How to design a community around your product

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Introduction: 

Picture this:

You come up with a brilliant product idea and feel that your users will love it as it solves one of the pressing problem they need solving

Yet, the product being everything your users need, you are not able to attract any user as well. Not only that in spite of multiple user interviews, the root cause of this phenomena is eluding you.

Sometimes users are entrenched in certain ways of doing things and shaking them off to try an alternative might be futile, yet human beings are motivated by being seen, heard and engaged. And hence a community is a strong craving for any human being. This is no different in business.

In 2015, I was in charge of launching a major online marketplace for designer and luxury products.

This was a new platform being developed within a larger ecosystem of a major e-commerce marketplace. Up until that point, luxury shopping was fragmented and was more brick and mortar boutique drive. It was also highly personal and intimate with shoppers extremely involved in the entire decision making and buying process.

Getting this category of shopper to drop these behaviors and shop online with limited human interaction was a task at hand. So what did we do?

We invested in building a community around our target user by focusing on their need, aspiration and gratification. By aligning our mission with fulfilling the aspiration of our users, we were able to develop a thriving and highly engaged community in just over 6 months of launch of our product.

What is a community in the context of a product? 

Communities develop when a group of people with a shared interest, affinity and purpose come together seeking gratification through use of a product. 

Communities around products develop when the product mission is aligned with the aspiration and purpose of a group of people who center their conversation around the product, its utility, benefits and how to improve it

Communities around brands and products is not a new concept. There has been global communities build around iconic products like Harley Davidson, Star Wars, Harry Potter and of course Apple 

Why do you need a community?

Benefits of an engaged community

There has been a strategic shift in the way most product organizations approach their business objectives. PLG is one of the most exciting ways to drive growth and adoption with the product itself being the anchor for driving that growth. 

For organizations, from early stage startups to established brands, it is increasingly getting tougher to cut through the marketing & sales noise and create a space for themselves. Consumers are seeking validation through reference and experience. Having a community around your product can play a critical role in the entire user journey as well as in the product roadmap. 

85% of marketers and community managers believed that having an online community improves the customer journey and increases brand trust.

Insights blackbox: An engaged community can be your blackbox of product insights. You can leverage their experience to understand what is working, what is not, what to prioritise and also lean on the community for advocacy. 

Most brands with a highly engaged community also have an edge in growth, with community conversation, it is much easier to identify growth levers and also identify your initial growth flywheel.

Building and designing a community is an exercise in intentional decision making as you need to think about the impact it can have both ways on the business as well as the members who will interact with it are part of it. Hence, it becomes all the more important to take impactful decisions with thorough consideration.

How to build a community: A Roadmap

The groundwork:

• As PMM you need to have a very clear understanding of your organisations/product mission 

Identify who this mission serves the best. 

Be highly focused on that one key problem so as to narrow down on that one core user group with the most pressing need for solving that problem.

• Design your community framework and objective:

• Align your product/brand mission with the need of your target audience

• Identify your core target audience

  • Create a profile of that user ( you ICP) you want in your community and also the anti- ICP the one you don’t want in your community.

• Define what ties your target audience with your product

  • Identify the user set which demonstrates the highest affinity for your product where the problem is being most effectively solved by your core feature.

• Design a member level strategy:

• Define what ties them all together:

• Outreach ( Find the best way to connect with your community)

  • Cold Outreach:  

    • Design a registration program and do a tactical drip cold outreach to your target audience through emails and social media messaging 

    • Based on the designed ICP and the identified pain point share relevant insights to show how your product helps solve that problem

    • Incentivise this audience to partner in the program 

    • Design a nurturing program from the word go

  • Social outreach:

    • Design a content strategy aim at your target user base and the right platform

    • Initiate discussion and participation of your target audience

• Meet your community where they are. Identify the platform the are active on, test ways to reach them ( mail, message, call, events, forum etc)

• Start by sharing your native content with your audience 

• Know what to focus on.

• Identify the best platform/space to engage them

• Meet your community where they are. Identify the platform the are active on, test ways to reach them ( mail, message, call, events, forum etc)

• Start by sharing your native content with your audience 

• Know what to focus on.

• Identify the best platform/space to engage them

• Value and incentivizing  your community ( Benefit sharing)

• Provide a safe environment to engage: 

  • Set your boundaries: According to ForumCon, community members need to feel emotionally secure and comfortable sharing.There has to be guidelines and moderation standards to guide the community members towards constructive engagement and communication.

• Engage and involve ( hooks) ( How to give customers a voice in your product development)

• How do you measure community engagement:

  • Find the best metrics to measure and drive engagement and elevate community objectives. 

  • DAU, MAU and NPS

Role of product marketing manager. 

• Insights: PMMs are closest to a product users and hence are best placed to drive user insights and feedback which can help design a community which is highly engaged, active and productive

• Advocacy: Know what to ask for: content generation, reference, testimonials, testing etc

• Growth (Identify the tipping point when a user becomes an advocate). 

  • What are the core signals?

Strategy Example: How Yonder Build a Community around their early product.

Topic: How Duolingo built a community around their product.

• About the product: 

• The Blueprint: 

• Empowering uses and platforms for knowledge sharing.

• Facilitating social connect

• The 1/9/90 rule: Duolingo focused on incentivising and enabling 1% of their users to contribute to their content creation with 9 % of the rest being active users and 90% of the users being addressed as target consumers

• The Essence:

Conclusion:

Community can be a highly effective strategy for product organization. Some of the biggest brands like meta and Duolingo have build their entire growth strategy on community strategy.

Product manages and product marketing manager can play a critical role in community driven strategy which can act as an enabler for growth, user insights and engagement.