The investments you’ve made in social media have perhaps mostly paid off after spending time marketing there. Nowadays, though, social media has become a little more challenging to find new customers without more targeting. When you have brand advocates working there, it becomes a lot easier.
It’s why branded communities have become a new trend likely to become a permanent marketing interest, according to Forrester.
Creating an owned community has a number of advantages while bringing engagement among your most valuable brand advocates.
Like-Minded Buyers
When you put together a forum or portal where like-minded buyers can hang out, you let the alchemy of people who appreciate your brand take over. This saves you time having to convert new customers to purchasing your products.
The best way to approach this is to create a discussion forum so your fellow brand advocates can recommend products to newbies. A good example of this is Sephora who put together their own branded community. Called Beauty to Catwalk, their forum features numerous beauty topics to help advocates and casual customers find what they need.
Support Communities
When you take more pains to provide customer support in your branded community, you create a true customer experience they’ll want to share. Think about the domino effect when customers receive a top-tier experience on your forum. Quickly answering questions and providing informative live chats inspire new advocates to spread the word quickly on social media.
Bringing a Sense of Discovery About Your Brand
A branded community lets you set up a forum or site that lets people discover more about your brand. Doing so helps reduce costs because you can channel all contact systems through one source. Providing self-discovery information should include a feedback forum for an agile approach. You can grow your brand and the community content you offer based on what people request. This only brings more trust and loyalty when you listen to the concerns of the customer.
Visit us at SocialEngine to ask about our unique social community software to create digital environments like this.
