Community marketing involves creating an environment of shared interest between you and your target customers. The environment builds a community, helping you establish the much-needed human connection with your prospects. It helps them realize that they’re not just numbers or buyers to you. Instead, they’re valued members of a community of which your business is an active member.
With a combination of different marketing activities like social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and offline advertising, you can win the love of prospects in that environment.
In this post, you’ll learn six proven community marketing strategies that will help you attract new customers and build customer loyalty.
Content:
Create an effective Facebook community page
Facebook has roughly 2.93 billion users. That’s a large number, and you can be sure that it includes a good percentage of your target market. An effective Facebook community page helps you interact better with individuals who have a shared interest in topics relevant to your business.
Unlike a Facebook business page, a community page helps your audience express themselves more freely. It’s an unofficial platform for members to exchange views and suggestions on different topics associated with your organization.
As a result, the community page is not just a way to sell. It’s also a listening tool that helps you identify the needs of your audience and develop more relatable strategies for marketing to them.
Previously, brands could create a User Administered Community Page by clicking “Create a page” on Facebook. However, with recent updates, the Facebook group has taken over the feature.
With Facebook groups, you can create and manage your community on the platform, like Airtable below.
Airtable’s community page is dedicated to all Airtable users and gives tips to help them use the platform more effectively. You’ll also find other Airtable communities for entrepreneurs, web professionals, and more.
Having a community page does not stop you from having a regular business page. For example, Airtable has several groups alongside its business page. However, some of these groups are not controlled by the company.
Your Facebook page and group will contribute to improving your community marketing strategies. You’ll be able to nurture a community interested in your brand. By sharing frequent content and updates, you’ll build a relationship with your audience, keep them engaged and boost customer loyalty.
Before setting up your page or community, ensure you have determined how you want to communicate with your community. Consider details like voice, tone, images, and writing style to maintain brand consistency.
For effectiveness, you should observe and determine what works for your community and get inspiration from similar brands. You can also check a style guide template to create a guide for your business.
Build a review culture
Another effective community marketing strategy is to build a review culture within your existing community. Reviews help your customers feel heard and valued, leading to more reviews. For example, Xbox has an online community called Xbox Ambassadors, and they encourage others to join this community by including reviews on their website.
One easy way to get reviews is by creating a feedback page on your community platform so members can share their thoughts. This works well, especially if you want to get reviews on a particular product, like Pipedrive in the example below:
Meanwhile, software engineering teams use platforms like GitHub to collect product feedback. They then import that feedback into their requirements management tools and use it to refine software products and align them with user expectations.
You can also send emails to your community members asking them to leave a review about their experience so far.
Rather than getting a generic review, it’s better to be specific about what you want them to give feedback on. Is it concerning what they have learned from your community? Or how your products have helped them? These reviews will not only help you to get more customers, but they will also reveal areas you can improve on as a brand.
Create a powerful landing page
Your community landing page will help you attract more prospects to your brand. So you must create a powerful page.
To achieve that, you’ll need to ensure that all the features align to encourage the desired action from your potential customers. Populate your landing page with interesting content. Not only that, but the landing page should also help visitors understand what they’ll get from your online community.
For example, Underlined has a community page with helpful information for potential members.
The page also includes links to various forums their users can join. Each forum has its focus.
They also include a preview of the community members. This also attracts potential members, especially if your visitors see someone they know.
At the bottom of the page, users can see the various categories of books on the platform. With this, Underlined can successfully win the hearts of writers and avid readers who want to join a community like theirs.
Another good idea for your community landing page is providing answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that your product users and potential customers might have. Don’t forget to include a clear call to action, so your leads know what to do once on your landing page.
Set up and host a social event
A social community event is a great way to connect and build relationships with community members. A successful social event builds trust between your business and the community, allowing cooperation.
Common events include product testing, fun days, trade shows, and competitions. You can also organize branded festivals, like Adidas in the example below:
Like Adidas’ Recode Running Festival, a community event should allow your business representatives to mingle with the community you have hosted the event for and create a shared, meaningful experience.
Before hosting an event, you need to do marketing research to ensure the event is appropriate. Then, promote the event through social media platforms and other marketing channels.
You can use a custom event app to enhance the social event for the attendees. Custom event apps allow you to display the event’s schedule, send announcements, interact with attendees directly, and communicate after the event.
Optimize Google My Business listing
Another great community marketing idea is to optimize your Google My Business listing. One benefit of this listing is that it can help prospects within the vicinity of your local store find you online. Hence, the platform is useful for both online and offline visibility within your community.
Ensure that your profile has been properly claimed, or your business listing won’t look legitimate to online community members when they view it. You also want to complete your Google My Business profile, so include all important details like the business email, address, and working hours.
For example, Venture Smarter includes its address, operating hours, and website on its Google Business Page. Prospects can also check the official website, where they’ll find more information about the business.
Venture Smarter also has a clear image of the firm’s location so visitors can identify it. Having good photos is essential as it supports the legitimacy of your business.
Add location targeting in Google Ads
Location targeting allows you to deliver your ads to customers in specific locations. This feature is valuable if you want to reach the community within your store’s vicinity.
To add location targeting in Google ads, you need to go into your settings:
- click on “Edit locations;”
- then “Advanced search;”
- “Radius targeting;”
- then, type in your business address and add the radius size, for example, 10 miles.
Here’s what the dashboard looks like:
Also, collect data for your location targeting Google ads. Collect click and conversion data. To collect click data, sign into your Google Ads account and click the reports icon. Next, click “Predefined reports,” then “Other,” and “Free clicks.”
From here, you can view and download the click data. The click data will help you determine which locations to target. To find your conversion data, you need to go into your “Tools and analysis” tab and click “Conversions.” Be sure to show ads to locations with high values.
In closing
The goal of community marketing efforts is to help you stand out from your competition. Becoming known in your local community helps you sell to a wider audience in a more targeted way, resulting in more conversions.
Remember to create an effective Facebook community page to communicate and engage people with a shared interest. Also, you need to optimize your Google My Business listing, build a review culture, and create a powerful landing page to funnel potential customers to a conversion page.
Setting up and hosting social events for community outreach is important, too, but make sure you promote it well and do your research. Lastly, adding location targeting in Google ads helps deliver your ads to the right place.
If you implement all these tips, you will have an optimized community marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter the size of your business or what industry you’re in; community marketing is an effective way to grow your business.
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