Learning lessons from the front-line of Circular Marketing

Newton Day has always been about helping businesses to make conversation with customers, but how we do that changed dramatically in February of this year. We've been pioneering #Circular Marketing methods for our clients for the past 9-months, ever since we realized that transactional marketing was effectively so ineffective it was dead in the water and that circular marketing was the solution.

Just in case you missed it, #Circular Marketing is about converting marketing spend into different forms of assets such as goodwill rather than burning it on transactional programs.

Circular marketing is not peculiar to traditional community groups. The logic of circular marketing is that - whatever you sell - you will need to build trust and goodwill in your community of interest these days before you have the privilege of being considered as a supplier.

You want your brand to be trusted by your buying community of interest. You want to be 'in the room' when prospective buyers surface a requirement. You want prospective buyers to come to you first when they need something because they already have a relationship with you - and trust you.

Once your brand is known and trusted within your community of interest, you will always have those trusted social ties working in your favor.

What have we learned about circular marketing this year? In this article, I pull out some highlights.

#1. Plan out your community of interest design and 'give to gets' is important before you get lost in the detail

Before you jump into the weeds you need to work out how to structure your community - or communities - of interest. This isn't just about working out what common goals and interests your audience fits into, it's about stepping through the give-to-get value you expect stakeholders to value.

Communities run on rewards and reciprocal altruism, and if you don't know what drives yours, it probably won't work!

Bear in mind that most good communities have seekers and solvers. Both of these groups might share the same subject of interest but they probably want different things.

One way of sorting out the structures and value drivers of your community is to build a value chain model first. This is essentially an illustration that plots out the various stakeholders in your community marked as 'blobs' on a piece of paper. Next, draw lines between the blobs to show the linked value connections that exist from one stakeholder to the next. Such as 'gives money,' and 'gets product.' Illustrate on each link the direction of travel (i.e., who gets and who receives). It's crude, but it works!

#2. You need to invest in a good digital platform

Let's be honest, communities work on digital platforms these days, so don't skimp on getting the best platform for yours. What you are looking for is a forum-based digital ecosystem that allows you to segment the community structures into spaces. For each space, you need control over who pays and who doesn't.

You will also want to include features such as the creation of assets/resources, training courses, surveys, events, forums, posts, etc.

Think too about how well your platform caters to your members' needs in terms of their ability to contribute to discussions and gain value from their capabilities. You might want to offer a marketplace.

To personalize your system, you will no doubt want to include your own third-party software building blocks. It's important to check that your chosen community platform can integrate these new elements.

#3. Micro-rewards are not a nice to have

In addition to all the bits and pieces I have covered in the previous section, your digital ecosystem will also need to support a micro-rewards system that offers 'points and pounds' to members for adopting the positive habits and behaviors that you want to encourage.

A micro-reward is payment for a give-to-get. It is the essential glue to incentivize positive behaviors and turn them into habits.

Of course, micro-rewards don't have to always be financial... Peloton is a brand that fundamentally understands the give-to-get. It rewards its members with coaching soundbites of encouragement to keep on with their exercise regime. Tesco's too are past masters at micro-rewards. It's the reason why their Clubcard points system is so successful.

For me, micro-rewards are much more than a nice-to-have. The marketing industry has talked about designed behaviors for a decade, and yet surprisingly few organizations take it seriously. If you want to instill positive habits in your customers, you need to reward them. There is no better way to do this than to offer micro-rewards.

Your micro-reward system should adopt a common identifier for your members that integrates closely with your other system components. It will need to be automated, and it needs to be simple to manage member ledgers of payments, otherwise, you could be creating a monster!

Final thoughts

I could go on (and often do) but there you have it, three of the big learning lessons of our #Circular Marketing experiences in 2023.

#1. Plan out your community

#2. Invest in a good digital platform

#3. Work out your micro-rewards agenda

Roll on 2024, and to all you #marketinganimals out there, my best wishes for the festive season. Enjoy the time off and come back recharged and hungry for success!