Building an online community can bring numerous benefits for a brand:
- Added value for customers: offer a USP that competitors can’t imitate.
- Customer loyalty and trust: customers will recommend your products to each other and start to identify with your brand.
- Viral marketing: community members will spread the word about your brand/product.
- Control over your message: communicate key marketing ideas; respond to criticism on your own terms; advertise on an ideal forum that is 100% under your control.
- Advantages for your website: dynamic content, increased traffic and improved search engine ranking.
- Customer insights: mine data from your website; profile your customers; engage in dialogue with your target market; instantly test products and marketing concepts to reduce time to market.
- Savings: save on copywriting, marketing, market research, and customer support by putting community members to work for you.
- Earnings: generate revenue through banner advertising, e-mail marketing, coregistration offers, and by charging money for premium community features.
Keep in mind that none of these benefits will come instantly; you need to be willing to invest the time to let your community take root and grow. If you are looking for fast results, you might be better off marketing on existing social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Xing, rather than building a new platform. More on social networks in our next post.
