Community-led growth is a strategic business approach centralized around actively developing and engaging a community of loyal users, customers, fans, or brand enthusiasts. It emphasizes placing the community at the core of a company’s operations, products, and messaging.
Unlike traditional marketing, which often treats community members more transactionally, community-led growth fosters an ongoing two-way dialogue. It provides community members with opportunities to contribute insights, co-create value, and feel a sense of belonging with the brand beyond mere consumption alone.
When implemented properly across organizations, community-led growth delivers multifaceted benefits:
By engaging members through content, support, and participation incentives, brands build familiarity and comfort, elevating retention and loyalty.
Prioritizing community increases overall customer lifetime value, driving repeat purchases and minimizing churn year over year. This is because the platform becomes integral to the lifestyle of the user.
Passionate community members organically turn into brand activists as their enthusiasm for the brand encourages word-of-mouth recommendations and social shares, reaching new potential customers with peer trust. This built-in credibility is at a scale otherwise unachievable through traditional ads alone, which consumers increasingly ignore.
Direct community feedback, reviews, and data analysis provide customer insights to drive future product upgrades, roadmap development, and new offerings shaped precisely around user needs and desires.
Brands with community support can weather turbulent times, controversies, or shifting market preferences. However, brands without communities have detached consumers who will barely blink when trouble hits. Brand advocates belonging to the community will drown doubters when push comes to shove, powered by community resilience.
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The shifts in online culture and social media help explain the rising importance community development plays in helping brands succeed. Younger demographics (aged between 12-34) prefer more private, interest-based communities, which has led to the following shifts:
Research and statistics illustrate the decline of social media usage. Findings from Edison Research and Triton Digital have shown a waning in social media usage among Americans aged 12-34.
The Global Web Index has indicated that the typical social media user now spends only 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on social media. This equates to one-third of our total online time, suggesting that the amount of time millennials and Gen Z spend on social media is not rising as rapidly as in recent years.
Younger audiences are moving away from traditional social media platforms, seeking out online communities that align with their interests and values. This is because they seek authentic connections rather than manufactured online identities.
Social media communities, such as Instagram, Twitter (X), and YouTube, can feel more public than smaller communities on separate platforms like Discord or Teach.io. Users crave the privacy that separate platforms offer, helping them to escape the values, views, and pressures of the older generation.
Because of this shift, more online platforms are developing features that afford more privacy, such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram Threads. These features support more private, intimate, and authentic interactions.
The shift to a more authentic online experience has meant that brands and marketers need to adapt their strategies to appeal to younger audiences in interest-based communities.
They can do this by leading with authenticity. Brands should prioritize genuine one-to-one interactions with their audience over bigger and more aggressive marketing and broadcasting. Furthermore, they should take the privacy and safety of younger audiences into consideration. Creating smaller spaces for interaction will help their audience feel safer and encourage community engagement.
A digital campfire is a small and intimate space where online users can meet and share their interests. Compared to traditional social media platforms, such as Instagram and X, Digital campfires provide more authentic and meaningful interactions with each other.
There are three types of digital campfires:
Private messaging campfires let online users communicate through direct messaging apps or features. These campfires are often small, closed groups with only a few people who share a common interest.
Examples include Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. These apps let younger audiences communicate safely without a wider audience watching.
Brands can make use of private messaging campfires by using personalized one-to-one and small group chats on their platform, mimicking the intimacy of personal conversations. This use of direct messaging will help build connections and offer support. Many community platforms, such as Teach.io, have features to support this.
These small, interest-based groups often exist within much bigger platforms or even community-focused apps.
Micro-community campfires include:
Shared experience campfires are public spaces where community members can meet and engage in common interests. The purpose of shared experience campfires is to build a deeper connection by sharing experiences with like-minded individuals.
Fornite and Twitch are prime examples of spaces where community members with a common interest can meet and engage with content and each other. Twitch users consumed a huge 592 billion minutes of live-stream content last year.
Brands can use the shared experience campfire by developing custom content tailored to the community’s behaviors and interests and creating branded events that the community will find interesting.
Digital community platforms and brands can use digital campfires to address many social media marketing limitations. They can create communities centered around knowledge, trust, and belonging by following the following best practices.
Consider real-world examples that showcase the profound transformations brands and communities can have through creative engagement initiatives. They can give life to ideas, collectively championing causes forward and creating a safer space for audiences.
Seeking stronger connections with young demographics, Sprite launched the “You Are Not Alone” online campaign to spotlight inclusion and mental health.
Leaning on data that identifies common personal struggles younger people face today, they created issue-specific online forums, introducing vulnerable topics and facilitating supportive community conversations. This globally addressed isolation with empathy, understanding, and transparency.
Because of this, Sprite earned immense brand affinity, conveying compassion around previously taboo issues that impact young consumers daily. The campaign forged deeper audience bonds that transcended mere normal branding, demonstrating how modern brands willing to lead community conversations can earn consumer trust.
Seeking tighter customer engagement beyond their social posts, cosmetics company Glossier launched a private online community that was exclusive for top current customers. This intimate group was aimed at fostering deeper knowledge sharing and product feedback. Brand devotees could test new launches early and relay their authentic usage experiences. This meant that ongoing beauty innovations were aligned with the user needs of a passionate beauty community.
Valuable Beauty Insider insights directly inspired the development of multiple bestselling makeup products like the Milky Jelly cleanser through collaborative product development. Fans didn’t just feel like consumers – they felt treated as true partners, co-creating future offerings together.
This shows that digital community platforms can afford intimate consumer connections. Thus, when forward-thinking brands increasingly prioritize community inclusion across their operations beyond just marketing gains, they reap immense innovation and revenue.
Seeking a younger demographic in gaming, the leading metaverse platform Fortnite revolutionized digital communal events through virtual concert performances featuring artists like Travis Scott and Marshmello. These artists performed choreographed shows watched by over 12 million gamer fans globally.
With community engagement waning, Fortnite’s creative director leveraged built-in community mechanics like live-streaming broadcasts and avatar dances, connecting players through a metaverse-produced music phenomenon.
Beyond entertaining gamers, the concerts generated immense discovery potential, introducing new audiences to both the musicians and the platform. Interactive community experiences centered around entertainment captivate modern audiences more impactfully than companies originally assumed.
Savvy entertainment marketers recognize that gaming and metaverse community platforms hold the keys to capturing younger generations’ attention.
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Seeking to make second language education habit-forming and fun while addressing high attrition rates plaguing competitors, the popular education app Duolingo gamified lessons through points systems and streak counts. This motivated brain training that 500 million subscribers worldwide could enjoy while learning a language.
Alongside effective quiz-style vocabulary lessons, Duolingo fosters further community engagement through shared public goal setting, group chats praising user milestones, and meetup events. This facilitates closer bonds together in person, connecting global learners worldwide.
80% of engaged Duolingo users admitted to feeling more connected to target language cultures and peers through insider discussion forum conversations, motivational gaming incentives, and localized language meetup events organized nationwide. This improved key retention metrics.
This shows that incorporating community engagement beyond solo learning activities demonstrably enhances user experiences, improving engagement and retention metrics when executed creatively. Shared accountability inspired individuals to persevere further in learning a language, leading to higher success rates.
Seeking tighter customer engagement, leading cosmetics retailer Sephora launched online Beauty Insider Community forums. They introduced gamifying features through tiered reward points systems and recognition badges. This encouraged users to share helpful beauty content.
Active user-generated content like product reviews, artistic makeup tutorials, and technique guides foster deeper peer discussions. Regular themed challenges unite participants, who collaborate creatively on beauty projects together, reinforcing community bonds.
When it came to Sephora, registered community members had an increased purchase frequency of 25% higher on average than customers who were transactional only. Veteran users guided newcomers into the world of Sephora, creating deep and lasting connections with like-minded individuals.
When building your digital campfires, here are some key things to consider:
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Unlike soulless social media marketing gains, holistic community-led growth strategies produce self-sustaining competitive advantages, helping brands survive for years through economic turbulence and changing trends.
Today, digital community platforms have the tools to foster close community bonds and create safe spaces where younger demographics feel safer. By embracing the shared journey businesses undertake alongside customers, user motivations transform from transactions into partnerships, helping create brand advocates.
