In 2024, creating a community for your brand is crucial because it can guide your brand through continuous growth in the long term.
Leveraging communities among brands and firms has become an indispensable strategy that must be included in any marketing approach.
So, why do you need a community? It would help if you created a community because:
- It fosters customer engagement and loyalty;
- It leverages the power of user-generated content and word of mouth;
- It can help your brand spread its voice and message;
- It is capable of responding to one of the most important customers’ needs: the need for belonging
We are not talking about a theory but a well-observed reality. This is why, in this article, we want to introduce one of the companies that have proven the growth and incredible results you can reach with a community: Ziken Labs, an emergent innovation & growth lab that is helping its clients improve their brand awareness and customer engagement, building engaging communities. Keep reading to know more about it.
Why You Need A Community: Understanding Its Power And How To Build An Efficient One
Understanding why you need a community to engage your customers today is important for engagement and loyalty, for sure. But it is also important for other factors linked to the need for an ecosystem where your brand can inspire clients who share mutual support, values, interests, and personal growth.
Just think about two incredibly famous brands: Apple and LEGO.
Apple has built a remarkably loyal community of users who are not just customers but real fans and brand ambassadors. The brand launched the Apple Support Community and organizes events like WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), fostering a sense of belonging among its users. Apple customers feel like an essential piece of a great group that shares the same interests and values, and owning an Apple product means standing out from those who don’t and underlining a specific social status.
LEGO, on the other hand, has harnessed the power of community through its IDEAS platform: here, fans can submit their designs for new sets, the community votes on these ideas, and winners see their creations become official LEGO sets. This approach uniquely engages their audience and makes them feel like an integral part of the brand innovation process!
But apart from these examples, what is the key to creating a functioning community? Let’s discover it in the next paragraph.
4 Key Ingredients To Build An Efficient Community
1. Always consider Psychology
Maslow’s pyramid of needs includes the need to belong and participate in a community. After fulfilling survival needs, people will try to fulfill their craving for esteem and to feel part of a group. In this sense, when brands create a community, they can meet this fundamental desire, creating a bond beyond the mere transactional act of buying or selling.
2. Choose the right Channels and Strategy
In this era, you can consider different channels to build a community, going beyond the typical ones such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
The real essence of building a thriving community lies in the communication strategy behind it, which consists of tailoring experiences that resonate with the target audience, engaging content, interactive events, and open dialogues. This is why you should consider the channels that Ziken Labs is using to build an online empire for its clients: interactive communities like Discord or Slack.
Discord was originally popular only among gamers but has now expanded to serve various communities. Its success derives from its incredible versatility since it offers real-time chat rooms, voice channels, and the ability to create a highly customizable and private space for the community you want to build.
Slack is often used for internal team communication but can also serve as a platform for building external communities, especially around professional or tech-related topics since it offers organized channels for discussions, direct messages, and file sharing.
3. Commit in sharing value
Authenticity and genuine value are the currencies of the digital community space: brands that succeed in building a great community listen, respond, and evolve based on the feedback and aspirations of their users!
Actively listening to your community doesn’t mean reading comments but answering them and building conversions on the most exciting topics to gather the needs and opinions of your followers and adapt your communication or service according to them.
And what about sharing value? In a community, this means providing your users with educational content, opportunities for personal growth, spaces to share their experiences, and platforms for peer-to-peer support.
4. Leveraging Technology for Engagement
It means leveraging the functionalities of AI, inserting gamification in your community, or considering VR and AR experiences to bring people together and improve their time in the community.
For example, you can leverage AI to work smarter, not harder! AI algorithms can suggest relevant discussion topics, community members to connect with, or content that matches users’ interests. You can also use chatbots and virtual assistants to provide 24/7 support to community members, answering questions, guiding them through resources, or connecting them with relevant group discussions.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can offer new opportunities for creating immersive experiences. Just think about the possibility of organizing Virtual Meetups and Events via VR: in these spaces, members can engage in activities, discussions, and networking opportunities that mimic real-life interactions, strengthening community bonds. Or consider AR-driven Engagement: it can bring a layer of interactivity to the physical world, allowing community members to access digital content, games, or experiences linked to real-world locations or objects.
Does it seem complicated? Well, in this article, we have cited two colossal brands like Apple and LEGO, building highly efficient communities. Does this mean that creating them works only for these kinds of companies? Not, and this is where Ziken Labs enters the scene.
Why You Need A Community: Discover The Ziken Labs Experience
Ziken Labs has embraced and been at the forefront of the so-called Marketing 6.0: a topic analyzed in several of Philip Kotler’s books, a famous and influencing marketing professor, strategist, and researcher. Marketing 6.0 is synonymous with innovation and forward-thinking in the digital ecosystem and is focused on the power of digital communities and word of mouth.
Well, Ziken Labs embraced this power to revolutionize its clients’ marketing strategies, understanding the potential of a community and mastering the art of creating and nurturing one. The company places the community at the center of its strategy, focusing on close interaction with the members, understanding their needs, and managing them beyond expectations, saving brands time and helping them improve customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty over time. This approach has improved their clients’ brand identity and led to significant organic growth through word-of-mouth and peer recommendations.
In its approach to Marketing 6.0, Ziken Labs merged technology with human connection, showcasing service innovation. They set the stage for the decentralized future of Web3, acting as real trailblazers of this new marketing era. How? They understood that successful marketing was about selling a product and creating meaningful relationships and experiences that resonated with your audience’s evolving needs and desires!
Have a look at their website and discover more about their services: this is your opportunity to transform your communication strategies and obtain true customer engagement with the power of modern communities!
