actually can’t be replicated,” says Laura Roth, B2B SaaS neighborhood and advertising chief.

With expertise managing communities at Amazon, WeWork, and Vodafone, Laura is aware of simply how impactful the advantages are.

However she additionally is aware of that, to realize these advantages, it is advisable put within the work. You might want to create one thing distinctive, that comes out of your particular mission and values as a corporation, and that speaks to the actual wants of your neighborhood.

“Neighborhood is a long-term sport,” Laura says. “It doesn’t occur in a single day, and you’ll’t copy it.”

In case you’re not ready to take a position the time, you then gained’t see the end result.

To learn the total guide, SEJ readers have an unique 25% low cost code and free transport to the US and UK. Use promo code SEJ25 at koganpage.com here.

¹ A. Volpe. Why neighborhood issues a lot – and how one can discover yours, Vox, 24 March 2022, www.vox.com/22992901/how-to-find-your-community-as-an-adult (archived at https://perma.cc/6F9H-GT4T)

² D. V. McMillan and D. M. Chavis. An Introduction to Sense of the Neighborhood, nd, www.drdavidmcmillan.com/sense-of-community/ article-1 (archived at https://perma.cc/H56M-ZWWS)

³ Digital Neighborhood Leaders. 2023 Digital Neighborhood Leaders Survey Report, 2023, https://digitalcommunityleaders.com/ (archived at https:// perma.cc/275F-E4C5)

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