Is it better for brands to focus on owning their communities, or renting them from Tiktok or Zuck?

Where does your community live? If your answer is social media (LinkedIn, Tiktok, Twitter, etc.), and your connection to your audience depends on these platforms solely to survive then…

your community will be born, live and die with those platforms.

Fortunately, you’re likely sitting on a goldmine of brand love that’s all yours…it’s time to turn your bog-standard CRM into a living, breathing brand-building machine.

?? The Customer Relationship Machine?

Traditionally, companies advertised on billboards with little information about their target audience and sold products through retailers without fully knowing who was purchasing. The internet changed this one-way model, giving brands the ability to communicate directly with their customer and therefore enabling them to have a relationship.

Facebook releasing ‘like’ pages was the first time ever that brands could connect and communicate with their fans. It was the first time they could get direct feedback in order to iterate, learn and understand them. Brands could now deeply understand their audience well enough to provide a product and service that creates a remarkable experience as well as expand their reach beyond existing customers. But we should know by now, nothing in Silicon Valley comes for free.?

??The Zuckerberg Rent

It starts off with a magical free engagement and sales machine, where you build a powerful, connected, and committed community. In fact, it's going so well, you start spending money on ads to increase the number of people who follow your page. At some point down the line, when you’re really entrenched, they figure out a way to make money from your desire to access the communities you so lovingly built and nurtured. By then you’re hooked, and you cannot sacrifice the community because it drives too much revenue for you.

Facebook started the trend, brands spent millions in ads to build up their like page until overnight in 2014 (and then again in 2015) they changed their algorithm to deprioritise company posts over member posts. This meant that even if you had a million followers, you would still only be seen by a small fraction of them. "Success" became determined by how much you could pay in ads to target the very community, your community, that you paid Facebook in ads to build, and a price was put on access. In other words, Facebook started charging rent.

It happened with Facebook, then Snapchat and Instagram. It will happen with Tiktok - it's a question of when, not if. Relying on platforms means you’ll have to continually migrate marketing efforts and you’re likely to lose your community via attrition in the process.?

So what's the alternative? Well, it’s considerably harder, but if done well, the long-term results are substantial.

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?? Moving from rented to owned communities

Many huge brands like Lush have decided to quit social media platforms as they questioned their ethics and also declared they were “tired of fighting algorithms.”?

Maybe you don't have to go AWOL from social media like Lush but you can find a hybrid model for now, and slowly escape from the clutches of rent-a-communities. CRMs are probably the largest community for most brands, but rarely seen in that way. It’s uniquely positioned to help you own, curate and grow a network of your customers. The key is to stop viewing it as a transactional tool, and start to work on the R part: Customer Relationship Management.?

How do I add value and create a remarkable experience for my customers in my CRM??

Think about it. You have all the information of your customers, what comms they respond to well, their buying habits etc. and using this you can create a unique experience that they consent to and actually want. This could be a bespoke club, a digital experience, or a game.??

How can you extend your product experience into the digital sphere? What parallels with your brand? Lululemon makes yoga pants, but their brand values are all about personal growth. For example, joining their paid membership program gives you access to a large amount of personal growth materials, class passes and more. Our friends at Frugi use their CRM to drive their sustainability agenda; Adidas' Creators Club is known for its co-creation component and exclusive opportunities for it's customers.

Your CRM gives you a direct line to your audience, allowing you to create an evergreen feedback loop of learning to make you a better brand for your most valuable customers. Harnessing them and adopting practices from social media marketing will lead to massive sustainable growth with engagement that exceeds that of rented channels.?

Cheers, Paul