Community marketing

Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Whereas marketing communication strategies such as advertising, promotion, PR, and sales all focus on attaining customers, Community Marketing focuses on the needs of existing customers. This accomplishes four things for a business:

There are two types of community marketing:

Recent skepticism building among consumers as a result of blatant advertising and other unethical communications has affected the success of the sponsored form of Community Marketing. Continuing success in community marketing strategies has been found in engaging and cultivating the natural communities that form around their product/service.

Some of the world's strongest brands were originally built through low-cost community-based marketing. Nike, Starbucks and Google are some examples. When companies focus first on meeting the needs of the people they serve, they don't have to spend big money to attract new customers. And when they stay close to their communities they don't need market research to tell them what people want. Kiehl's, for example, is a premium body-care product used largely by models and the elite. People from around the world make pilgrimages to the original New York City store. A renowned global brand now owned by L'Oreal, Kiehl's packaging is plain, its stores are basic and from its 1851 founding until today, the brand has never advertised. Success has been driven by products tailored to customers' needs, word-of-mouth promotion, free in-store product trials and the personal connections forged by requiring active community involvement of every employee.

Human beings are programmed to want certain things. The top most needs are having a sense of belonging and the feeling of being understood. These needs are most often met through families, clubs and communities. When companies begin to focus on building communities, it makes a powerful impact that forges emotional bonds. When a new community is established, people who once felt left out now find kindred spirits. They begin to have a place to belong. When an existing community is strengthened, people who once felt marginalized now find validation. They discover that they have an important role to play. While its brand image is brash and unapologetically competitive, Nike has done an amazing job of connecting with under-appreciated consumer segments and fostering communities that build empowerment, from making running mainstream, to supporting inner-city basketball, to empowering girls as athletes. The reward has been intense customer loyalty.

Community brands remain relevant because they're constantly adapting to the changing needs, interests and values of the people who give them meaning. Starbucks originally provided the caffeine addicts a "theater of coffee" experience, with each nuance carefully engineered. As more newcomers joined the tribe, baristas were trained to educate them on coffee exotica, developing a dimension of accessible adventure for the brand. When technology caused a convergence of work and home life, Starbucks lost its individuality and it was not a much sought out place for coffee due to the emerging baristas. Starbucks responded by tapping the larger cultural trend of consumption-based self-expression to offer an endlessly configurable array of unique toppings, ingredients and preparation techniques inspired by customer requests and baristas' creativity. While Starbucks has stumbled of late, it's telling that upon his return to reinvent the company, CEO Howard Schultz quickly reached out to the community by establishing mystarbucksidea.com.

...
Wikipedia