The Power of Community Building: Drive Engagement During an Economic Slowdown
Authors
Chris Salazar
Innovative marketing executive with a 18+ year proven track record of driving market expansion, increasing revenue, and elevating market awareness for Fortune 500 companies.
In this article
Introduction
In today’s challenging business climate, B2B marketers search for cost-effective ways to maintain engagement and drive growth. Community building has emerged as a powerful strategy to achieve these goals.
Long a staple of consumer marketing, B2C communities focus on emotional connections for engagement. Sephora’s Beauty Insider community offers a gallery for customer selfies. Rust-oleum’s Creator’s Studio focuses on DIY arts and crafts with project suggestions and photo galleries of customers’ finished work.
B2B communities can also recognize the importance of connection but prioritize different needs. B2B communities emphasize value creation, professional growth, problem-solving, peer perspectives, practical benefits, and ROI.
They are built around shared professional challenges and goals that foster a sense of belonging among industry peers.
B2B Communities Are a Growing Force in Marketing Strategy
Recent data underscores the growing importance of online communities in B2B marketing. According to a 2023 survey, 48% of B2B companies use community-led growth strategies.
At the same time, 58% of the top SaaS brands and 40% of B2B brands already have or are building an online community. B2B communities are part of a broader trend toward more authentic, value-driven marketing approaches.
Why Community Building Matters in an Economic Slowdown
Community building during tough times might seem counterintuitive as businesses often face budget constraints and increased pressure to demonstrate ROI.
B2B online communities offer marketers a cost-effective way to generate leads, maintain brand visibility, foster customer satisfaction and loyalty, encourage peer-to-peer interactions, and enhance their brand advocacy.
This is only effective, however, if community-driven marketing follows proven strategies.
How to Build Value-Driven Communities That Stick
1. Create Original Content That Speaks to Your Audience’s Needs
Emphasize creating content based on original data and first-hand experiences. These perspectives are both more interesting and more easily separated from purely AI-generated content.
As one expert notes, “Customer stories, ‘building in public’ posts, industry surveys, and deep dives into internal data are examples” of content that resonates in B2B communities.
However, AI can be a valuable tool for enhancing human-generated content, streamlining workflows, and personalizing the community experience.
Explore and vet AI tools to support content creation, community management, and data analysis to gain deeper insights into community behavior and preferences.
2. Turn Engagement into Connection with Active Participation
Engagement is essential for building a thriving B2B community. Foster engagement by hosting regular virtual or in-person events with guided discussions, posing thought-provoking questions to your online community to spark conversations, and recognizing and featuring community members to celebrate their contributions both within the community and on social media.
CMO Alliance advises on how to enhance the engagement of community members: “Highlighting them on social platforms, websites, or even featuring them on podcasts or YouTube channels can make them feel valued and integral to the community.”
3. Empower Members to Share and Learn Together
Create opportunities for community members to share their knowledge and experiences. This offers clear value to your community members and simultaneously reduces the burden on your customer support team.
Customer support costs can be reduced significantly because many answers are already available within the community.
Given the widespread use of mobile devices, prioritizing a mobile-first experience is essential. For example, develop a branded mobile app for your community and ensure that all community content and features are optimized for mobile devices.
4. Integrate Community and Customer Journey
B2B communities are becoming more integral to the broader customer journey, from awareness to advocacy. This means that communities are vital to nurturing leads and supporting existing customers.
Align your community features to the stages of the customer journey, developing content and experiences tailored to each one. Be sure to integrate community data with your CRM and other marketing tools.
Examples of Transforming Marketing with Online Communities
Several successful examples of B2B community building have emerged in 2024, showcasing the power of fostering strong connections among professionals and businesses:
1. dbt: A Community-Led Growth Powerhouse
dbt, a $4.2 billion analytics engineering B2B software company, has seen remarkable success with its community-led growth strategy. Its community boasts 25,000 members and continues to grow by 10% every month.
What’s particularly impressive is that 80% of dbt’s revenue comes directly from its community, where buyers actively seek out its products.
2. Kahilla: Women Leaders Empowered Through Connection
Kahilla has created an impressive enterprise-level B2B community for its leadership development solutions, serving over 2,000 members. Their platform offers live courses and on-demand training, supports mid-level managers and executive leaders, offers corporate memberships for large enterprises, and holds custom training and workshops to help members increase their influence.
3. Stripe: A Community-First Approach to Entrepreneurial Success
Stripe, a major payment software provider, took an innovative approach to community building by acquiring Indie Hackers in 2017. This community includes an active discussion forum, interview-style podcasts, and rich data resources for entrepreneurs and developers.
By maintaining Indie Hackers as a separate brand, Stripe has created a thriving ecosystem that indirectly supports its core business and offers immense value to their entrepreneurial community.
4. Salesforce: A Community-Driven Ecosystem for Growth
The complexity of platforms like Salesforce can be a barrier to adoption and effective use. Recognizing this, Salesforce has cultivated a thriving community that plays a crucial role in user support and training.
By fostering a network of independent consultants and empowering them to achieve official certifications, Salesforce has created a valuable resource for users who seek assistance with implementation, customization, and best practices.
This community-driven approach not only reduces the burden on Salesforce’s internal support resources but also fosters a vibrant ecosystem of experts who contribute to the platform’s overall success.
The Lasting Impact of Community Building on B2B Marketing
Investing in community building in a slow economy offers important, sustainable benefits. A supportive environment where customers feel valued and connected strengthens brand loyalty and attachment.
Communities can also serve as real-time focus groups, supplying valuable insights to enhance your product development and marketing strategies.
Community engagement can also reduce marketing costs by building organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals to support or supplant expensive acquisition campaigns.
Engaged members are also more prone to remain loyal to your brand, even during challenging times. Nurturing community relationships during downturns fosters loyalty and positions your brand for future success when your markets rebound.
To Build a B2B Community, Engage, Adapt, and Thrive
Building a thriving B2B community is not just a strategy for withstanding economic downturns. It’s an investment in long-term growth and resilience.
By prioritizing authentic engagement, valuable content, and strategic integration with the customer journey, B2B marketers can cultivate communities that drive customer loyalty, generate valuable insights, and fuel sustainable business success in any economic climate.
Remember, a genuine community is built on trust, shared value, and a real desire to connect with and empower your audiences.
Discover more resources
Successful B2B Lead Generation requires generating Marketing Qualified Leads. In this article, we have discussed how to identify MQLs and 10 practical tips to generate more MQLs. These tips cover essential strategies from optimizing your sales funnel to leveraging engaging videos and interactive content. You'll learn about the importance of strong calls-to-action, utilizing chatbots, and implementing Account-Based Marketing. We'll explore how a Customer Data Platform can improve your targeting and lead-generation efforts. By implementing these strategies, you can significantly improve your MQL generation and boost your B2B growth.
Struggling to grow your B2B business? The key lies in understanding the difference between demand generation and demand capture. While one creates awareness and interest, the other converts that interest into tangible results. But which strategy should you focus on for sustainable growth? This blog post has the answer. Plus, you can find practical strategies for both demand generation and demand capture. Read on to learn how you can scale your B2B business.
Demand for SaaS products and services has increased significantly in recent years. By making cloud-based software solutions more accessible, SaaS companies bring technology closer to modern businesses. The increased demand has resulted in a highly competitive SaaS environment. One effective strategy companies can use to stay ahead of the competition is SaaS advertising. Read on to discover how ad platforms facilitate SaaS advertising and find out which advertising platforms your company can leverage to succeed in sales.
