How to build a community from the ground up

Community and customers are not synonymous. The idea that both are one and the same thing is off. Customers will definitely build a community but not all community members are customers.

Here are some ways people will interact with your products.

• Evangelists?tell everyone they know to buy or use your product because they genuinely love it.
• Community?is the group of people who’ve found belonging and utility through your product.?
• Customers/users?buy and/or use your product.?
• Ambassadors?are incentivized, through payments or rewards, to promote your product.?

For SaaS Start-ups thinking about building communities, they have to think along the line of;

1. Fostering friendship rooted in the affinity for your product, driving customer live time value.
2. Building in real-time product feedback source for fast iteration with the solutions people want.

The Community Funnel

The notion in B2B SaaS of tying everything into a business ROI is ridiculous at times. So, when building a community, you have to create a merge between business needs and customers. Don't too much attention to vanity metrics, but think long-term. Great communities build brands.

Notion | DigitalOcean | Adobe | Airtable

Go-To-Community

Have covered Go-To-Market strategy in the past [ link in the resources ]. In the recent past start-ups are considering go-to-community as their GTM strategies.

GTC has built start-ups into IPO.

They say the proof in the profits, here some examples

Gitlab | Duolingo | Roblox | Walkme

A community-driven strategy can be implemented at different stages of the customer's journey.

1. Awareness with examples like SalesForce's Trailblazer
2. Acquisition?with examples like Atlassian community
3. Activation?with examples like Notion's Template Gallery
4. Retention?with examples like Airtable's community forum
5. Product with examples like Gitlab community
6. Referral with examples like Twilio's champions program

GTM and GTC working together will give your start-up an edge in the age of product sameness.

Give your customers more reasons to stick with you, cause switching to your competitor is One-Click away.

Resources

1. How to Drive Business Growth By Fostering Your Community [ blog ]

2. To Start Building a Community, Master These Two Concepts [ blog ]

3. Community-led Growth [ Past newsletter ]

4. Why Go-To-Market ( GTM) for your start-up [ Past newsletter ]

Post worth checking

Hello

Okerosi Davis here,

Learn & Grow