Community marketing is the new marketing trend that helps brands in creating direct bonds with their target audience.
It enables businesses to reach millions of audiences through organic lead generation.
In community marketing, the members help in building the business through participation in events, word of mouth, and creating content that can help grow the community.
Are you a digital marketer? Do you desire to connect with your audiences directly? Community marketing is for you! Guess what? It's super easy to run.
Are you worried about how to get started? Quit worrying.
In this article, we've put together all you need to know to get started with community marketing and serve your audience better. Without any further ado, let's dive right in!
What Is Community Marketing and Why Is It Effective?
Community marketing is a modern and thriving means of reaching out to potential customers and it is made available to digital marketers.
It is an easy and rewarding type of marketing. If you're a dedicated marketer, you can do it on your own without coaching.
Also, community marketing is an important component of contemporary marketing that helps in bringing individuals of similar interests together.
For example, your company may place an ad on their Instagram or Facebook page/group to network with other locals and companies.
They can also sponsor an upcoming event. Additionally, you can get in touch with residents likely to profit from your product or service offerings.
Also, community marketing is a form of making use of the different social media platforms available to connect to a niche audience.
Benefits Of Community Marketing
Check out a list of the benefits you stand to get as a business for adopting the use of different types of community marketing .- Creates more relevance in the marketing world for your business
- Deep understanding of your customer's pain point
- Gets more loyalty
- Keeps your business more connected with their local communities
- Cuts down independence on paid ads
- Gives your clients a strong voice in your business
- Community marketing campaigns help with lead generation for your business
- Enables direct sales to your community
Examples of Community Marketing
The following brands have mastered the art of community marketing and are doing excellently well.Here are some community marketing examples that you can learn a thing or two from:
Legiit
Legiit is a freelance platform founded in 2017 and ever since then, it has beat its competitors in a lot of ways. But how was this achieved?Legiit studied her competitors And guess what? They improved the observed loopholes and glitches.
Legiit effectively uses community marketing to ensure steady growth as it has an active Facebook group with over 13k members and they share ideas, advice, and family-like support.

On Legiit, there are organized live videos where the members can participate to gain knowledge about the platform, new updates, and SEO tips.
More so, there is the ‘Legiit Monday’ where members are allowed to showcase their services to buyers in the group.
With these community marketing campaigns, Legiit has experienced significant growth over the past years.
Apple
Apple isn’t only popular because Mr. X ate a part of their logo.They achieved the feat by constantly engaging with their audience- collecting data of feedback and working hard to improve on them.

Customers know best, right? Well, yes, Apple understands that and will do everything in its power to satisfy its customers.
The Apple support community offers magnanimous support and a platform where users can share their experiences.
Lego
Lego is another community marketing example worth emulating.

The Danish toy company has been around for years because they earned it and effectively strategized the principles of community marketing.
Lego’s engagement and response to every customer are second to none. They allow their customers to share construction ideas, and the best ones end up sitting gloriously on the shelves.
The 3 Key Components of a Community
The 3 important aspects of a community include:
- Targeting a niche community
- Carrying out proper research
- Building relationships with the community
Targeting a Niche Community
When you target a niche community, it enables you to able to solicit feedback from your audience easilyYou can also test riskier ideas faster and successfully before presenting them to a larger audience.
Let's look at it from this angle, if an idea doesn't go well with a local community, there's every possibility it won't make it out there among a larger audience.
Carry Out Proper Research
Research is the foundation of any community marketing approach worth thriving.Make sure you use both traditional and social research techniques in all your analysis.
Most importantly, create genuine conversations with the key members of your local marketing community
Building Relationships With The Community
When you compare community marketing to a national campaign, a community marketing strategy speaks to a much smaller audience thereby enabling deeper connection.However, it's not always a waste of time. By using community marketing, you can build stronger customer relationships.
Also, it makes your brand more visible in a certain community and encourages word-of-mouth promotion resulting in a more close relationship with your customers.
How To Get Started With Community Marketing
Starting up community marketing in 2022 can be a little bit of a challenge. However, it helps the brand grow and also creates community marketing jobs for a lot of individuals.
Here are details on how to get started:
1. Choose a Purpose For Your Community
Choosing the purpose of your community or picking up a niche is the first thing to consider when starting up a community.Who are my target audiences? What are their needs? What interests them the most? These are the questions you should answer yourself first, before anything else.
Creating a customer avatar is very essential here. It helps you know who your target audiences are, the best ways to help them, and the means of getting across to them.
Once you know your target audience and what they need then creating quality content that resonates with their needs becomes easier.
2. Choose a Platform
With the recent trend in technology, app developers have been able to develop multiple social media platforms where businesses can meet with other businesses, clients, and potential clients.Choose the social media platform where you believe your audiences hang out.
You can choose Facebook and Instagram where you can run ads easily and target your niche audience easily.
3. Invite Your Existing Audience
Do not leave your existing audience out of all your social events.Invite them to all the programs organized by your business and ensure that they get value.
Make them a strong part of all your social media platforms and get them engaged.
Never neglect your existing audience while searching for potential clients. Carry them along at all times. It's part of your job as a community marketing manager
4. Create Content
There is a popular saying that says "content is king". The content you create can enhance community growth or break down.Always ensure you create rich and unique contents that resonate with your audience.
Get to study your audience's pain points and create contents that solve those problems.
Through the contents you put out, ensure you connect very well with your customers thereby building trust.
5. Generate Traffic And Invite More People
Generating traffic is one of the easiest ways of getting leads. Through traffic generation, you pull more leads resulting in more clients.The more people you invite, the greater possibility of getting more clients in your community. take the job of traffic generation seriously because it helps your community grow.
Also, you can make use of different means of generating organic traffic such as the use of influencers, placing ads on social media platforms, organizing free webinars, and running an email newsletter.
6. Create Discussions
Creating discussion is one of the best ways of getting started with community marketing 2022. You should create discussions among your audience, it's essential.It's also a way of getting to hear their reviews on the activities carried out by your business.
Create a connection with your audiences using this community marketing strategy. Organize events, live streams, webinars, and business talk sessions with your community members.
7. Organize A Door-to-door Outreach
Going on a door-to-door outreach to discuss your business and services is another great way of starting community marketing.Although this is not a form of digital marketing, it has a way of skyrocketing your business.
So many people will get to know the service you offer and how they can solve their problems.
There's a possibility of making sales through this strategy even though the aim of community marketing is not all about sales.
It aims to create deep business connections between brands, customers, and potential customers.
Tips For Creating a Great Community
Creating a great and powerful marketing community is not always a walk in the park. It requires a lot of processes and strategies.Check out some proven tips that can enable you to build a great marketing community:
Allow Your Audience To Hold and Take Part in Events
A simple method to establish common understanding and traditions in your community is through events. Allow your audience to take part in them.Physical gatherings have the capacity of giving members of an online marketing community a place to interact in person and deepen their bonds and trust.
By bringing people together online at a specified time, on a certain subject, and in a communal experience, online events can enhance communities. Also, events are best when your community members participate because they spark conversations and inspiration long after the event has ended.
You can decide to hold an event yourself, collaborate with events that draw your target audience, or combine the two.
Research topics that have the potential to attract a greater audience.
Pay Attention To Your Audiences Feedback On Your Products And Services
Instead of focusing on your brand and what you feel you can offer alone, pay more attention to your target audience's feedback.Their reviews both positive and negative ones have a lot of impact on your business and the community.
Note, don't just attend to your audience, make sure you carry them along in your services.
Always Show Up
If individuals are not turning up yet, do not be discouraged.Always show up. Create quality content that catches attention and post them at least twice daily.
Continue with lead generation and pull more traffic and in no distant time, your audience will start turning up because you've naturally built trust with them using your content and consistency.
Let Members Share Their Content
Your community members should be allowed to share out their content because there are so many of them who are equipped with what it takes to move the community forwards and close much more sales.However, if you don't allow them to share their content, you won't know that such things exist among the members of the community.
Their contents can also spark new ideas in you that can enable you to carry out your community marketing strategies effectively.
Final Thoughts
This article has extensively discussed all you need to know about community marketing- How to get started, the key components of a community, the benefits of community marketing , and tips to build a strong community.If you're a dedicated digital marketer, you can connect and target your audience better using community marketing strategies. More so, if you need a better and wider scope to understand community marketing, you can grab our community marketing pdf and carefully study the processes.