In today’s oversaturated retail landscape, brands need to form strong relationships with their consumers to surpass their competitors, drive sales and ROI, and nurture long-lasting customer loyalty. Much of consumer relationship building relies on our desire to connect with other people who share the same needs, interests, and motivations. Marketers can take advantage of this by creating a dedicated brand community. This allows consumers to develop connections with each other and with their favorite brands at the same time. What is a brand community, and how do they lead to better company-consumer relationships?

While definitions may vary from company to company depending on engagement levels and purchase frequency, a brand community generally describes a segment of consumers who are invested in and dedicated to that brand. They don’t include people who occasionally check out a brand’s social media or only make the occasional purchase. To increase customer lifetime value and grow their community, brands need to guide these kinds of consumers onto the next stage of their path to purchase, shifting them from awareness and acquisition to loyalty and advocacy. 

Community members are emotionally connected to a company’s products, services, and values, and consistently engage with their content. They may even be brand advocates who frequently leave reviews, offer feedback, and spread the word among family and friends. Notably, brand communities often exist without the brand’s direct involvement, but will have a much smaller chance of long-term success as a result. If companies want to see their brand community expand and evolve, they need to create a dedicated relationship building strategy.

The main advantage of brand communities is their ability to act as a sales and marketing tool without needing a significant amount of resources. For example, companies can create referral programs where people get a discount code if they get someone else to make a purchase. They can create a branded hashtag and encourage people to post user-generated content, which they can then reshare on their own social media, reducing their own content creation costs. These community-driven efforts are typically inexpensive, easy to implement, and result in high returns. They also help businesses create a stronger brand identity and voice over time.

Another advantage of brand communities is their appeal to consumers’ psychological needs. Today’s consumers are skeptical, and find it easier to trust other people than trust in brands. When people advocate for specific companies and products, it creates social proof, where consumers emulate other people’s interests and behaviors to fit in, leading them to engage and make purchases based on their recommendations. Brand communities also appeal to our need for group belongingness. We typically seek out acceptance and emotional connections with like-minded people. Brand communities create loyal groups of people who share the same interests, habits, and levels of dedication.

Lastly, brand communities help companies capture and leverage user first-party data. Brands need data to inform their segmentation and personalization efforts, which further strengthens their customer relationships. Instead of chasing after individual consumers for their contact information and personal preferences, marketers can organically collect large amounts of data through community building efforts. For example, they can run a sweepstakes contest where shoppers need to share their name, email address, and favorite product to participate. They can build a loyalty program where members answer surveys about what they like about the brand in exchange for rewards. Brands can then use this information to better serve their community’s needs, resulting in increased sales, engagement, and customer loyalty.

One of the biggest challenges of brand communities is the need for constant monitoring and moderation. As a brand’s following grows, marketers must be mindful of how negativity and poor behavior can affect their reputation. For example, a brand might receive lots of social media comments, resulting in them creating a discussion forum for their biggest fans. However, they need to keep an eye on what people are talking about and what information they’re sharing to ensure that people are being truthful and respectful. Misconduct and misinformation can lessen people’s brand perception, especially if marketers don’t interfere and keep it from happening.

Negativity can also go so far as to lead to anti-brand communities, where groups of people come together to share their dislike of something. This is most commonly seen in sports teams and entertainment, but can also apply to brands, such as people who strongly dislike Apple products or gaming consoles. As a result, brands may see an influx of negative comments, reviews, and mentions on social media and other discussion-based websites. Marketers need to strike the right balance between too much moderation, which can seem like censorship, and too little moderation, which can seem like a lack of control.

1. Identify your brand’s values, goals, and unique value proposition.

To start, brands need to determine their own identity based on their mission, vision, and competitive advantages. Marketers can also look at consumer perspectives to get a better sense of their brand’s personality, such as whether they’re known for being informative and knowledgeable with great customer support, or if they have a reputation for being fun and engaging on social media. This can help shape the rest of their brand community strategies, such as what kinds of content to create or what tone of voice to use.

2. Gather insights into your existing audience’s needs, interests, and motivations.

Companies also need to understand what consumers want beyond their current products and services. For example, do they want merchandise so they can show support for their favorite brands? Do they want brands to send them text messages when there’s an upcoming sale or an exclusive event? Do they want to join a loyalty program so they can earn rewards for making purchases and engaging with other consumers? Polls, surveys, and social posts can help brands collect this kind of information.

3. Develop a communication strategy for connecting with your followers.

Next, brands need to choose the best marketing channels for communicating with consumers and fulfilling their needs. Companies may benefit from creating a centralized “hub”, such as their website or a discussion forum, where people can find and exchange information. They should also consider implementing an omnichannel approach to create a seamless experience for their customers. This can range from commonly used channels like email newsletters and social platforms to more niche channels like mobile apps, push notifications, and SMS messages, depending on where their audience can be found.

4. Create content and messaging that appeals to existing and potential customers.

Marketers can then start to develop a content strategy for engaging and expanding their brand community, informed by prior research and first-party data. For example, an alcohol brand can send recipe pairings via email newsletter based on what alcohol their consumers purchase. A makeup brand might share video tutorials on how to use their products via social media to attract new customers. They should also experiment with timing and frequency to determine when and how often people engage with their content.

5. Reward your consumers for desired actions and behaviors.

One of the most important aspects of any successful brand community is its ability to provide ongoing value. If brands want to retain customers, they need to recognize and reward them for their efforts. To start, marketers can offer exclusive content to people who regularly engage with their emails. They can send discount codes to people who frequently comment on their social posts. Lastly, they can run marketing promotions like contests and gift with purchase programs to drive sales and engagement while rewarding consumers at the same time. For example, they can ask customers to make a purchase to receive a gift card or the chance to win a free product in return. Rewards help consumers feel appreciated by their favorite brands, increasing the likelihood of long-term user retention.

6. Consider building a loyalty program for your most engaged community members.

The best way to build, nurture, and monitor a brand community is through a dedicated loyalty program. Loyalty programs are full-scale marketing tactics where consumers are continuously incentivized to engage with a brand. Unlike one-off promotions like sweepstakes and contests, loyalty programs help marketers strengthen consumer trust over time through game mechanics and rewards. They can also include leaderboards and program tiers, rewarding consumers for higher levels of engagement and gradually increasing their loyalty towards the brand. For example, brands can segment members into tiers based on number of purchases, then give them access to exclusive content and perks like free shipping as they move into higher tiers.

7. Collect and leverage user first-party data on an ongoing basis.

To nurture meaningful relationships with consumers, brands need zero-party and first-party data to understand their interests, needs, and behaviors, ranging from basic contact details and demographics to deeper insights into their product and content preferences. While brand communities focus on bringing people together based on shared similarities, customers ultimately still want personalized experiences. For example, they want to choose what email content they receive or what rewards they redeem. Marketers should create processes for organizing and analyzing their data, then turning their data into action plans. This can include using sales data to create exclusive offers for community members, looking at survey responses to find ways to improve their loyalty program, and so on.

Engaging & evolving

First and foremost, brand communities need to be engaging in order to drive member participation. If brands only share the occasional social post or send the occasional marketing email, people will see this as a lack of effort and become less interested in connecting with them, and may even switch to another brand. The content itself also needs to be engaging; for example, brands should create a variety of social content and email campaigns to avoid seeming repetitive and uncreative. Lastly, brands need to be flexible and open to evolving their community building strategies as they go, such as what social platforms they’re on to what loyalty program rewards they offer, based on their community’s interests.

PlayStation first launched their online service, Playstation Network, in 2006, because an increasing number of people were starting to buy and play games online. Over time, this became PlayStation Plus, where members pay to access additional features like exclusive discounts, free games, and the ability to connect with other PlayStation enthusiasts through discussion forums and apps. PlayStation will also be launching a free-to-join loyalty program, PlayStation Stars, later this year, where people can play games and join monthly campaigns to earn points and redeem them for digital collectibles. PlayStation’s evolution of their brand community proves their ongoing investment in fulfilling consumers’ needs.

Reciprocal & consumer-centric

When nurturing consumer connections, brands should be careful not to create one-sided relationships, as this leads to a lack of communication and trust. For example, when customers leave reviews or write comments, marketers should take the time to respond. When brands add a new feature to their loyalty program, they should include a survey where members can give feedback. Companies also need to center their community building efforts around what consumers show interest in, like which products they purchase or what types of social posts they engage with.

In Toro’s ‘The One Landscape Contractor’ Rewards program, members can provide feedback about the program and answer surveys that help Toro better understand who they are and what they’re looking for. Questions include what services their landscaping business offers, who their customers are, what retailers and brands they purchase from, and which factors influence their purchase decisions, such as product price and technical support. Toro can use this data to improve their loyalty program and marketing strategies over time, as well as continue to build up their brand community through increasingly relevant offers and rewards.

Collaborative & inclusive

To further the reciprocal aspect of their brand community, companies can also ask consumers to contribute their own suggestions for new features, products, and services. These collaborative efforts help consumers feel seen by their favorite brands and can lead to increased sales and engagement. Brand communities should also be inclusive and open to as many consumers as possible, with relatively low barriers to entry, to avoid creating an exclusionary environment.

Starbucks’s ‘My Starbucks Idea’ asked consumers to submit and vote on ideas for improving and expanding their offerings, ranging from new drink flavors and products like cake pops to service innovations like free wifi, reusable cup sleeves, and mobile payments via drive-thru. This helped enhance people’s brand experience and improve Starbucks’s reputation, as it demonstrated their dedication to listening to and directly implementing their consumers’ feedback.

Omnichannel & data-driven

Lastly, while brand communities should have a centralized location like a website or discussion forum, marketers also need to develop an omnichannel strategy where they can meet consumers where they are via as many marketing channels as necessary. Whether community members are moving from a brand’s social media to their mobile app or their emails to their website, the experience should feel interconnected, frictionless, and easy to follow. To do so, communities also need to be data-driven, where brands follow user journeys to identify potential areas for improvement. For example, looking at loyalty program data to see how people are earning points and redeeming rewards, or tracking their email engagement to see which subject lines and calls-to-action result in the highest open and click-through rates.

In Universal Pictures’s All-Access Rewards program, members get the full omnichannel experience through the program’s website, pop-ups, and email campaigns. The program also includes a Movies Anywhere integration, where users connect their account to accumulate points for purchases from streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and watch bonus features from purchased movies without needing to navigate to another site. In addition, Universal can collect a wealth of data for actionable insights, from high-level information like member demographics and purchase behavior to individual user journeys, such as what pages they viewed before purchasing a movie or what actions they took before redeeming a reward.

Build brand communities with data-driven customer loyalty programs

Brand communities are crucial for creating reciprocal company-consumer relationships, leading to increased engagement, sales, and customer loyalty, as well as better ROI and improved customer lifetime value. Marketers need to focus on creating quality content, messaging, and experiences that boost their brand’s value and reputation by understanding their competitive advantage, their audience’s needs, and their users’ first-party data.

With 3 tier logic’s PLATFORM³, brands can build successful communities through short-term promotions and full-scale loyalty programs. Modules like Points & Gamification, Dynamic Messaging, and Data Capture & Analytics provide marketers with the tools and information they need to nurture ongoing relationships with their customers. To learn more, chat with an expert today.