Community Marketing Offers an Answer to the Facebook & Google Problem

When digital marketing was introduced, most of us wrote it off as a passing fad. Then, when every brand jumped on board, we marvelled at the success stories and tried to emulate their tactics. Now, marketing is shifting again to become something much greater than just ads and acquisition, and a few brands are already riding the wave.

The move from traditional to digital —and now digital to community-based marketing — is significant, so we’ve shared how we got here along with some examples in an article that you can find here.

The TLDR (too long; didn’t read): Digital advertising and organic social content created a boom that was fuelled by cheap ads and low competition. The brands that jumped on board had huge successes, and most of the marketing industry is still trying to replicate those wins.

The biggest marketing success stories of today are all coming from brands that are investing in one thing: Community. Not Instagram-follower-style community, but real communities of people who are sharing, interacting, and spending time with each other.

For now, let’s get right to the point: How and where can we get on board with community marketing today?

As with the early days of social media, people are congregating in a lot of places (remember: Hi5, MySpace, Friendster, and LiveJournal?), so here are a few proving that people are hungry for spaces that have more to offer than a general newsfeed can:

*Click on each for a more in-depth definition

• Discord — What was once a gaming-focused platform for groups to discuss Minecraft and League of Legends has evolved into spaces for everyone from sneaker heads to stock enthusiasts to assemble. One chat called FWB that exists to discuss crypto topics alone is valued at $30 million because of the unique way that it’s created its membership.
• Reddit — The Reddit community is not new, but continues to grow despite, or perhaps because of, its structure as a series of smaller interest-based communities known as SubReddits. Just this week it received a valuation of over $10 Billion.
• NFTs — The often misunderstood Non-Fungible Tokens give creators the opportunity to offer membership and exclusive access to people who hold their respective NFTs. Communities exist to discuss, trade, and share in the benefits of their ownership.
• DAOs — These are Decentralized Autonomous Organizations that use crypto to allow members to become owners of the communities they’re a part of, and make collective decisions about their future. Think of it like an organization with no hierarchical structure that’s able to accomplish anything that a traditional corporation, non-profit, or charity could (in many cases, much more).

How about an easier one?

• Email newsletters — This is perhaps the lightest version of community-based marketing (some might argue that it doesn’t perfectly fit the definition), but it has many of the characteristics that we can all put into practice today. Done well, it creates value for its community that attracts people, retains them, and gives them a reason to tell their friends to join.

As you can see, we’re talking about a fundamental shift that changes the way we think about marketing and interacting with our communities. As with any major change, it’s going to be challenging to get on board in the early days, but as it gets easier, it will also become more common, and therefore less of an advantage.

And, just like the early days of digital marketing, many brands will try (and stumble) to adopt the new perspective, but the brands that are most likely to fail are going to be the ones that pretend the shift isn’t happening and believe that they can continue to use the tools and tactics that worked a decade ago.

Read the full article here.

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting