Brand communities play a critical role in connecting businesses with their customers, especially in a world that has moved largely online. Community platform provider, Chaordix, saw growth in communities built on their platform of up to 44% since COVID-19 hit in early March, and with key players like HubSpot, Forbes, and Deloitte recognizing the value of community and customer participation, they can only predict this number is going to grow in the years to come.
SourceForge interviewed Navi Vaid, Vice President of Sales at Chaordix, to better understand brand communities, why connecting with your customers is so important, and why the Chaordix Community Platform is the ultimate all-in-one tool for connecting brands with their customers.
Q. What is a brand community?
A. Essentially, a brand community is a central location, often online, for a brand’s fans and customers to gather, share, and connect over their fondness for that particular brand. Think of it like your brand’s wateringhole, where your customers come to gather.
Q. What are a few examples of successful brand communities?
A. So many of today’s biggest brands are leveraging the power of brand communities, it’s hard to pick, but here are a few of my personal faves:
LEGO Ideas is one of the largest examples of a successful brand community. It has over 1.5 million members all connecting over their love of creating and building with LEGO. The community truly is a hub for co-creation and collaboration. LEGO Ideas encourages members to create and share their own product ideas and vote on submissions from others. They’re launching new fan-created products every quarter. It’s really incredible.
There are a lot of B2C brands that rely on third party retailers to get their products into their customer’s hands, but what happens is they lose out on the valuable data that comes from direct brand-consumer interactions. This was exactly the case for Rust-Oleum. Looking for a way to connect with their customers, they launched the Creator’s Studio, a community for DIY enthusiasts , giving them direct access to their product’s biggest user’s data and insights.
Harley Davidson truly is a cult brand, with a cult like following. Their brand community, Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.), is a wonderful example of a group of people connecting and forming a community over their genuine LOVE for a brand. These ride or die (for lack of a better term) Harley owners are granted direct access to the brand they love through the brand community – this encourages things like evangelism, knowledge sharing, brand affinity, loyalty, and trust.
Q. What are brand communities most commonly used for?
A. A brand community’s key role is giving brands direct access to their customers. By doing so, brands are able to drive business results and improve their services. The people who actually use a brand’s products are able to share inspiration, ask questions, co-create, collaborate, foster innovation, and share insights.
I mentioned earlier that LEGO Ideas pumps out new fan-created products every quarter. The Ideas community is huge for ideation and product development. Their recent 90th Anniversary activity, where community members voted for their favourite ‘classic’ LEGO sets, gained over 75,000 submissions in a week’s time. Rust-Oleum’s Creator’s Studio serves as a rich source of UGC, User Generated Content (UGC) – there have even launched YouTube video ad campaigns using content submitted by the community. Dremel’s Maker Studio continues to be a source of ongoing product testing and reviews. And American Airlines introduced new first class lounges as a result of community-listening.
Q. How does a brand community differ from a brand’s social media presence?
A. We often say that social media is a great tool for brands wanting to simply broadcast their message to their customers, but for brands looking for ways to really interact with and engage their customers in a secure space, that’s what a brand community is all about.
Even with a strong presence on social media, your brand is only one of the many, many, MANY voices on social media competing for your customer’s attention. Brand communities skip the noise, and allow you to manage the conversations happening about your brand.
As we know it today, social media only provides simple, immaterial ways for customers to participate. Things such as liking, commenting, or at most, responding to a poll, are as advanced as it gets. Brand communities offer a far more diverse way for your customers to get involved and engage with your brand. Our platform [Chaordix] includes fun polls and content sharing, then expands to include discussions, surveys and multi-phase challenges, offering participation and engagement at every level.
Privacy on social media has also been a growing concern for many users (and brands), especially with recent news scandals involving privacy breaches and issues over data protection. I mean, it’s hard to ignore when it impacts most people’s day-to-day lives. By having your own brand community, you are able to have direct control eliminating the risk of unwanted third-party involvement – putting you and your customer’s minds at ease.
Lastly, although social media offers some degree of metrics, they are often surface level, and don’t do much in terms of tracking value-add. Brand communities offer detailed analytics and reporting on the things that matter most. Understanding your customers, the community members, on a granular level means you can make informed decisions using valuable data and insights.
Q. Why are brand communities becoming more popular lately?
A. For people in the community space, the question has been, “why weren’t brand communities popular, sooner?” because anyone who’s been involved in the community recognizes how valuable it really is. But for those who are newer to the space, I think I can narrow it down to three main reasons for why it’s grown in popularity recently.
Firstly, social media platforms, which have become a mainstream mode of connection between a brand and its customers, continue to fall short as consumers become increasingly aware of data and privacy issues that come with it. People are looking for ways to interact with brands online in spaces they feel safe and comfortable doing so. Brand communities offer that security.
Secondly, transactional marketing is dead. Plain and simple. Gone are the days where customer journey’s that end at the purchase phase are considered sufficient. In order to stand out, brands must cater to the customer’s entire journey, past purchase to use and feedback and repurchase. Brand communities allow you to do this effectively and efficiently.
Lastly, and I mentioned this earlier, brands are beginning to recognize just how powerful brand communities are when it comes to building brand-consumer connections and fostering genuine long term engagement. Communities allow for a highly scalable connection point. A community manager and a moderator can build connections with tens of thousands (if not more) customers in a powerful and cost-effective way.
Q. What are the advantages of using the Chaordix Community Platform to build your Community?
A. The Chaordix Community Platform is an all-in-one tool that can host discussions, drive engagement using activities and challenges, carry out market research, and even source new product ideas. The platform is not a hollow one-size-fits-all setup. Chaordix is flexible, in that you can create different streams of activities and content and these can be smartly segmented into different user groups. And it’s all packaged up in a format that is inspired by social media, so that adoption is streamlined.
Q. What types of organizations would benefit most from a community built on the Chaordix Community Platform?
A. We’ve seen a ton of success with creative product companies, the Dremel’s, Rust-Oleum’s, LEGO Ideas’…but any consumer company with an established consumer base can benefit from a direct connection with their customers. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to gather UGC, ask them questions, run contests and more whenever you want?
Q. What should marketers consider when evaluating online community platforms?
A. Before shopping around for an online community platform, it’s important to first understand the purpose of the community. Ask yourself what questions your customers could help you answer, or how your brand can support the goals of your customers. From here, marketers can then look for a platform with the necessary features and functionality to serve that defining purpose.
It’s also important to start thinking about who’s going to lead the community after launch. Do you have a designated Community Manager? Moderator? Is it going to be someone’s full time job, or are they going to have to adjust their role to take this on? Remember this person is going to act as the bridge between your brand and the community, and ultimately determines whether it’s a success or not. At Chaordix, we have a world-class community success team to support you at every step of the community building process.
Conclusion
Brand communities serve as a direct channel for your brand to interact, communicate, and engage with your most valuable stakeholders – your customers. Providing brands with an online space that they have complete control over means richer engagement and insights for the brand, and an increased sense of safety and security for its customers (members).
At Chaordix, we have over ten years of experience in building, managing, and growing vibrant brand communities for some of the world’s biggest brands. Our customers become raving fans of our Client Engagement Team. The team is equipped with the necessary skills and expertise to turn business challenges into fun and engaging ways for members to participate.
All in all, what makes our community platform stand out is the power to guide the participation of members. Where other online communities allow members to participate in discussions or post media like images or videos, our platform does this and more. It allows brands to launch fun activities and innovation challenges, test ideas, and work directly with consumers. Consumers are searching out ways for brands to engage with them. All consumers can do is “scream” and complain at brands on social media or simple brand sites. We bring them in to help become part of the solution and provide insights.
These insights from communities built on our platform empower brands to drive more business value, more quickly. We see community as the ultimate connection tool for brands because unlike email, SMS, simple forums, or traditional social media, branded communities bring customers together in one space where they can build relationships with both the brand and one another. Those relationships are important because they act like glue, connecting customers to brands in lasting, valuable ways.
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