What is community-led growth?
Community-led growth is sometimes referred to as a ‘go-to-market strategy ‘ in which companies build and nurture communities of enthusiastic customers. When done well, these communities add significant value to the product experience. This helps with customer acquisition, retention, and account expansion. It’s a powerful way to grow a business.
Why is community-led growth becoming increasingly popular?
Businesses have long benefited from communities of dedicated customers. But these communities haven’t always been central to growth — and up until a few years ago were often just a welcome side effect of a product-led strategy. That’s starting to change — a result of like-minded people having more options for connecting online than ever before. This lets businesses make communities central to their development and go-to-market strategy. But community-led isn’t the only growth strategy. It’s more of an evolution of those that came before.
Examples of companies that implement community-led growth
Below are some examples of brands that implement a community-led growth strategy:
- One Source Direct: Helps small businesses and independent workers connect their products and solutions to the right audience at the right time, and compete online through peer-to-peer community-based networking.
- Mindvalley: Mindvalley’s community spaces add a social element to its personal development courses.
- Airbnb: Airbnb is only possible thanks to its community of hosts. The company has an online community that provides them with all the help they need to be successful.
- YouTube: YouTube has become a more community-focused model for growth recently thanks to features like comments and community posts.
The benefits of community-led growth
Let’s take a look at the ways community-led growth can benefit your business:
Build and sustain a powerful moat
Building a community brings a significant competitive advantage. Business communities act as a substantial barrier to churn, a sign-up incentive to new users, and they protect you from new competitors. Peloton is a great example of a company with a powerful moat built with the community.
They are a valuable source of real customer insights and feedback
Business Communities are a valuable and honest source of feedback on your product or service — and they provide insights into your customers’ needs and goals. Here’s how:
- Discussions highlight what customers want from your product. This can influence future updates or features that need to be fixed.
- Discover which community members will make the best beta testers for new products and features from the content they post. This benefits all involved since your customer gets early access to features, while product teams get feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
Ultimately, community-led growth creates opportunities for greater engagement through the help of deeper insights. This enables your brand to make data-driven decisions that improve the customer experience.
Drive customer success
Communities offer a place for customers where they can interact, share tips, ask questions, and receive information from each other. This allows customers to support one another while creating a valuable hub of helpful questions and answers that users can use to solve their issues around the clock. This helps businesses drive customer success by reducing their support team’s workload.
To develop the perfect community growth strategies that fit your company’s needs and goals, at One Source Direct, we provide the tools that help small businesses to connect, create, and grow, and ultimately achieve long-term, sustainable success.
