What does it mean to build a community for your business? Effectively, you are trying to foster a group where all of your customers can communicate with both you and themselves. People can become members of your community, possibly earning exclusive access to things like discounts or early releases.
Does every business have a community? No. Should your business have a community? Well…it is extremely beneficial to have one, and here is why:
Establish customer loyalty
Communities are excellent ways of establishing customer loyalty as you encourage people to keep coming back for more. When someone joins your community, the chances are they will make repeat purchases. Not only that, but you have access to them and their details, making it easier for you to encourage them to make repeat purchases. Plus, as mentioned above, communities are fantastic in that you can give members access to unique things that other customers won’t get. Thus, people are encouraged to remain a part of your community to get exclusive things.
Learn more about your customers
Building a community means you have an easy opportunity to learn more about your customers. You can interact with your community and seek feedback from the members. What do they like about your business? What do they dislike? If they could change things, what would they change? Community feedback is the best way to get honest opinions on your company and what you can do to improve. The changes you make are fuelled by your customers, so they will help you find more customers. Also, referring back to the first point, getting feedback from your community helps to establish more loyalty.
An opportunity for more revenue
We’ve touched upon the idea of giving community members access to exclusive things already. Well, you can take things one step further and start monetizing your community. Some of the best community software around will already have monetization features implemented in your community. The most popular way of doing this is by having paid content for people to access. From a business perspective, this could mean community members can pay to have access to an exclusive ongoing discount, free delivery on all orders, the latest products before everyone else, and so on.
The idea is that you offer community members a chance to gain something extra by paying a little bit of money. Therefore, you can increase your passive revenue by getting monthly payments from community members. You can even give them special names like Elite Members to make them sound more important. This alone could encourage more people to pay for the extras.
So, as a recap, building a community for your business will allow you to establish customer loyalty, bringing more people back to your company all the time. It helps you learn more about your customers, so you can improve your business, and it gives you another avenue to make money from. All that’s left to say is why wouldn’t you want to build a community for your business?!