• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, October 11, 2023

Community building is no small undertaking. But as we discussed in a session this past week for MediaPost’s Brand Insider D2C Summit, it can be an essential component of the go-to-market plan for a retailer, and especially for a retailer that has maintained a direct-to-consumer brand.

I’ve tried to build community before, to varying degrees.  Sometimes your product just “fits” with the idea of a community, while sometimes that can feel more forced than it should be.  Consumer packaged goods are very much aligned to community, and so are B2B products. Healthcare and wellness products may or may not, depending on the willingness of the audience to share what they are feeling.

Building a community is not something you can force -- it has to be organic.  Your best customers give you feedback, and by monitoring what they are saying about your brand, you can identify the areas where you can lean in and foster more conversation.  That conversation, if done well, can lead to a community that maintains some of their own momentum and can be used to engage a broader view of your customers.

It should also be said that you should be listening to some of your less-than-happy customers too, because if they feel heard and responded to, they can become powerful advocates for your brand.

One of the key questions I had during our panel was how to staff a community, and what ROI one can expect from that staff and their efforts.  What I learned was that a community initiative does require strong staffing upfront, at least until the community gains some of its own momentum.  That staff is in place to spur and monitor conversations and be the voice of the brand that engages with those customers.

If you don’t guide the conversation at first, it can quickly veer off into areas that are not beneficial to your brand and can in fact become detrimental.  For example, competitors may gain access to your community and feed negativity about your brand to an audience they hope to flip.

The staff you allocate will be very busy upfront as they engage the audience, but over time they are likely able to ease back a bit and allow the group to monitor itself more.  That doesn’t mean a community can become hands-off.  You will always need to be engaged, but you should be able to focus on ways of growing the community rather than simply monitoring the one you have.

I also found it interesting that most people simply use existing tools like LinkedIn and Facebook to manage their communities.  In the past, there were community tools being used to create private groups, but it seems those are reserved for the best of the best and the companies who are trying to exert more control over the community.  Even those who do use a community management platform still use YouTube or other public-facing platforms to publish their content and promote it to people outside the community.

A community can be effective at both retention of existing customers and acquisition of new customers.  The acquisition component comes when you provide a way for users to engage and talk with others who have similar challenges or situations.  A community doesn’t have to be focused on a single product when it can be more.

Community is a truly important component of the GTM strategy for most retailers. If you aren’t actively engaged in it now, you should consider it for 2024.