Welcome to the Community FUNnel!

We've read all the books on community, belonging, and gathering.

We've explored the psychology of loneliness, isolation, and general ennui.

We've studied companies of all sizes with great NPS scores, solid revenues, and raving fans, and the thing they all have in common? Community enablement programs that align with their marketing funnel.

When we run Community Design strategy sessions, we work through a series of five questions:

1. What is your top of funnel engagement mechanism to engage current community members and attract new ones? (The Show)

Sephora uses YouTube, along with other social media channels to drive awareness and education. Their YouTube channel has over 1.3m subscribers. Their TikTok is over 400k subscribers (with some posts generating up to 4 million views), and their Instagram account has more than 21 million followers.

LEGO has only recently mastered the art of the show when they went mainstream with LEGO Masters on Fox. Season two garnered an average of 3.5 million viewers, and increasing sales by 89 percent just on eBay alone! In 2021, the company revealed that it experienced 27% year-over-year growth. (And none of this even takes into account the great LEGO movies from 2014 and 2019!)

But you don't have to be on TV to have a show. Ever heard of Mr. Beast ? This 24-year-old YouTube star has over 100 million subscribers and has built an entire fan community around the idea of giving things away in an entertaining way.

Closer to home, our Barefoot Business community for B2B Event Professionals simply has a podcast .

2. Where will your community members go to find out what's happening? This *could* mean an online platform, but more than likely it just means a web page for your followers to find your community offerings. (The Site)

In 2017, Sephora launched an online community which today is one of the world's largest beauty forums with more than 3 million members. They use their platform for groups, conversations, photo galleries, and to announce upcoming events.

LEGO's online community has over a million members, and hosts more than 10,000 sellers in over 70 countries for members who want to share their passion. Inside their site, they offer up activities, challenges, discussion forms, and parts exchanges. They have a specific area for product ideas, just for their community members to contribute to.

In addition to his YouTube (where most of his community resides), Mr. Beast hosts an active Discord channel with nearly 500,000 users where he shares announcements, his Facebook page has 10 million followers, 16 million followers on Twitter, and 50 million followers on TikTok, but his real "site" is the Mr. Beast Philanthropy site. This is the home of Mr. Beast and explains his why, his impact, and how companies and his followers can get involved and help make the world a better place.

As for the Barefoot Business community, we decided that a landing page was the best way for us to share information. There are plenty of online communities and Slack channels in the event industry and none of them are thriving, so adding another to the mix didn't seem like the right approach. Instead, we've linked to those communities on our page to help event professionals connect in the way they are most comfortable.

3. What kind of gatherings will you provide to bring your community together? Will they be in-person or virtual? How often? Who will lead them? What is their purpose? (The Series of Gatherings)

In my humble opinion, this is the number one most important part of your Community FUNnel. Bringing your community together for the energy, the camaraderie, the FUN... that's what this is really all about.

Sephora does so many in-person and virtual events that they literally have an entire Sephora Events web page: https://www.sephora-events.com/ From online influencer launches and collabs, to in-person tutorials at local stores, to celebrity stylists hosting gatherings, Sephora embraces the power of the gathering.

LEGO was meant to be played with, so it makes perfect sense that in addition to their in-person amusement parks, LEGOLand , they would let their community hit the road with events like the Brick Fest Live roadshow, bringing giant brick pit to the masses. Their community site highlights opportunities for local building groups to gather, as well as other events that will feature their community.

Mr. Beast knows how to bring his crowd together. He opened a burger joint in New Jersey and attracted more than 10,000 hungry (and excited) customers. His videos are often gatherings in and of themselves, like when he invited 100 subscribers to a private island to compete against each other to WIN THE PRIVATE ISLAND .

Barefoot Business hosts community happy hours and gatherings, and is bringing the community together for the first content-free, potluck-style gathering at a ranch in Texas this December. Through a series of events at industry gatherings and proprietary experiences, we continue to grow the community as event professionals bring a friend or share the invitation with a colleague.

4. What kind of inner circle does your community need? Should it be for a small group of your community members to have intimate conversations, or to act as your community advisory board to ensure you always have the pulse of the community and are evolving as needed? (The Sounding Board)

Sephora is well-known for it's Sephora Insiders Program , which gives insiders access to rewards, discounts, gifts, and access to special events and invitations. On occasion, Insiders also get invitations to test drive new products and give feedback on product lines.

LEGO offers the LEGO VIP program which lets members earn points and discounts, get early access to exclusive sets, enjoy members-only gifts, and receive invitations to VIP promotions, programs, and events.

Interestingly, Mr. Beast has elected not to focus on having an inner circle of community as his community enablement strategy. His true sounding board is his groups of friends that he hired to contribute to his channel. Many have left to pursue other endeavors, but having that initial sounding board of friends to get his brand rolling was no doubt beneficial to his brand growth.

Barefoot Business hosts the Sounding Board program for event marketing professionals. In this monthly 90-minute gatherings, seven corporate event marketing professionals come together virtually to share their current challenges and get feedback and give advice on their plights. Recognizing that leading a team of event professionals can sometimes feel like a lonely road as managers and directors navigate team leadership, strategic planning, and executive "manage-up-ness", we wanted to create a vendor-free, small group environment for them to get together. (If you're interested in joining the Q1 cohort, message me! No fee to join - limited to seven corporate event marketing professionals).

5. How will your community share their participation and advocate for you? Could it be through branded merchandise or through social media tiles they can share and use, or content they can share with their own networks to help them feel empowered? (The Shareable Moment)

It's all about word of mouth. Our friends at SwagHub have it right when they say that merch is how you can spread the word. It's the easiest, lowest-hanging fruit for your community members to show their pride. But Sephora and LEGO aren't exactly selling branded gear to drive loyalty and advocacy.

Sephora leverages it's Beauty Insider program to drive advocacy inside the BeautyTalk forum. They enlist their inner circle to write reviews, share results, advocate for products inside their community and on their own social channels. They also partner with micro-influencer and ambassadors to share on social media and drive impressions through their networks.

LEGO has embraced the love their community has for their incredible plastic bricks by giving them the reigns. From Facebook groups to STEM initiatives to robotics coding challenges, their loyalty and advocacy knows no bounds. Do they have swag... um, yeah. A whole site called LEGOwear , offering everything from t-shirts to snowsuits ! It's only available in Europe, but don't worry, you can still get most of it on Amazon or the Lego store .

Barefoot Business is working with SwagHub to launch a branded merch store, and since the official community is so new, we haven't quite made it to this piece yet, but stay tuned. We recognize the need and we're on a path to get there!

The TL;DR

Okay, if you made it this far, you either scrolled past all my babble or actually read it, so it may be too late to label this a TL;DR. But here's the overview of everything we just discussed - this is your actual Community FUNnel.

Once we've worked through our five questions and the components of community design, it's time to tackle the community enablement programs. Perhaps you don't need all elements to kick your community off, or perhaps you only have funding to focus on one or two of them.

Taking this framework, we can craft exactly what kind of community you need to build and how you will serve them.

We can prioritize what's right for you now and in the future, and develop a plan to align your community to your marketing funnel.

Now that you know the parts and pieces, take a look at your community and determine where you need to invest to hit all the parts. At what phase of the marketing funnel is your community most needed in your business?

Now you have the blueprint. Time to make the plan.

Liz Lathan, CMP, is co-founder of The Community Factory , helping brands grow and engage their communities of customers, prospects, and team members. Through a Community Design Strategy session, we help companies develop Community Enablement Programs and offer Community as a Service (CaaS) solutions that fit their needs. Contact Liz at [email protected]