Building a B2B community is often not easy, as it requires a considerable amount of time and investment. It only becomes difficult when CMOs have to ask for the same from their CEOs who are already on limited resources and competing priorities.
Today, with the boom of social media, CMOs and marketing leaders are striving to build prosperous communities for their organizations. Building communities is, without a doubt, pay dividends for brands in terms of enthusiasm, loyalty, and evangelism. It is also not a surprise that many organizations are eager to build communities for their brands. But, the sad reality is their efforts in building-community fall flat. Oftentimes, it is because organizations get the strategies of community-building wrong. But in some cases, communities don’t get off the ground because they forget to ask themselves one crucial question: why do they want to form a community in the first place?
While there are general benefits as listed above, CMOs should dig deeper than that for a successful community to take off. They should get granular about the ‘why’ for their specific brands if they expect buy-in from themselves and the decision-makers that sign off on the resources and budget required to build a community that lasts long.
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‘Why’ help to Drive Investment
Asking the CEO to invest in community building is usually not that easy. With limited resources and competing priorities, most of the CEOs are not convinced that it is worth the investment. Hence, should begging with a clear understanding of ‘why’. This will enable them to articulate how a community will benefit their business and measure that to show it is working. When they are crystal clear how the community will bolster the health of their organization, it is much easier to get CEOs to agree.
At the same, it is critical that CMOs set the right expectations about what a community will not do for the business operation. CMOs should let the board know that it is not a quick win but a long-term investment that will yield promising results. When CMOs are making a campaign for investment in a community, they want to build, ensure that they are focusing on goals and metrics that matter which will prove to deliver on their ‘why.’
Communities stimulate big behavioral shifts
One of the primary reasons organizations invest in communities is that they can support the thought and behavior changes required to influence buyers along the sales cycle. If the brand is selling a product or service that requires buyers to make a transformative change, a community of people who have already made the same change can give them the encouragement they need to jump in. This becomes crucial considering that a B2B buying panel of organizations for complex solutions is a build-up of six to ten decision-makers, as per Gartner’s “5 Ways the Future of B2B Buying Will Rewrite the Rules of Effective Selling”. Getting all these executives on board can become easier if CMOs have someone on the inside who’s ready to evangelize the brand. The CMOs ‘why’ can go a long way in such situations.
Also Read: Enhancing Customer and Business Relationships with Personalized Messaging
Knowing the ‘Why’ of customers
Similar to knowing the brand’s why CMOs should understand why their prospects and customers would be interested in joining the community, which is often not to hear the pitch of their product. CMOs can assume their community members will show up if they deliver value on a broad level.
To build the types of relationships required to make communities valuable both to the brand and its members, CMOs should connect with the whole person and just users of the product. They should understand their customers’ motives and challenges and offer opportunities that will help to form meaningful relationships across the span of who they are and not just how they use the product.
By having a comprehensive understanding of the member’s ‘why’ and connecting it with their own, brands can build authentic relationships that make the customers loyal and pay dividends for the organization in the years to come.
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