B2B Customer Communities: Creating Value Authentically
What makes a successful customer community?
It’s a simple question, but one worth diving into. In the world of B2B companies, founders and CEOs are constantly looking for ways to stand out from the competition. They cite common numerical data, such as rounds of fundraising, profit growth, customer acquisition trends, and churn rates. They announce new product launches certain to change their companies’ strength in the marketplace. They paint a rosy picture of financial stability, even when economic factors fluctuate.
But founders and CEOs also point to less measurable company traits - things like employee satisfaction, promotion paths, and HR benefits. One such more subjective attribute is the concept of a customer community.
When founders promote their community of customers, it can occasionally sound cliche, or even unconvincing. They may cite customer support response times, trying to prove that a quick first response to a support ticket makes customers happy. They may highlight something like an NPS score, and compare their company’s number to “industry standards.” Employees may raise a skeptical eyebrow at these talking points, and they are not wrong to do so.
Indeed, trying to objectively measure something like a customer community with numbers sort of misses the point. But founders would be smart to take seriously the idea of creating a real, authentic, passionate group of company devotees. When done right, a strong customer community can provide intangible benefits to a company’s performance, brand and overall image.
In this installment of StudioPod’s Content Frequencies series, we’ll focus on customer communities. What makes a good one, and how can B2B marketing teams work to develop strong customer connections? StudioPod Co-Founder TJ Bonaventura has spoken with industry experts all over the B2B marketing landscape. Here are some highlights he’s learned about how to create genuinely happy customers.
Why is a customer community valuable?
Before answering the question about the value of a customer community, it makes sense to define a customer community itself. For B2B companies, a customer community denotes an organized gathering, group, or meeting hub for customers and devotees of a particular company’s product. This community can come to formation in many shapes and formats: Slack channels, customer support Q&A forums, webinar attendance, conference gatherings, or even local city-based meet-ups. Customer communities provide a way for a company’s customers to get together, connect, network and share tips
The idea of a customer community probably sounds great to all; but why should CEO’s and company staff pay particular attention to it?
Create real fandom through authenticity
Successful customer communities take preparation, careful construction, and detailed execution. They cannot be created with the flick of a wrist or press of a button. When a community comes together in an organic way, though, companies can feel the impact.
Kalei White, the Content Marketing Manager at Trovata, has seen customer communities succeed firsthand. “I’m a huge advocate of B2B companies making communities,” she says. “When it is done right, it is fantastic. And it is the kind of marketing that all marketing should be like because it is authentic and it creates real fandom. People get so much value from a community when it’s executed properly.” The idea makes perfect sense. If a company puts the effort in to create genuine space where customers can interact authentically, those customers are more than likely to feel stronger affiliation for that company.
Provide brand lift over competitors
This benefit follows naturally after the first one. The landscape of competitors in most B2B SaaS settings is cutthroat, with tight margins separating market leaders from challengers. Companies that have a strong community of happy customers can naturally rise above others in their category.
Word of mouth is one familiar way that customers can benefit these companies. But happy customers, and vocal members of a community, can provide help in other ways as well. A company group may come up in somebody’s detailed research about the competitive landscape in one market, for instance. Also, forums such as Reddit, Quora, and Glassdoor allow internet browsers to read about which companies put care into the customer experience.
Build value on the cheap
Customer community maintenance requires upfront resource allocation, detailed planning and most importantly pure intentions. But the ongoing costs are quite low. “What I love about community is that it’s a less expensive way to create value,” Kalei says.
Think about a customer community’s costs as compared to brand campaigns, targeted advertising, and even content marketing development, and the reality is clear as day. If a customer community succeeds, it will provide value at limited expense to the company’s balance sheet.
Building a successful customer community
Once a company or marketing team has decided that building a healthy customer community is an authentic priority, it takes time and dedication to create the right parameters for that community’s development. Here are some tips for building a winning customer community.
Committed executive buy-in
This tip should be no surprise to marketing professionals who have tried to make any plan, program, or campaign successful. Whoever will present the plan for building a customer community, or the ultimate community manager, should make sure that executives know what will take place. A flourishing customer community does not take shape overnight, and there’s no immediate way to tie customer engagement to leads or ROI. Executives should be aware of this and approve of the vision regardless.
Avoid the urge to sell
Community managers or moderators may feel the urge to sell members of their community on products or services that their company offers. They should avoid this temptation. And it comes down to the issue of trust. “It takes months and months to build up a community who are engaging with each other, who have confidence in the community and know that they’re not being sold to,” Kalei explains.
Members of a new or developing community are either looking to learn more about the company or are already registered customers. They may feel turned off by something branded a “community” that in turn pushes products or services too aggressively.
Meet people when possible
Simply setting up a forum or Slack channel for customers and hoping it will blossom is likely a fool’s errand. When possible, community managers should put in the extra effort of meeting customers, in person and virtually. These meetings can take the form of one on one sessions, product training webinars, live chatrooms, and even in-person dinners.
Kalei mentions one particular colleague of hers who put in the extra effort as a community manager. “He made the best community I’ve ever seen,” Kalei says. “And he would get to know customers one on one on a personal level. He’d send calendar invites, get to know them, build a personal connection, and then invite them to join the community.”
Include customers, but in exclusive ways
Customers want to feel included, but they also want to feel special. Community managers would benefit from this understanding by scheduling limited-participation events.
Dmitry Shamis, the VP of Brand and Creative at SEVENROOMS and Founder of The Creative Brand, notes the example of product or support webinars that are capped at a certain number of participants. “This might sound counterintuitive, but I think successful webinars are both exclusive and inclusive,” he argues. An exclusive webinar has people bringing their own situations into play, and there’s just a different level of inclusion that is way more engaging.” This approach can: a) improve the quality of a webinar with focused participation, b) make attendees speak up and ask questions, and c) make participants feel seen and heard by the company, increasing their ties to that company’s brand.
Creativity goes a long way in marketing, but the same can be said for fostering a great community of customers.
Building community through company podcasts
This write-up has been all about building an authentic, successful community of customers for B2B companies. A company podcast can extend this idea further by getting that community to become active, engaged listeners to dynamic and thoughtful content. The StudioPod team provides full service podcast production for B2B brand and content marketing teams. Contact us today to learn more about how your customers can transform into community members and engaged listeners.
