Why is a brand community important now?

Brand communities are becoming more and more important. No longer just another buzzword, the concept is thriving thanks to social media because users have moved from just searching for brands to congregating around them.

Today, people expect more meaningful interactions with brands than ever before. But how can this be achieved and what are the essentials that you need to know?

Marketing and brand communities

Generating word-of-mouth custom and building loyalty are where brand communities excel. This means that they fit into both the acquisition and retention aspects of the marketing mix simultaneously, so you may already have useful tools within reach.

Better yet, with acquisition getting increasingly competitive and complex, brand communities can offer exciting new opportunities. Any kind of community shares similar qualities, whether it’s a brand-based one or not, so all it takes to adapt is a little flexibility.

Users are learning and speaking to each other of their own accord already, so brands can act as a facilitator of these conversations and even take part in them – well, as long as this is done on the community's terms! That may seem like a change of pace for marketing teams that are used to having to make the first move, but navigating this need not be difficult.

However, building an enduring, authentic brand community is not automatically straightforward. As reinvention company Jackman found in its Human Insights Study, there are many potential pitfalls and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to be followed. You will need to use your judgment and take your unique circumstances into account.

Find out how to set up a brand community here.

Brand communities and loyalty

Brand communities can be a very effective response to today’s much more challenging commercial landscape. That’s not an understatement; a report by SimplicityDX has revealed that the cost of customer acquisition has risen by 60% in the past six years.

As Generation Z has entered the conversation with a more values-oriented approach to consumerism and the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a lasting growth in the acceptance of digital options, brands have needed to re-evaluate what it is that will attract audiences and keep them engaged. 

This means that customer retention schemes and post-purchase communications have become all the more important too. In both cases, brand values need to be played up to keep the consumer engaged and aware of what the brand stands for. Remember: brand = product + values.

A growing scepticism among consumers about endorsements made by paid influencers is also a factor. Brand communities can play a great role in creating a much more substantial kind of influence, leveraging word of mouth from more trustworthy ‘people like us’ who are not on the company’s payroll.

Brand communities and events

The question of whether an event should be physical or virtual comes up much more frequently nowadays. The classical physical kind are pretty well documented, but some in-depth examinations have now taken place for virtual ones as well. GWI looked into virtual events in their paper Virtual Events and Interactions and they noted:

"With 8 in 10 consumers having attended at least one of the virtual events we asked about, the demand is plain to see… Virtual events hold a bigger potential that can only be utilised if organisers move away from trying to replicate the perks of physical events in the online space. Our data shows that virtual event attendees want interactive experiences and video quality more than anything else, so creating unique interactive event models is key."

They also note that this type of experience has been helped by a general reduction in tech-related anxiety – with no choice but to attend events virtually during the pandemic, plenty of people from all walks of life found they liked them after all – and that virtual events may actually prove more profitable than physical ones. While in-person events often have options for revenue generation like food and drinks, the digital world can offer easy ways to generate revenue like merchandise, subscriptions and donations too.

To turn that inside out, how viable physical events are now is also an open question. High costs and low profit margins have always meant that they are at the mercy of market forces to a greater degree than many other types of commerce, but post-pandemic safety considerations and the ongoing cost of living crisis may mean many people simply may not return to physical events or will go to far fewer than they used to.

Virtual events and live streaming

We need to remember that people attend events for various reasons that go beyond just ‘entertainment’. For many, they act as an escape from the stresses and strains of everyday life and provide a precious opportunity to hang out with friends and family. As a result, these events provide more than a ‘service’ for consumers and they become a part of their identity that is both looked forward to eagerly and looked back on fondly.

That makes them very different to other types of experience where people just happen to congregate. You might watch a movie with a few hundred people in the cinema, for example, but will you ever find out any of their names? By contrast, people interact differently and more ‘intimately’ with strangers at events, whether in person or online, because of this shared sense of identity supported by common turns of phrase, points of shared interest and familiar experiences.

Whether in person or online, people will still want to experience this shared sense of identity. That’s why this kind of event can provide a brand community with a serious highlight and one that offers the brand itself the perfect opportunity to attract new interest and bolster its retention efforts. Our brand communities report offers more thoughts on this topic.

If you would like to discuss brand communities and what they can offer you in greater detail, we can help with that. Take advantage of our FREE content consultation here to talk to us today.