Community-Led Growth Is the New Product-Led Growth Strategy

We’re seeing tried-and-true marketing strategies come full circle, with the strategy known as community-led growth as the hot "new thing." Except a community-focused marketing approach is not new. Luxury vehicle companies like Harley-Davidson and Jaguar have tapped into their community meetups to empower brand advocates for decades. As for ancient history, religions became widespread entirely on the basis of community. In modern times, companies have struggled to attribute revenue to their communities. But if pandemic life has taught us anything about marketing, it’s the power of the brand and the importance of designing long-term marketing strategies that sustain organic growth. Connecting directly with devoted customers is an essential way of feeding organic growth. Rallying enthusiasts behind a united cause and giving them the platform to interact with one another are great ways to drive acquisition and improve retention. What’s different in community marketing today is the expansion beyond traditional walls. Communities are no longer just meetups (a la Porsche). They’re not simply closed-door digital platforms (a la Marketo’s Marketing Nation). Communities are thriving across Twitter, Slack, YouTube, independent brand ambassadors, and beyond. Here are some industries where we’re seeing strides in community marketing: Highly regulated industries (such as alcohol and cannabis)Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)Business-to-Business (b-to-b) Are highly regulated industries the future of marketing? Brands in the alcohol and cannabis spaces face more regulatory obstacles in standard performance marketing channels. To win, these marketers will need to empower the brand marketing sides of their businesses. There are opportunities across influencer, content, organic social media, email and, of course, community marketing. Luxury CBD brand House of Wise took a bottom-up approach to its marketing strategy. Founder and CEO Amanda Goetz built her personal community, taking her Twitter following from 950 to 30,000 in a year. Then she started the House of Wise community on Slack well over a month before launching her products. Within the first year, she and her team were able to attribute their $1 million run rate largely to their community. How to educate SaaS newbies SaaS companies like HubSpot and Zapier have effectively tapped into communities to generate top-of-funnel awareness of their brand. They’ve even motivated their existing users to help educate the newer entrants to the product. On the brand awareness front, email service provider ConvertKit prides itself in building products for its community of creators. Their community-driven approach shines best in its Creator Sessions video series, which data shows grew to over 1 million total views on YouTube in April 2021. ConvertKit’s YouTube channel boasts 20,800 subscribers. A step beyond a traditional community, productivity app Notion has an ambassador program where power users like Marie Poulin and Khe Hy have built six-figure businesses off their own independent Notion courses and communities. Where community-led meets product-led growth One area uniquely positioned to benefit from community-led growth is b-to-b SaaS, where a brand is creating a new category. It’s an area where product-led growth is already popular through built-in viral loops. For a software company, product-led growth is one of the healthiest ways to sustain the business. Communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Loom in particular have benefited from this tactic as users ultimately maximize utility of these tools simply by inviting others to download them. This makes sense for Slack and Zoom because new users have to sign up and onboard with the apps in order to use them. With that built-in virality, community then becomes an additional channel for distribution. Slack communities themselves become advocates of the product and thus fuel growth. But for video messaging platform Loom, users aren’t required to download anything in order to view a video. Their organic growth comes from the users who are so delighted by the ease of use that they end up recruiting new users. On average, Loom users who record and share videos are seen by six others. Two years ago, the service had 1 million users; today, it's grown to 14 million users across 190 countries. Beyond SaaS for b-to-b communities It’s not just SaaS companies that benefit from the educational content generated by community members. In an era where remote work is becoming the norm, knowledge workers have become hungrier than ever for a sense of community. Sub-communities in social media—like Marketing Twitter—have thrived over the past two years. Marketing executives like Dave Gerhardt have even left their full-time roles to go all in on the communities they’ve created. And niche Slack, Circle and Discord communities like Demand Curve (for founders and marketers), Superpath (for content marketers), Swipe Files (for growth marketers), Code Cafe Online (for developers) and Cobble (for founders) have either seen substantial growth or sprung up over the past couple years. In this b-to-b space, some of the most engaged communities are run by service providers and course creators. Communities that lead with value will win As marketing teams continue to embrace community-led growth, they’ll uncover the valuable content and event opportunities that will ultimately make their long-term strategies more efficient. And the most successful brands will end up becoming their own distribution channels. Seeking Growth, Pernod Ricard Doubles Down on Media