We won’t pretend that brand love can ever replace actual human love, although I’m sure some could argue their relationship with a brand is healthier and longer-lasting than their human counterparts (looking at you, Apple ).

But consumers can be very emotional about the brands they purchase. In our State of Community Powered Marketing study, we found that 69% of consumers believe the brands they buy reflect who they are.

This goes beyond affinity and Net Promoter Score to signaling the opportunity to form direct, emotional, and engaging consumer-brand connections that can have a powerful impact, from inspiring advocacy to increasing purchase frequency and forming lasting emotional loyalty.

So this Valentine’s Day, we’re looking at the top ways marketers can create authentic brand love with consumers, borrowing from some of the key ingredients for fostering love in any relationship. 

Key Love Ingredient #1: Validation

Validation is about feeling seen, heard, and understood and is a central element in creating a connection with humans and brands alike. For marketers, this can be achieved through personalized messaging. 

While “personalization” has been on the marketer must-have list for a while, many organizations limit personalization to surface-level data like demographics, purchase history, and/or other passively collected behavioral information. Sometimes this backfires. There is a fine line between the validating feeling of “you know me” and the creepy sensation of “how did you know that?” 

Brands should aim to elevate their personalization efforts by focusing on values, core beliefs, interests, and passions. Collecting this kind of information, also known as zero party data, equips you to be able to deliver more meaningful content, offer relevant website experiences, tailor email campaigns and target ads. And as we all know, there are few things more attractive than showing someone that you “get them” and their needs are important . 

By validating consumers in a meaningful way, they will show you love in return. In fact, 97% of consumers are motivated to be loyal and purchase more frequently when a brand listens to their opinions and feedback. 

Key Love Ingredient #2: Empathy 

At the end of the day, we all want to know we’re not alone. We won’t lie though; empathy from brands is a tough business. “We’re here for you” and “We’re all in this together” triggers involuntary eye-rolls more often than not. To have an impact, brands must go beyond messaging and truly live and breathe the “we understand” sentiment.  

A key way to show empathy is by facilitating a sense of belonging. In an increasingly divisive world, people are seeking meaningful connections. And they are increasingly turning away from social media’s synthetically picture-perfect and ad-focused environment – Gartner predicts 50% of consumers will significantly limit their use of major platforms by next year – toward the authentic and personalized experience of online communities. In fact, 40% of consumers say their involvement in online communities will increase in 2024. 

Starting an online brand community for like-minded people is a way to show your consumers that they’re not alone and there are other people who are like them. And building connections with others will strengthen those with your brand; 67% of consumers report feeling more connected to a brand through community than social media.

Stripes, a fast-growing holistic menopause solutions brand founded by actress Naomi Watts (also one of our clients), wanted to empower women to embrace midlife and take away the stigma and anxiety of experiencing menopause. When they launched the Hot Spot community, it became a home for women to connect with the brand and each other. Stripes supports this dialogue through an active discussion forum that allows members to share stories, tips, and recommendations for navigating their midlife journey.

Key Love Ingredient #3: Appreciation

Consumer appreciation can be shown in many different ways. It can seem complicated, but really the hardest part is remembering to do it. 

Showing appreciation to consumers does not stop at providing a quality product or service at a reasonable price. The next level is ensuring the entire brand experience is as smooth as possible AND goes above and beyond. However, 54% of U.S. consumers say customer experience at most companies needs improvement. That’s a pretty large gap. 

Going above and beyond can be anything from surprise and delight moments and offering complementary products or services, to personal notes or even involving consumers in upcoming company decisions. 

Plush stuffed animal manufacturer, Squishables, states they are a democracy and has operated “Project Open Squish” for consumers to submit and vote on designs for upcoming products. Fast-growing condiment brand, Sir Kensington’s, often includes hand-written thank you notes and provides additional resources like nutritionists to its online brand community Taste Buds (ps they’re also a client). 

By tapping into the voice of the customer, brands can understand what will engage their audience and give them all the feels. With an online community, marketers can harness discussions, polls, surveys, and focus groups to stay on top of preferences and then put those insights into action, delivering meaningful experiences, offers, and content. 

Key Love Ingredient #4: Trustworthiness 

It used to be that a brand was considered trustworthy when people could believe in how the company was run, and if it stood behind its products or services. Over time, for younger consumers in particular, it grew to include consideration for a corporation’s ethical practices and the footprint it leaves on the planet.

Today, however, many brands are no longer just manufacturers or service providers. They’re actually technology companies in disguise. Some brands openly admit this, like when Dominoes said they are a “tech company that sells pizza.” While consumers certainly care how your product is made and how you market yourself, when you become a technology company, trustworthiness grows to mean something more. 

71% of consumers say it is more important to trust the brands they buy from or use today than in the past. And being a trusted brand today includes being transparent about your data practices. 

We all know that consumers are seeking more control over their data. But control doesn’t have to equal absence – 93% of consumers are willing to share their data in exchange for unique experiences and offers. Follow-through is as important for brands as it is in any relationship so don’t risk your consumers breaking up with you by not delivering on your promises – 67% of consumers are disappointed when they share their data and a brand does do anything with it.

Another way to make your brand more trustworthy is to create a brand mission statement on data collection. Consumers want to know not just the who, what, where and how of data collection, but also the “why.” Why does your brand believe data is helpful? How does it rhyme with your brand story and your unique value proposition? Data is an undeniable part of our lives now. Take a stand on how your brand believes data plays a role. 

Key Love Ingredient #5: Authenticity 

86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support, however, more than half (57%) of consumers think that less than half of brands create content that resonates as authentic. 

Brands knew about the importance of “authenticity” long before Merriam-Webster recognized it as the word of the year. And smart marketers realize that being “real” is not about telling the story about who you are as a brand. It’s about empowering people to tell the story of who they are and what they stand for. 

The best way to make your message authentic is to have other people say it for you. You can do this by empowering advocates to share their stories. Brand advocacy should be the cornerstone of every effort you make to “be real.” Spark advocacy from your consumers by providing useful content, thoughtful and exclusive brand experiences, and new information.

And then acknowledge and reward their efforts by showcasing their UGC, ratings & reviews, and testimonials for the world to see, on your website, community, social media, packaging and more. Because nothing is more authentic than wearing your heart on your (digital) sleeve.  

Inspired to take the plunge?

If you have questions about how the TINT community platform can build direct, emotional, and engaging consumer relationships that last, let’s talk.

Sign up for a demo today.

The post 5 Ways Marketers Can Foster Brand Love appeared first on TINT.

Thankfully in the midst of so much change, the best solution is a familiar one. Brand advocacy remains the gold standard of marketing strategies for a reason. Mobilizing your biggest fans to go to bat for you and recommend you to their friends and followers has the benefit of trust, relevance, authenticity, and efficiency, making it one of the most effective marketing strategies. 

And at the heart of brand advocacy campaigns is user-generated content, or UGC. After all, seeing is believing. 

For CPG brands in particular, brand advocacy efforts focused on UGC can help breakthrough in crowded categories and organically amplify your messaging to reach mass audiences. It can also personify your brand in new, relevant, and authentic ways to create buzz and elevate consideration from target audiences.  

Below, we’ll highlight how to generate UGC for CPG. But first, let’s talk about why UGC is important for all CPG brands. 

What are the Benefits of Leveraging UGC for CPG Brands?

Increasing reach and brand awareness

Easily one of the biggest benefits of leveraging UGC for CPG brands is the ability to expand your reach. When consumers who rave about your products create shareable content, you can use that content to get the word out about your brand, a new product line, an existing product line that needs some love, or any other aspect of your brand that you want to reach the masses. 

This strategy has nearly limitless potential for scaling, too. As you reach more and more people with shareable UGC, some of these people become fans of your brand and, in turn, will create UGC on their own, and the cycle continues.

Improved trust in your brand

84% of consumers trust recommendations from their peers over all other forms of advertising, such as paid media. 

There’s no type of content that your consumers put more trust in than word-of-mouth. And as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. User-generated images and video bring your brand to life, capturing the interest and imagination of your target consumers. 

UGC’s importance in improving the overall authenticity of your brand can’t be overstated. And its impact is real: According to a recent study by Edelman, consumers said trust in a brand (88%) is even more important than love (81%) in deciding what brands to buy or use.  

Collect valuable insights

UGC for CPG isn’t only about getting the word out about your brand and bringing in new customers. You also get the opportunity to collect valuable insights from your consumers, such as why they love your products. 

These insights can be used to fuel future marketing efforts and product development. 

How an Online Brand Community Helps Generate UGC for CPG Brands

One of the primary draws of an online brand community is how useful it is in all aspects of UGC, from curating the content to measuring brand advocacy.

For CPG brands looking to generate more user content, your online brand community is the best place to start. Here’s how your online brand community helps generate UGC for CPG. 

A ready-made pool of raving advocates

One of the best parts about your online brand community is that you’ve cultivated a group of consumers who are crazy about your brand. Not just the products you provide, but the lifestyle created by your brand and your overall mission. 

These are exactly the kind of people that you want to mobilize to create more content. 

Community platforms make it easier than ever for these brand advocates to share their UGC. For example, the TINT community platform amplifies advocacy by incorporating Single-Click SharingTM technology, giving your advocates a seamless experience for sharing their UGC across all types of platforms, from TikTok to Instagram and Bazaarvoice. 

Simple and effective sampling programs 

Easily the most effective way to generate UGC for consumer packaged goods is with product sampling. By giving your consumers the opportunity to try your products for free, you’re providing value to them in exchange for UGC in the form of testimonials, authentic reviews, and other important content. 

Although product sampling can be done without the help of an online brand community, your community provides several benefits that can help with the effectiveness of your sampling campaigns. 

For starters, sampling campaigns need proper audience targeting. With a community platform, such as TINT, you’ll have ready-made customer profiles that are enriched over time, allowing you to hyper-segment and target the individual needs of each customer with your sampling. 

Once consumers have received their samples, your online brand community is used to generate UGC in real-time as community members post their experience through images, videos, testimonials, and reviews. 

Lastly, many community platforms have robust reporting capabilities. By analyzing sampling data, you will discover ways to optimize and improve your campaigns over time. 

Sampling campaigns powered by an online brand community make generating UGC for CPG easier than ever. 

Providing incentives 

Product samples aren’t the only way to activate brand fans to advocate on your behalf. With an online brand community, you have even more options to incentivize your consumers to take part in UGC campaigns. 

Some of the ways brands incentivize advocates to generate more UGC with a community include:

• Discounts and special offers
• Social recognition (shout-outs, etc.)
• Points and badges
• Exclusive events
• Contests and sweepstakes

For example, let’s look at Drip Drop. With the help of TINT’s community platform, they were able to activate 1,800 community members to share UGC of the product by providing a special $2 off coupon good at key retail websites. In just 8 weeks, the campaign delivered over 5,900 pieces of UGC and increased share of voice by 1450%. 

With a high-value incentive, this campaign resulted in high-quality UGC that delivered results, as the DripDrop Brand Manager shared: “We were thrilled to see not only an abundance of content that drove an increase in online share of voice, but also an increase in sales at our key retail partner.”  

Seamless reporting and analytics

It’s not enough to simply generate endless UGC.  If you want to measure your progress and stay on track with your goals, tracking certain metrics is essential.

Your online brand community can be a one-stop shop for these reports.

Many community platforms allow you to track advocacy and UGC-related metrics such as quantity and type of UGC, impressions, friend and follower engagement, ratings and reviews, and more. 

TINT’s online brand community platform makes it easy to not only capture but track all the UGC your advocates create in one convenient place. You’ll also be able to sort through content to identify high-quality pieces, flag creators of effective UGC, tag and organize UGC for future use, and more.

Conversion tracking is made easier using your online brand community as well. By arming your advocates with a specific link, you can enable tracking on that link and get an accurate representation of conversion metrics.

These analytics will enable you to better understand the impact of the UGC your advocates are creating and can fuel future marketing strategies.

Questions About How to Generate UGC for CPG?

The TINT team are experts in the unique needs of CPG brands, from UGC and review generation to building brand equity and more. Reach out to us. We’re here to help. 

The post How to Generate UGC for CPG with an Online Brand Community appeared first on TINT.

In a category that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation, Clio Snacks established a completely new type of product. But with a small marketing team and resources, they faced a big challenge in building awareness, trial, and household penetration for their brand. So they once again decided to explore new and creative ideas.

Your Consumers Are Your Best Asset

Clio’s marketers knew they had an incredible asset – their enthusiastic and dedicated consumers. But they needed a way to activate and focus that brand excitement. They knew that cultivating brand advocates would help drive awareness, social proof, and trial to accelerate brand growth. But with limited budgets, they needed to start small with a test.

So, like many brands, they turned to Facebook and Instagram, creating and engaging with a limited group of targeted consumers in private groups. They asked their followers to complete challenges, from taking “shelfies” of the product in-store to posting reviews. The Clio team tracked the activities in Excel and rewarded their ambassadors with swag on a monthly basis.

Their test proved out their idea. Cultivating their relationships with their consumers and activating them to share their brand love created an outsized impact on their Word-of-Mouth and user-generated content (UGC). And generated valuable insights into their consumers’ needs and preferences.

It also proved how difficult it was to engage and manage the program themselves: just 100 ambassadors quickly overwhelmed their team. They wanted to grow their program but knew they would need the right tool.

The post Doing More With Less: How Community Makes a Big Business Impact for Clio Snacks appeared first on TINT.

Sir Kensington’s market is crowded with household names – Hellmann’s, Heinz, French’s, Hidden Valley, Newman’s Own. The competition for shelf space is fierce.

 So from the start, the brand has taken on the mantle of challenger label and set out to stand apart.

The Ultimate Challenger Brand

Every decision Sir Kensington’s has made is to ensure their brand is different from everything else out there. From their product (real tomatoes vs tomato concentrate as the first ingredient) to their packaging (a glass jar vs the ubiquitous squeeze bottle) to their brand (a British knight persona vs all American). They challenge the ordinary and expected in every way.

They turned to Vesta’s online community platform to maximize those strengths through Community Powered Marketing.

But first, what is Community Powered Marketing?

Simply put, Community Powered Marketing is harnessing your community of fans to power your brand growth. Placing your community at the center of your marketing enables you to connect, amplify, and elevate your efforts, activating the relationships you invest in and build through community to drive advocacy, generate social proof, elevate household penetration, uncover predictive insights, fuel innovation and more.

From loyalty and rewards programs to peer influencer marketing, and shopper marketing to content creation, mobilizing your community will not only create more authentic and accelerated impact but it will form lasting emotional loyalty by connecting your consumers more closely to your brand and their fellow members.

Activating Community Powered Marketing through the Taste Buds Community

When your resources are limited and you’re facing an uphill battle, you need to make the most of every asset you have. In Sir Kensington’s case, their consumers – whom they call their “Taste Buds” – are clearly a powerful force. They saw the way they reacted to their products and they knew they needed to develop deeper, direct relationships and harness that power. 

Hear Amanda talk about how the Taste Buds Community got started.

Vesta’s online community platform enabled them to tap into their brand love to face their biggest brand challenges including:

•   Generating Owned Data Through Direct Relationships
•   Creating Scalable & Authentic Advocacy
•   Elevating Innovation with Always-on Insights
•   Capturing Market Growth with Emotional Loyalty

Generating Owned Data Through Direct Relationships

While many brands are scrambling to prepare for the accelerating privacy changes that are reshaping how data is acquired and used for marketing, thanks to their online brand community, Sir Kensington’s has already launched and optimized a complete zero-party data strategy.

With the Taste Buds Community, the brand has created an engaging home where they can cultivate consumer passions, provide engaging and valuable experiences, and in turn, collect freely shared zero party data. That owned data allows them to personalize and elevate brand experiences both inside the community and with the greater consumer population.

Without third-party gatekeepers (think social media channels), Sir Kensington’s has always-on access to cultivate their consumer relationships, collect data, and harness it to optimize all of their marketing efforts.

Creating Scalable & Authentic Advocacy

Another benefit that Sir Kensington’s reaps from their community is the ability to easily activate and scale engagement. From sampling campaigns to promoting the brand’s documentary Fries! The Movie (about their favorite “host food”), the community makes it easy to mobilize members to scale up campaigns to drive awareness, acquisition, and social proof. The ability to hyper-segment to pinpoint key audiences provides invaluable savings of time and money on programs that miss the target.

For one sampling campaign executed in partnership with Wild Planet, a canned tuna brand, Sir Kensington’s activated 1,000 targeted community members by sending them samples of both products and asking them to create and share a recipe across social media. The campaign generated 3,600+ pieces of UGC and 350 reviews. As a challenger brand with a resource-strapped team, the value this holds for Sir Kensington’s is unmatched.

Elevating Innovation with Always-on Insights

With their Vesta-powered online brand community, Sir Kensington’s taps into an always-on consumer panel through surveys, polls, and focus groups to capture key audience intelligence, gain insights during product development, and efficiently navigate brand decisions according to audience preferences.

One example is the Market Research Online Community (MROC) study the brand conducted with the help of Vesta’s Insights team. This intensive 7-week focus group engaged a select group of community members in a series of discussions and activities to identify consumer pain points, gain product feedback, optimize creative concepts, and gauge interest in products under development.

The research directed the development of new products for Sir Kensington’s “Everything Sauce” product line. In addition to allowing Sir Kensington’s to launch with confidence, involving community members in co-creation ensured they felt valued by seeing their feedback and ideas reflected in product decisions.

Capturing Market Growth with Emotional Loyalty

In demonstrating their commitment to putting the consumer first, Sir Kensington’s has ignited a powerful relationship with its community members that cannot be achieved through any other medium. With features like the in-platform Survey tools and the Discussion Forum, the brand can hear the genuine thoughts and opinions of consumers who are eager to share with them, exciting members through the process of co-creation and gaining a deeper understanding of them.

The community’s ability to nurture genuine connections and increase awareness of Sir Kensington’s and its brands has been pivotal in driving Household penetration. Community data shows that 73% of community members who were non-purchasers of Sir Kensington’s were converted to brand purchasers after joining the community.

Community Powered Marketing Delivers Impact for Sir Kensington’s

Sir Kensington’s makes it clear – when you challenge the ordinary, you can achieve something extraordinary. Just as the brand took the condiment category by storm, they’ve also turned their online brand community into a force that drives their advocacy, engagement, and insights strategies to the next level.

 In just 2 ½ years, they’ve achieved:

•   132% increase in Net Promoter Score
•   73% purchase conversion
•   91% positive brand opinion
•   31,000+ pieces of authentic user-generated content
•   35,000+ survey responses collected

 Community Powered Marketing enables Sir Kensington’s to continue to cultivate a community of super fans they know they can rely on to continue to challenge – and win – in a competitive market.

Are You a Challenger Brand with Challenging Challenges?

Vesta has helped brands like yours tap into their best consumers to find their next consumers and deliver big market impact. 

We invite you to take a listen to this clip from Sir Kensington’s about working with Vesta. And then let’s talk about how we can help your brand.

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post The Ultimate Challenger Brand Wins With Community Powered Marketing: How Sir Kensington’s Did It appeared first on TINT.

Community marketing makes engaging with your consumers easy and effective, mobilizing your advocates to increase brand awareness, drive acquisition, nurture customer relationships, and more. 

Is your brand using community marketing to the fullest? 

We can help. Here are 14 community marketing ideas that you can put into action today, along with some examples of brands taking advantage of them. 

1. Create a Reviews Pipeline Through Sampling

Effective review generation should be a top priority for brands, especially considering that two out of three shoppers will read a review before purchasing a product or service. 

If you want to generate more authentic and valuable reviews, sampling is one of the best ways to do it. 

Let’s look at Hero Cosmetics, a fast-growing premium beauty brand. They needed to support sell-through at two key retailers: Target and Ulta. So they turned to the members of the Hero Skin Squad Community to come to their rescue.

For Target, Hero Cosmetics established a campaign that rewarded community members who shared a photo or video of themselves with Hero’s brand new Clear Collective product line. All community members who shared were put into a drawing to win a Hero Cosmetics swag bag stocked with products. 

When Hero Cosmetics launched at Ulta, they wanted to make sure they showed their new retailer the love. Hero activated members of their community to visit Ulta, sample the products and share a video or photo with their Hero product in hand. All participants were put into a drawing for another of their popular swag bags.  

These campaigns allowed Hero Cosmetics to mobilize their community members to sample the products and share their experiences. They also gained countless high-quality user-generated content (UGC) that they could repurpose for additional brand building and awareness efforts. The members of the Hero Skin Squad community have truly turned out to be “heroes” for the brand. 

2. Enhance Brand Ambassador Engagement

Turning consumers into brand ambassadors takes effort, but it provides your brand with unparalleled value. Brand ambassadors provide valuable and honest feedback, while also being raving advocates for your brand. 

Clio Snacks, makers of delicious yogurt treats, were believers in the power of harnessing their highly vocal consumers as ambassadors. After building a group on Facebook to see how they could get consumers to advocate and take action on behalf of the brand, they knew they were onto something. But at 125 ambassadors, they realized it wasn’t sustainable. So they turned to TINT to start their Clio Cravings Club. 

They wanted a destination that they owned and where they were free to build one-to-one relationships at scale to drive co-creation and to inspire ambassadors to be “megaphones” of behalf of the brand, amplifying content and supporting retail relationships through reviews and user-generated content (UGC). They also saw community as immeasurably valuable in generating actionable market gutchecks and ongoing audience learnings. 

“We see such value with an ambassador program because we can get so much strong insight from a very valuable consumer base while also driving long-term loyalty” – Rachel Moore, Chief Marketing Officer, Clio Snacks

Today the Clio Cravings Club community delivers delicious benefits to consumer ambassadors hungry to engage with the brand. They have the opportunity to influence product innovation, to be the first to know about new flavors, to engage with the brand and fellow fans in discussions and campaigns, and to receive exclusive offers and branded swag.  And in just one years, their numbers have exploded by 2300%. 

3. Drive Word-Of-Mouth

Word-of-mouth continues to be one of the most powerful and cost-effective marketing channels. Consumers place the utmost trust in word-of-mouth, with 88% of consumers saying that they have more trust in a brand when it’s recommended by friends or family. 

Popular exercise equipment maker Peloton understands the importance of word-of-mouth marketing. In fact, they went as far as to halt nearly all of their marketing efforts to focus solely on word-of-mouth at one point. 

Peloton recognized that word-of-mouth was their most cost-effective marketing channel and their most effective one.  The Peloton community made this possible. Peloton’s focus from the start has been on building connections between members as well as with their instructors. Their trainers are active across social media and frequently interact with members online. 

The ability to access motivational instructors and ride with virtual classmates made Peloton what it is today. The community they’ve created is one of the primary selling points for consumers to spread the word about Peloton to their friends and family. And while the brand is once again investing in brand marketing to overcome recent challenges, the community it has built will help it weather the storm. 

4. Make Your Brand a Part of Consumers’ Lifestyles

All of the most successful brands offer more than a simple product or service. Brands that consumers love to rave about create an entire lifestyle around the brand. Their products, missions, and other aspects of their brand mesh perfectly with the values and interests of their consumers. 

Lululemon is one of the best examples of a lifestyle brand. They’ve promoted a lifestyle of health and wellness and, in turn, created an entire community of enthusiastic consumers. 

Their Sweat Life community encourages consumers to connect through their workouts, sharing posts of their daily exercise. And their stores are becoming experiential meetup hubs, where consumers can bond with each other and the brand through yoga, fitness, and health classes as well as purchase gear.  

By creating a lifestyle that draws consumers together, Lululemon has experienced exponential and sustainable growth without a sweat. 

5. Deliver Product Innovation and Co-Creation

A community can be used to fuel both product innovation and product co-creation. What better way to provide your consumers with what they want from your brand than consulting with them directly?

LEGO has the right idea with their LEGO Ideas community. Lego Ideas, originally known as LEGO Cuusoo, is a platform that leverages the inherently creative minds of the LEGO-loving community. It’s a space where the LEGO community can come together to submit their own ideas and support ideas from other community members.

LEGO Ideas not only gives the brand a chance to create products that the community wants, but it also makes members and consumers feel valued. Their ideas are being considered, making them feel like a part of the brand itself. 

With community, driving product innovation and co-creation is easier than ever—you have a ready-made pool of consumers who love your brand and would love to contribute. 

6. Spark Advocacy and UGC

The importance of UGC can’t possibly be overstated. When consumers create shareable pieces of content that get the word out about your product or service, there’s not much more you can ask for.

UGC is at the forefront of the hello friends community, the community created by challenger brand hello Products. They’ve generated thousands of images, recommendations, and testimonials with their community. 

That’s because the hello friends community makes it easy to execute advocacy campaigns.  One recent campaign to support the new packaging for hello Pure Mint Extra Whitening fluoride toothpaste campaign sparked social sharing by sending 500 targeted community members a full-size tube of the toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a branded sharing guide. hello Products also engaged friends and their followers with helpful tips, engaging discussions, and brand information to drive even more excitement and buzz. 

Community members shared their content directly through the platform, making it easy for hello to capture it to repurpose in its own campaigns and glean insights.  In just 9 weeks, the campaign generated over 3,000 pieces of UGC, 1.3 million consumer-generated impressions, and 308 retail reviews.

If you want to learn more about hello Products and their strategic use of UGC, our podcast episode with founder Craig Dubitsky is a must listen. 

7. Gain Data and Insights

Listening to the wants and needs of your consumer base is at the heart of every successful brand—and that’s what data collection and insights are all about.

A community makes it that much easier to collect data, both first-party data and intentionally shared zero-party data, as well as to act on the insights the data provides. 

Rust-Oleum, a leading manufacturer of coatings, is taking full advantage of the power of consumer insights. It harnesses Creators Studio, its community of passionate DIY enthusiasts, to gather intelligence on its audience. 

Rust-Oleum can ask questions directly to their consumers to gauge trends and inform innovation decisions. Regular innovation challenges allow members to submit their ideas, and vote and comment on other submissions, providing visibility into what interests and excites its top consumers. The brand also hosts weekly “Ask the Expert” sessions where Rust-Oleum associates answer questions as well as engage in general chats where they share tips and recommendations, boosting the brand’s customer experience (CX). 

These valuable insights allow Rust-Oleum to continue to innovate and meet the needs of its passionate consumers. 

8. Power Your Direct-to-Consumer and Ecommerce Efforts

Community marketing ideas can work in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) and e-commerce spaces. 

Just look at beauty brand Glossier. Started as a beauty and lifestyle blog, the community built by the brand owner Emily Weiss grew from showcasing beauty routines to developing a product line: Glossier. 

Glossier had a community before their product line even existed!

On the Glossier blog, Emily Weiss defines the company as “a DTC beauty company that leverages content and community to power a superior shopping experience.” Glossier has harnessed the followers of its blog and Instagram to drive new consumer acquisition and product innovation, staying close to its consumers to deliver exactly what they want. With a valuation of over $1 billion today, it’s hard to deny the success of Emily’s efforts. 

All of this shows how important community is to industries across the board—including those in the DTC and e-commerce space.

9. Personalize Your Consumer Engagement

Consumers crave a personalized experience. Whether it’s the shopping experience or post-purchase emails, personalization helps project your brand in a positive light. 

A community can be used to help create personalized engagement with your audience, and Sir Kensington’s is a fantastic example of this. 

Sir Kensington’s delivers personalized brand experiences with Taste Buds, their online brand community. 

“At the beginning of our journey we analyzed the (Welcome Survey) data and we created these four different segments of our audience. They range from people who are interested in eating food for pleasure versus those that are more diet focused. And people who are more adventurous to those that prefer more mild flavors. And this has helped us personalize the experiences and the messages that we’re putting out there based on which segment each of our eaters fall into.” – Amanda Triglia, Associate Brand Manager, Sir Kensington’s 

Using their community, Sir Kensington’s can personalize the way consumers interact with the brand. In addition to its broader audience segmentation, the community continuously gathers data on community members as they interact and participate, creating rich progressive profiles that can be used to hyper-target offers and content. From food preferences and cooking habits to nutrition and special diets, Sir Kensington’s is able to customize its communications and brand experience in ways that are meaningful and build connections with its consumers. 

In the end, it’s all about creating value for consumers with personalized engagements—and that’s exactly what Sir Kensington’s can do through their Taste Buds community.

10. Elevate Connections With Gamification

Gamification, which adds the typical elements of game play, like points and competitions, to a non-typical purpose, like encouraging engagement with a product or service, is a tried and true way to engage and connect with your consumers. Not only is it entertaining but by harnessing people’s intrinsic motivators like mastery and competitiveness, it can deliver lasting engagement and connection.  

Look at the Nike Run Club. Understanding that consistency in training is often hampered by a lack of motivation, the Nike Run Club helps motivate users by encouraging them to smash their fitness goals, whether it’s through guided running workouts or custom coaching plans. 

Nike uses gamification by incorporating organized challenges with a small sense of urgency. When these challenges are tackled, users are presented with achievements that can be shared with friends for a bit of humble bragging. 

This gamified approach to the community helps Nike hook people and engage with them in meaningful ways. 

11. Support New Product Launches

One of the most common and effective community ideas is supporting new product launches. A community can be used to great effect when brands want to boost awareness surrounding a new product launch. 

BiPro understood the importance of driving new product awareness. They started by mobilizing 500+ segmented, health-conscious consumers looking to add natural protein to their diet. They targeted these consumers specifically to share authentic word-of-mouth about BiPro’s new product line. The launch campaign sparked thousands of posts, reviews, photos, and comments across key online channels, driving BiPro’s new product awareness among target consumers. 

Their campaign also created “pre-seeded” reviews, meaning that the product launched with reviews already available to provide additional validation. 

The results? A 21% increase in share of voice, 2,400+ pieces of UGC, and a 61% likelihood to purchase among a peer influencer group.

12. Amplify Your Shopper Marketing

Community can be used as a driver for shopper marketing campaigns. To demonstrate this, let’s look at Veggies Made Great and their community.

Veggies Made Great invited its members,  known as “Veg Heads” to “plant” discount coupons on product boxes in stores nationwide, and then spread the word on social media by sharing pictures of their in-store actions. The social sharing fostered a “treasure hunt mentality,” engaging friends and followers of community members to seek out and use the product coupons to sample the product. With minimal lead time and creative assets, Veggie Made Great was able to harness its digital relationships into offline actions with a major impact at the retail level.

The mission led to 4,460 coupons planted, a social reach of over 92,000 people, and a coupon redemption rate 30% higher than the industry average. 

13. Build Awareness of Your Brand Purpose

Brand purpose has become an important part of consumers’ decision-making process. And it’s not just Millennials and Gen Z:  75% of consumers worldwide expect brands to contribute to their well-being and quality of life. With community, brands have the opportunity to not just spread awareness of their efforts but to engage their die-hard fans to join them in their fight. 

Using their Generation Good community, Seventh Generation mobilized over 600,000 members to support legislation for various causes, including climate justice, menstrual equality, and indoor air quality, all while growing a connection to the brand. They hosted discussions and shared information within the community about the causes close to Seventh Generation.

They even held voter sweepstakes—all community members registered to vote in the United States by the promotion period were eligible to enter the sweepstakes to win Seventh Generation laundry detergent.

14. Create a Learning Community

An online community is the ultimate setup for helping and supporting others. By gathering a group of people willing to learn, and those willing to teach, you end up with a supportive community that provides a ton of value.

Duolingo takes the concept of “learning community” to the next level. In fact, the Duolingo Community grew to the point where it created valuable content alongside the Duolingo content team. This wasn’t an overnight success, either. The Duolingo Community started small before growing to over 50 million language learners. Today members are even developing their own courses for other members to take advantage of and learn new languages. 

As Duolingo learned, harnessing the power of community can create massive impact for your brand. 

Questions About Community Ideas?

With years of experience in community marketing, the TINT team knows all about the community powered marketing techniques that you can use to take your brand to the next level. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post 14 Community Marketing Ideas You Need to Put Into Action Today appeared first on TINT.

So we thought we’d let one of the many brands that are reaping the benefits of an online brand community tell you about the impact and ROI themselves. 

Read on to learn how one of our clients, Hero Cosmetics, has turned their community into their marketing superpower, driving soaring advocacy, consumer acquisition, and loyalty. 

Who is Hero Cosmetics?

Hero Cosmetics is a fast-growing, premium beauty brand that empowers people with acne-prone skin. Their first product was Mighty Patch—an acne patch that minimizes pimples without stripping or agitation. Since then, the brand has been on a meteoric rise, adding over 30 products to their line. 

The primary focus of Hero Cosmetics products is ingredients. Hero believes in restricting all of the ingredients that could cause irritation, understanding that customers with sensitive skin have trouble trusting new skin care products. 

A Hero’s Journey

As with all hero’s journeys, Hero Cosmetics has faced challenges along the way, fighting to get their voice heard in the highly competitive beauty and skincare space. 

As a true skin champion, they had a passionate consumer base but no way to cultivate and harness those relationships.

They also wanted to take their product sampling to the next level, driving influential, authentic reviews and valuable insights that they could use in future marketing campaigns. 

In their search for solutions, Hero Cosmetics determined that an online brand community would enable them to quickly and efficiently scale up their sampling and relationship-building efforts, providing an engaging destination where they could nurture and mobilize their fans to drive advocacy and insights. 

The Hero Skin Squad 

With the help of TINT, Hero Cosmetics established an online brand community: The Hero Skin Squad. The community’s mission is to provide a space where people can connect and communicate about their skincare journey, helping consumers find the skin they want and the confidence boost that comes with it. 

In addition to fun interactive brand experiences such as discussions, polls, and promotional offers, the Hero Skin Squad offers consumer activations, which harness community members as a guerilla marketing team to generate brand awareness, in-store traffic, high-quality ratings and reviews, and user-generated content. 

For example, when their new Clear Collective line launched at Target, the brand ran a shopper marketing campaign to elevate in-store traffic and sell-through and generate brand buzz. Community members were mobilized to head to their local Target and share a photo or video of themselves with the new products for a chance to win a stocked swag bag from the brand. Hero supported its launch at Ulta Beauty in a similar fashion. 

These activities help Hero Cosmetics to increase awareness surrounding both new and old products by generating authentic video and photo reviews. It also helps create high-quality UGC for the brand to use. 

Hero was able to tap into TINT’s in-platform survey tools to immediately begin gathering zero-party data to drive segmentation and personalization, supercharging its sampling efforts by hyper targeting members with the right skin tone and type. It also helped the brand team get a read on emerging skincare trends, such as “slugging” (check out this article from Elle if you’re curious).

In addition to rewarding Community members with opportunities to win product and branded swag, Hero awards points for every action and contribution to the community. These points are converted to coins in Hero’s rewards program, allowing more ways for the brand to foster brand affinity and loyalty from its biggest fans. 

The Results 

“We are incredibly excited to see the immediate impact our community is having on our brand. The Hero Skin Squad is actively sharing their positive experiences with our products, participating in product development, and helping us spread the word about our new launches. The activities and insights coming out of our community are creating great value for Hero” – Amy Calhoun Robb, VP of Marketing, Hero Cosmetics  

With the help of their online brand community, Hero Cosmetics has quickly racked up amazing results. 

In just one year, the community has managed to generate 690 high-quality product reviews and over 7,500 pieces of user-generated content, supplying invaluable social proof. 

Hero Cosmetics also saw a 23% increase in Net Promoter Score. With more people likely to spread the positive word about their brand, they’re able to organically raise brand awareness and reach. 

And Hero Cosmetics drove powerful sales growth, increasing average spend per community member by 25%, as well as achieving a 67% increase in members who have 3+ Hero products stocked in their homes. 

Drive Product Sampling, Authentic Reviews, and More With An Online Brand Community

The results that Hero Cosmetics saw with their online brand community speak for themselves. 

From increased word-of-mouth and reviews to elevated sales and increased basket size,  there’s no doubt that an online brand community is one of the most effective marketing channels for increasing awareness, acquisition, and growth. 

If you want to see results like Hero Cosmetics, an online brand community is the superpower you need. 

Your audience is waiting. 

Questions About Online Brand Communities?

We’re here to answer any questions you have about how communities can drive authentic reviews and UGC, or any other community questions you have. 

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Driving Sampling & Authentic Reviews With Community – How Hero Cosmetics Did It appeared first on TINT.

What is community platform software?

Community platform software is a type of marketing technology that enables brands and businesses to create an online community destination for their audience of consumers. 

Community platform software has two parts: the front end and the back end. 

The front end of a community platform software is the end-user experience – what your consumers see and how they interact with your brand or business via the community. 

The back end, often referred to as the “admin” side of the software, is used to help marketers and business departments manage various community elements. This can include launching community activities, posting updates, delivering tailored messages, monitoring content, collecting zero-party data and analyzing activity to optimize for business impact. 

Let’s dive into some of the essential parts of both the front end and back end of a community platform software. 

The consumer user experience of an online community platform software 

Each community platform software will have different features available for your consumers to interact with, but generally, online communities consist of: 

1) connection touchpoints with other community members

2) community activities

3) brand communication & gamification 

Connection touchpoints

Connection touchpoints with other community members are a central tenet in ensuring your community is an actual community. Platform-wise, this is anything that allows your audience to interact with each other, whether it’s through a comment section or a robust discussion forum with hundreds of topic threads.

Community connection helps your consumers feel a sense of belonging and kinship, which ultimately will help build an emotional relationship that drives brand loyalty. In a study by Harvard Business Review, they found that emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as even highly satisfied customers. These connection points will quickly translate into real revenue. 

Additionally, the conversations that take place are rich with knowledge exchange. They are great for handling trouble-shooting and customer service requests, and fantastic for getting a pulse on trends and understanding what is most important to your consumers. 

Community Activities 

While community interaction is necessary, it’s also essential for community members to feel a sense of exclusivity and excitement from being a part of your community. 

A good community platform software can make consumers feel like they are your team’s special and valued extension. This can be anything from a sneak peek at company announcements to offering feedback on innovation ideas to sampling products or contributing to branded content. Activities foster community participation and will empower your brand or business to mobilize authentic brand advocacy. 

The activities you can deliver to your community will vary widely depending on the community platform software you choose. 

At TINT, we believe more is always better. Consumers want to feel a sense of freshness and discoverability each time they engage with your community, and with our platform’s 30+ activities and activations, there are hundreds of fun, interactive and entertaining experiences to be had. 

From social sharing activities to surveys & polls, ratings & reviews, eCommerce & digital promotions, and even personalized geo-targeted and in-home events, we provide a variety of ways to interact with a community. 

When choosing a community platform software, it’s not just important to consider the different types of activities but also how your consumers are invited to participate. According to a McKinsey & Company study, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t receive a personalized experience.

We’ve all encountered getting an invitation from a brand that was misaligned. Conversely, we’ve all felt incredibly valued when a brand listens to us and speaks to our individual needs. This could be the key moment when a person goes from typical customer to die hard fan. Don’t miss these opportunities. 

A community platform software must build a robust data feedback loop into its technology. This means that when consumers offer a piece of information about themselves, they will receive a relevant community activity. 

With TINT, each consumer accesses a personalized Netflix-style community dashboard with their latest and ongoing community activities. 

Consumers are already highly guarded about their data, and offering community activities driven by personalized engagement will build trust. 

Brand communication and gamification

All community platform software packages should allow the community owner (you) to communicate and interact with its members at large. 

Community postings can be a way to deliver news about your brand, updates to the community, upcoming events, or any other important information regarding their community experience. 

Community members should also receive feedback or engagement for their overall participation. This can be as simple as highlighting featured members or showcasing particular community activities. 

But a way to make your community shine is by offering gamification and rewards. Gamifying your community provides immediate delight and a lighthearted way to keep your community members engaged. 

The admin experience of an online community platform software 

A high-quality front-end consumer experience will increase your brand equity and consumer engagement. And a top-notch admin experience will help maximize your investment, deliver the most business value, and generally make your life easier and your job more enjoyable. 

A good community platform software will offer four things: 

1. A way to quickly identify and segment different groups in the community 
2. A seamless process for creating and launching community activities 
3. Visibility into community content for monitoring and moderating 
4. Insight into business impact metrics that are easily digestible

Community segmentation 

A community platform software should be able to target micro-audiences within your community to drive personalization efforts.  

Each community platform software will have different targeting capabilities, some being very limited and some being almost limitless. 

Almost every community platform software will require consumers to create or sync a personal profile upon signup. This can be a place for marketers to capture basic demographics like age, email address, gender, and location. Depending on the software provider, they may also be able to sync loyalty card accounts or eCommerce profiles. 

With TINT’s built-in survey capabilities, marketers can go above and beyond basic demographics and start collecting highly sought-after zero-party data and first-party data. This includes more values-based information like shopping preferences, lifestyle behavior, personal interests and passions, and much more. 

Using this kind of information, brands can segment and deliver tailored community activities for each individual. For example, you can identify a group of people with a love of photography and offer them a photo contest activity. Or ask a group that is passionate about the environment to spread the news about an eco-friendly innovation coming to market. 

Additionally, community segmentation also allows you to gain valuable consumer insights that you would not be able to get through third-party “rented” channels. This can help inform messaging, creative, product innovation and optimize advertising investments. 

With any software system today, make sure the platform has state-of-the-art data security practices and follows industry best practices in privacy.

Seamless setup and launch of community activities 

A community platform software should offer an easy way for admins to deliver activities to the community. One of the best ways to tell if a particular software will fulfill this need is the company’s experience, leadership, and methodology behind the software. 

Community building is an art and a science, and the companies with experience know what works and what doesn’t. At TINT, we’ve spent more than 13 years building and refining our software to be easy, scalable, and measurable for marketers. 

And for resource-strapped teams, we offer dedicated community experts who can manage your community activities for you. 

Community monitoring and moderating 

Every community needs visibility into community conversation. Seeing actual commentary from consumers is one of the best parts of having a community. Beyond that, a community can provide a library of excellent content to reuse and repurpose in other marketing capacities. 

Like any other consumer-facing channel, moderation must be included. We offer moderating and monitoring services at TINT so your community always reflects and upholds your brand’s values. 

Business impact metrics & platform integration 

Business impact metrics include highlighting and measuring overall activity, engagement, time on site, and participation. But the real power of your community is the army of passionate advocates eager to share your brand with their social networks. 

A community platform software can show you external community activity, including social sharing, retail reviews, user-generated content, shared links, and more. Measuring ROI for community platform software is also achieved by gathering loyalty metrics and tracking them over time. 

An online brand community is both an immediate problem solver and a long-term business builder all in one. Our brand partners see an average lift of 48% in their Net Promoter Score in just the first 100 days of launch and 73% purchase conversion in the first year. 

Backed by Nielsen’s Audience 360 analysis, we’ve seen a brand partner’s lifetime value of a loyal community member grow up to 13x more valuable than other marketing channels. Another client saw an increase in household consumption of 16%. 

What are examples of online communities created with a community software platform? 

Technology decisions like this can easily swamp you in technical jargon, so we know it always helps when you can see a community platform software “come to life.” Here are a few examples of brands that are getting community building right. 

Using a community platform software to “graduate” from Facebook and build a brand-owned relationship 

Clio Snacks, a fast-growing chocolate-covered yogurt brand, was no stranger to engaging its audience. Like most brands, they used Facebook and other social media pages as a way to engage but struggled with the ongoing limitations and data gatekeeping of these third-party channels. 

They launched the Clio Cravings Club via TINT’s community platform software and turned their community from Facebook-owned to brand-owned. 

Through the community platform software, they could cultivate direct brand ambassador relationships and spread awareness to curious consumers through authentic user-generated content. Furthermore, they could gain predictive insights to drive brand innovation. 

As the Chief Marketing Officer from Clio Snacks says, “Our community members feel like they are a part of the development process…we can get so much strong insight while also driving long-term loyalty.” 

In the first 100 days of their community launch, Clio Snacks saw a whopping +25% increase in brand loyalty, a +10% increase in emotional connection, and a +23% increase in household penetration. Read their entire case study here. 

Using a community platform software to drive targeted sampling trial & generate reviews 

Another excellent example of a brand utilizing a community platform software is the premium beauty brand Hero Cosmetics. The Hero Skin Squad was the perfect way to mobilize its customer base’s intense passion for the brand. 

Product Sampling is an incredibly effective marketing tactic for any cosmetic brand to drive trial and acquisition. Using TINT’s audience segmentation, Hero identifies key audience segments within their community to deliver tailored samples and then prompts consumers to share their experiences via their social channels and retail websites. 

In addition to their community activities, the Hero Skin Squad has a vibrant community discussion channel, chock full of hundreds of conversations on all things skincare and makeup. Consumers can connect with like-minded people and exchange tips, advice, and recommendations for dozens of topics. 

Using its community, Hero gained over 400 retail reviews and a +25% increase in average spend per community member in less than100 days. Hero’s Vice President of Marketing praises the community stating, “we are incredibly excited to see the immediate impact our community is having on our brand. The activities and insights are creating great value for Hero.”    

Want to see even more examples? Here are five brands that are winning at community or check out even more case studies here.  

What are the best community platform software packages?

We won’t be shy with our bias – we suggest TINT is the best community platform software out there. Still, you should always ensure the technology partner you choose best aligns with your business goals, budget, and overall organizational fit.

We know how overwhelming it can be to choose the right marketing partner. Why should you pick us? Here’s what our customers tell us makes TINT best-in-class. 

Building a community around your brand is one of the best ways to give consumers value at every stage in their journey, generate new cost-effective customer acquisition, increase customer lifetime value, and provide valuable market resilience.

Do you want to see what a community can do for your brand in just 100 days? Let’s chat.  

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Find the Best Community Platform Software (2022) appeared first on TINT.

Snapple Straight Up Tea Assures Product Launch Success

Whenever a brand launches a new product, there’s always risk involved. It’s estimated that 70-80% of new grocery store products will fail. Snapple wanted to ensure it would beat the odds when they launched their new product, Snapple Straight Up Tea. They needed to make sure that their new product was fresh in the minds of consumers everywhere, and to support sell-through at key retailers like Target. So Snapple turned to social advocacy to amplify retail promotions and boost conversions. They used targeted peer influencers to drive in-store awareness and conversion of a mobile app coupon specifically for their brand new product. With their own guerilla marketing team of 1,200 influential Target shoppers generating buzz and excitement, Snapple was able to stand out on the shelf in a highly competitive retailer.  As a result of its social advocacy campaign, Snapple increased its online share of voice by 25% and achieved a coupon redemption rate double the industry standard.  Read the case study here!

Hero Cosmetics Creates Pipeline of Ratings & Reviews

Driving reviews is one of the most important benefits of brand advocacy, especially when you consider that 93% of consumers are influenced by a product’s online reviews.  Hero Cosmetics understands this, and with their online brand community, the Hero Skin Squad, they were able to mobilize consumer engagement efforts to drive retail reviews. Through a combination of branded content and targeted sampling efforts, they are able to generate consistent and authentic reviews.  It all started with the creation of their online community, a “home base” where the brand’s relationship with members are nurtured through engaging, interactive brand experiences such as social sampling, promo offers, surveys, and more. This ready-made pool of advocates can be called on to deliver authentic ratings and reviews to power e-commerce and retail success.  Hero Cosmetic’s brand advocacy campaign drove over 400 authentic reviews in just the first 100 days, as well as a 19% increase in Net Promoter Score.  Read the case study here!

Adidas Builds Relationships To Build Referrals

Adidas is up front about the impact that brand advocacy has on its business.  Their 2016 Annual Report highlighted its benefits:   “We firmly believe that advocacy will create sustained growth for our brands, underpinned by the fact that brand advocates, on average, buy more than non-advocates. In addition, a large part of our consumers rely on referrals from friends or family when making purchasing decisions.” Adidas cultivates this advocacy by making consumers feel special and giving them buzz-worthy content to share. The Adidas vision for brand advocacy is reflected in their online community—The adiClub. The club rewards loyal customers with exclusive access to special products, experiences, and services. The program doesn’t just reward Members for purchases: Advocates receive rewards for engaging with the brand by attending events, sharing referrals, and uploading user-generated content, among other things.  Adidas has also launched the Creator’s Club Week, a digital festival to show off the latest innovations, freshest designs, and sustainable products to the world. Participants have access to the brand’s largest drop of limited edition shoes, as well as raffles for unique creations.

Tesla Incentivizes Word of Mouth Referrals

How did Tesla reach the pinnacle of brand awareness despite having zero advertising budget?  The answer: Brand advocates.  Tesla’s success doesn’t solely revolve around its mission-driven and dynamic CEO. The company understands the importance of word-of-mouth marketing and how consumers trust the word of friends, co-workers, and family members over the brand itself.  So Tesla developed a tailored referral program that incentivized its customers to become active advocates. Owners could share referral links that awarded them and the new buyer with prizes upon purchase, including free Roadsters for super-referrers.  Tesla also connects with its community through customer forums and an owners club where they make consumers feel valued. All of this has helped turn their customers into raving advocates. 

Questions About Brand Advocacy Campaigns?

The TINT platform is all about providing brands with the tools they need to run their own brand advocacy campaigns. Reach out to us with your questions—we would love to help. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post 4 Brand Advocacy Campaigns That Got it Right appeared first on TINT.

But how do you know when you’re ready for your own brand community? 

You already have a wide range of tools at your disposal for all types of marketing initiatives. So how can a community help enhance your overall marketing efforts?

Don’t worry. TINT is here to help you work through all your questions.

Assessing If You’re Ready for an Online Brand Community

To help you understand if you’re ready for an online brand community, we’ve created a community readiness checklist. Asking yourself these nine questions can help you assess where your brand currently stands in regards to consumer acquisition, retention, loyalty, data ownership, and insights, and tell you if an online brand community is right for you. 

1. Are You Out Growing Third-party Owned Forums?

We understand that almost every brand has a social media page. After all, Facebook groups and Instagram profiles can be useful in word-of-mouth marketing. 

But is your brand outgrowing these third-party-owned forums and groups? 

Third-party groups and forums don’t give you the benefit of owning the first-party data you collect. Because of this, distributing your valuable content will require advertising spend. 

With a TINT online brand community, you own the data. You can use it in any of your ongoing marketing efforts, for personalization, or media optimization. 

Another problem with certain third-party-owned platforms is an overall negative outlook on the platform as a whole. Take Facebook, for example. The platform is often viewed negatively, with a large number of brands taking their communities elsewhere. Unfortunately, this means that your brand could be subject to harm simply by using Facebook as your primary community platform. 

Starting your own online community allows you to avoid this negativity and cultivate a community on your terms. 

2. Do You Have an Audience of Consumers Passionate About Your Brand, But You Can’t Seem to Build a Relationship with Them?

You’ve put in the work to cultivate an audience that loves your brand, your mission, and the lifestyle surrounding your brand. 

An online brand community can help bring that audience together and foster brand advocacy.

By providing your audience with a welcoming home, they can help drive word-of-mouth advocacy and bring new consumers to your brand and your community. If your audience is already developed, it’s time you think about providing them with a welcoming online brand community home. 

3. When Consumers Share about Your Brand, Are You Able to Mobilize, Scale, and Measure It Easily?

Nothing beats the thrill of seeing consumers talking about your brand in a positive light or giving passionate testimonials about their experience. 

It’s essential to harness this power in a repeatable and predictable way. Far too many brands run their word-of-mouth strategy through confusing and disjointed efforts, often ruled by excel spreadsheets or other ad hoc management systems. 

With a TINT community, you’re able to organize, run, and measure word-of-mouth campaigns from one place. This efficiency can help you remove entire processes and programs from your marketing stack and streamline your marketing efforts. 

4. Are You Invested in Ecommerce on Your Brand Website or Other Retail Channels, but Struggle with Driving Authentic and Recent Reviews?

We know that one of your main goals is to increase conversions that drive sales.

An online brand community will play a significant role in the purchase cycle.

A community can help you seed customer reviews on product pages. As a strong form of social proof, these reviews help fuel new sales and bring brand new customers to the table. 

With your community, you can foster emotional relationships with your consumers in between purchases. These strong connections build true brand loyalty that keeps customers coming back.

Communities also help consumers discover new products and services. Instead of constantly trying to get your advertising message to be seen, an online brand community gives you an organic way to promote your new products or services to an audience already interested in your brand. 

5. Are You Having Difficulty with Accessing Actionable Data And Consumer Feedback? 

With an online brand community powered by TINT, it’s never been easier to engage with your consumers and act on their feedback. 

Past conventional methods of gathering data are disappearing quickly, from cookies going away to Apple’s newer iOS privacy updates. This makes it more important than ever to establish a reliable channel to generate and own your data. 

With a TINT community, it’s easy to get feedback on how a product or service is performing. You can create polls to gauge interest in particular topics. You can even start discussions on new product ideas, as Sir Kensington’s did with their “Taste Buds” community.

Starting a brand-owned community gives you the perfect opportunity to act quickly and with purpose on consumer feedback. 

6. Do You Want Emotional Loyalty That Lasts Beyond a Transaction?

With online brand communities, the purchase isn’t the last step in the consumer journey. Beyond simple transactions, your community encourages loyal members to drive word-of-mouth promotion and build an active community of consumers who are all about your brand and your mission. 

For example, Seventh Generation initially thought that their “Generation Good”  online community members were their most loyal brand users. But it turned out that 60% hadn’t tried their brand before joining; they were looking for a community of people to connect with on the lifestyle. By fostering connections, educating, and empowering members to take action on issues of importance to them, they’ve built a meaningful and lasting relationship with hundreds of thousands of their consumers. 

Achieving that kind of authentic emotional loyalty at scale requires an online brand community. 

7. Do You Have a Unique Value Proposition in the Marketplace but You Still Aren’t Standing Out?

Nearly every company has a social media page for its brand. It’s a common channel for growing an audience and promoting products or services. This also means that it can be tough to stand out even with a great unique value proposition.

With an online brand community, you can create a vibrant online space unique to your brand. 

TINT communities can be customized to match your brand, from logos and color schemes to on-brand language throughout the pages of your community. And TINT’s Client Success team will develop a strategic calendar of highly targeted and tailored interactive elements, activities, and lively discussions to engage your audience. 

8. Do You Have a Powerful Brand Purpose That You Want to Bring “To Life”?

When you develop a strong brand mission, be it enacting environmental change, bringing awareness to certain issues, supporting charitable efforts, or anything in between, sharing that mission with the world is critical.

The problem is that the channels you usually have to share this on are limited. Brands are often forced to convey their message using advertising copy, which can feel unnatural and forced. Advertising is also less trusted by consumers.

An online brand community provides a more organic way to bring your brand mission to life using real stories from real people. These stories resonate with an audience far beyond promotional messaging. 

If you want an organic method of getting your message out to the world and truly bringing it to life, an online brand community is what you need. 

9. Do You Have a Strong Content Marketing Strategy and Want to Amplify Your Efforts?

An online brand community can help scale your efforts to a new level for brands focused on content marketing. 

As your community members interact through discussions and other elements, they create authentic and shareable content. All of this user-generated content helps drive more traffic, increases brand awareness and reach, and can help bring new consumers into the community. 

User-generated content is also a great way to use social proof to your advantage. Creating your own content about your products and services is important, but your audience is far more likely to trust online content from their family and friends above anything else. 

If you’re looking to take your content marketing strategy to the next level, look no further than an online brand community.

So… Are You Ready for Your Own TINT Community? 

Running through our checklist can be helpful in thinking about the ways an online brand community could help your brand. 

Let’s be honest, though. Nearly every brand can benefit from a TINT community. From streamlining brand advocacy through social proof and word-of-mouth promotion to acquiring new consumers and building lasting emotional loyalty, there’s something for every marketer to take advantage of with a TINT community. 

Learn how to get started with our guide to building online communities. Your audience is waiting.

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post How Do I Know When I’m Ready For An Online Brand Community? appeared first on TINT.

If 2020 taught business owners anything, it’s that the world can change at a moment’s notice and brands need to be prepared. Whether facing a groundbreaking new competitor, a global pandemic, or a social media boycott, Vesta co-founder and CEO Susan Frech finds solutions in community powered marketing.

“Community powered marketing shows the value of building an audience and growing the engagement with them,” says Frech. “People are online now more than ever, so with the right tools, brand marketers can give them a place to come together.”

Formerly known as Social Media Link, Vesta harnesses the power of community by creating brand-owned online communities with their innovative SaaS platform. Once users are drawn to the brand’s online community, their engagement with the activities, discussions, surveys, and more help the company build loyalty, generate advocacy, and enhance their digital presence.

“Consumers are looking for increased personalization. If a user doesn’t have kids, and a website keeps pushing content for parents, they won’t feel welcome,” Frech explains. “Our platform captures their feedback and uses it to create highly targeted content to engage each consumer. The more they interact on the platform, the more Vesta can personalize the user experience.”

The benefits of inviting members to join a brand-owned community go beyond a convenient digital experience. When planned strategically, it creates a loyal fanbase that will negate risk. “If you’re relying on a third-party social media channel for business and consumers choose to boycott that company, you’re stuck. But if you own the community platform, you’re able to have control no matter what the future brings,” says Frech.

The same principle of risk management applies to companies looking to launch a new product or service. By going to their community for feedback on new ideas, brands can focus on providing what consumers are after. “Once a new product hits the market, community members can write authentic online reviews, give recommendations, and create user-generated content that will drive new consumers to the brand,” Frech adds.“The exchange furthers emotional loyalty and transforms the customer base into an army of brand evangelists. It future-proofs the business.”

CASE STUDY
Growing a Community

Veggies Made Great had developed a small loyal following on their own, but when daily operations and tracking became too much to effectively manage, they turned to Vesta to create a scalable community where they could engage with their core audience of “Veg Heads” and capture their insights to help grow the brand.

Through Vesta’s platform, Veggies Made Great community members are able to connect with like-minded individuals, win free products, and find opportunities to get involved. For their “Plant a Coupon” campaign, members stuck coupons on Veggies Made Great products at their local grocery stores and talked to interested customers in person and online. In return, they were given coupons for products they already love. The involvement not only created an opportunity for members to interact, but it also created new fans through community powered marketing. As a result, the online community has helped drive a 20% increase in sales since its launch.

To see how an online community can create big results for your brand, let’s chat.

The post As seen in Forbes & Entrepreneur: Redefining Community appeared first on TINT.