Why Marketing to a Community Changes All The Rules

I recently threw up for sale a set of books that will be released this month. And my pricing strategy was un-like the "common wisdom" of the great marketers for online products. Why? Because my core audience is a community known to me.

An online community is a group of people who connect in multiple ways, through multiple media, around a specific topic or set of beliefs. In my case, it's a community of technology consultants who support small and medium size businesses.

We call ourselves the SMB Community, or the MSP Community. The community has many well-known characters. Some of these characters are bloggers. Some publish news. Some are vendors. Most are business owners. Some are technicians or engineers. Some are in sales and marketing. And there are many more roles.

But what we all have in common is the inter-related ecosystem that support the ultimate deliverable in this community: Supporting the technology of small and medium size businesses. We talk about the challenges and opportunities out there. And the tools. And the clients. And the processes. Everything around that topic.

How does that affect marketing? Very simply: These people know me. I am part of the community. That builds some automatic trust. If I say I'll deliver books by the end of the month, a whole lot of people are going to be asking me what happened if I don't fulfill that. If the books suck, that word will spread quickly.

Here's the "Common" Advice for New Launches

Tactic One: Give it away for free. The goal here is to get people connected, get the product in their had, and begin talking about it. This works great as a way to build your audience, but devalues the product. No matter what anyone says, people put less value in something they get for free.

Tactic Two: Give a big discount by not an absurd discount. For example 20% off, or even 50% off. But not 90%. The goal here is to offer a value but make it clear that the big price is still the big price. It creates a sense of urgency - sometimes false. This approach works really well if you have an established base and want to attract more people outside your base.

Community Marketing Adds Another Element: Reward

There are rewards to being in a community. You find friends, you find solutions, you exchange advice, and so forth. In this case my marketing strategy was to have a crazy stupid sale that only lasts three days - then switch to Tactic Two and have a 50% off sale.

Here's why: There's no way that my offer will suddenly go viral to the broader "un-known" consultants. The crazy stupid sale will be very visible for three days. As with all these tactics, it will start with my connected community. But by the time it spreads outside the community, the sale will be over. Then I'll have switched to the standard "great" sale for strangers.

I've been told that this is a stupid approach for one simple reason: The most connected, most loyal fans Are going to buy my book anyway. They will pay full price. They will be happy at 50% off. They will buy no matter what. So why throw away money by giving them a crazy stupid sale?

The answer is in the question. These are my most loyal fans. These people will buy whatever I have for sale, no matter what. They are the core group that support me and keep my business going. I want them to be rewarded. I want them to feel loved and appreciated.

If you have a crazy stupid sale without a community, you simple de-value your product. If you give it away for free, you promotion might go viral, but you de-value the product in favor of building an audience.

I need to balance two critical goals here: Make money and build my audience. I can still make money while getting lots of P.R.

Consider the worst case scenarios. If I give it away for free and it goes viral, I have a huge audience who only cares because they got something for free. There is very little sticking power in that. So I need to give away more stuff for free to keep this on my list.

I doubt the crazy stupid sale will go viral, but if it did, I'd just make a bunch of money and grow my list with people willing to spend money!

The best thing about a community is that it is a living thing that no one person controls. If you're in it and known, you have opportunities to promote in ways that don't exist elsewhere. But you also have responsibilities because each thing you do is evaluated in the larger picture of all things you do. The big sale or the big launch is not the end of your involvement. If you're lucky, it's an event people talk about kindly in the community.

Plus, you can be crazy and stupid - and if it fails you get to come back and do something else.

:-)