5 reasons to start a Brand Community | HM Issue #2
Why small businesses and startups should start one now?
Accessibility of the internet and new tools has enabled more and more people to share hidden truths
and now even small businesses can learn, how big businesses have been making this big money?
Are you ready to learn about it?
Proctor and Gamble started ‘Being Girl’ in the year 2000 as an information platform for young, teenage girls for advice on things such as acne, menstruation, eating disorders, and dating
Since then it has expanded to almost 50 countries.
A book Groundswell mentions that a mere 1 percent conversion rate in the Being Girl community would offer a 3x ROI built on the brand loyalty that the community inspires.
Think about it, they were doing it as early as 2000, what is your excuse to not use community for your business. (Refer to this link for more such examples)
So the first important lesson is that
1. The Big brands are already running their brand communities for years to make more money.
What are you waiting for?
Let me share another example
If you have experienced the WOW Skin Science product, you should also know that they run a raving community on Facebook.
And when you go in the community, you realize, people are sharing their buying receipt in the group
They have made buying their products like a celebration in the community.
2. A lot of businesses are using their brand community to sell more to existing customers or sell to them for a larger duration without losing their trust
What is your plan for this?
Customers of Harley, who are also the members of their official community Harley Owners Group (HOG), spent 30% more on the brand in comparison to those customers who are not part of this community by Harley Davidson.
Through HOG, Harley is not only selling more motorcycles to their customers, but the customers are also buying merchandise, event tickets, and various other programs offered at HOG.
3. If you have a strong community, you can think beyond your product line to increase revenue
So why are you not thinking about it?
While we are offering this newsletter, we are happy to tell you that soon we are also starting our online community
In his book ‘Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation’ David Robertson talks about when Lego was working on Mindstorm in its initial stage, how they invited 4 customers to become MUPs, and how they invited MUPPETs, and how gradually that lead to building a hierarchical community that was good to collect feedback from and through these distinguished customers to improve their product and how Lego was able to send the message down the community.
Lego now runs many communities, for example, they run Lego Architecture Line, LUGNET, Lego Ideas, and many more, and one of the core things they do through their communities
4. They include their community members to build better products
Why are you not including your customers to innovate your products?
T-Mobile, the leading telecom provider from the Netherlands reduced support calls by 60% by investing in customer-to-customer support
And like them
5. Many companies globally are using the community to heavily reduce Customer Service costs.
What are you doing about it?
There are many more reasons to start building a brand community, but let’s start with these five first.
Do share with us, what would you love to read in the next issue of HiveMakers